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WHMCS is a hosting billing platform. It is software you install on your own web server, and allows you to sell and manage domain names and hosting accounts. Upmind can also be used by web hosting providers. Upmind contains most, if not all, of the features WHMCS offers, plus many more. Both offer client management, hosting and domain sales and management, self-service order and client systems, support and more. Many of our users move to Upmind from WHMCS and we include an import tool which will migrate your WHMCS data to Upmind. In fact, Upmind was originally started because the founders wanted to move away from WHMCS. In this guide we explain some key differences between Upmind and WHMCS. We assume that you are familiar with WHMCS. If you are not, then the short answer here is that Upmind probably has everything you need and we recommend you just try it. Upmind is free and easy to try and so we would recommend giving it a go yourself.

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Installation and Ease of Use - Self-Hosted vs. SAAS

Upmind takes 20 seconds to set up and run without any configuration required. We run Upmind on top of Amazon Web Services. This is not only to ensure reliability; it enables us to use cutting-edge technology such as Lambda functions, queueing systems, search-specific databases, database replication and more. From a user perspective, it means it is really easy to use and you do not need to spend time or effort troubleshooting the setup. We also take care of all updates and security for you. What you cannot do with Upmind is log in directly to the database and change things. Some WHMCS users tend to do a lot of updates via SQL command. Our approach is different - we would much rather give you the tools to do this via the interface or API.

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API-First

Upmind is API-First. This means that every single action handled by you, your staff or clients, runs through our API. Our frontend interface is simply an implementation of those APIs. Using Upmind APIs you could write your own entire client or staff application with complete full functionality. WHMCS has an API but this is added on top of their software. From personal experience, developers using the APIs sometimes have to resort to running SQL commands to get the data out that they need, because the APIs contain an abstracted form of the data available. We presently have over 1500 API endpoints, in comparison to WHMCS with approximately 150 API endpoints.

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Responsive Modern Design

Upmind’s frontend interface is built in the latest frontend javascript technologies such as VueJS as a single-page application. It is completely responsive and works just as well on mobile and tablet devices as on desktops. We are offering javascript widgets which can be embedded into your client websites. Feedback from clients is that Upmind is “beautiful” and “a pleasure to use”. We know that our software is likely to be your homepage, and usability is an absolute priority. Obviously design is subjective but we recommend trying Upmind for yourself to see.

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Product Maturity

WHMCS is 10+ years old and established software. Upmind is currently in beta. We are adding features quickly. We have covered the vast majority of WHMCS features already but there may be some usage gaps we are not aware of, which are in the roadmap, or which we did not think it necessary to replicate. You can request these as features in our discussion area and we will endeavour to add them promptly. Ultimately we are committed to building the best software we can and are at the start of our journey. If there are features you need, let us know.

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Notifications and Hooks

Upmind has a flexible hook and action system. You can take any one of ~200 hooks and set conditional actions that occur on them in the interface. These actions include emails, slack alerts, and webhooks. These hooks can be set to fire on specific product status updates (e.g. suspension, auto-renewal change etc), or for example to send alerts of an upcoming renewal. WHMCS has a more rigid framework for email notifications such as product welcome emails, but other emails and notifications would usually be set up using custom PHP in their includes/hooks structure.

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Accounting

Invoices in Upmind are immutable. You cannot change them. If a client does not want to renew a domain, the invoice is credited. If a service is cancelled, the invoice is credited with a corresponding credit note. As a result, historic accounting data in Upmind does not change. This is how it should be. In WHMCS, invoices can be changed both by staff, or by the system cancelling or changing unpaid invoices.

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Integrations

We think that the current biggest difference between Upmind and WHMCS is that at present all Upmind integrations are first-party - i.e., they are written by us. In WHMCS you can find modules from third parties and add them, or build your own. The ability to add your own modules and integrations is in our roadmap. For now, we are focusing on integrating the top 20 domain registrars, the top 20 hosting providers, the top 20 web server providers, and the top 20 payment gateways. Additionally, Upmind currently has 50+ integrations with third-party services. As above, if you have a specific integration requirement, let us know and we will add it to our roadmap.

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Multi-brand, Multi-language, Multi-currency

Upmind can be used with multiple brands at once under one organisation. WHMCS supports a single brand. WHMCS supports one currency per client. If a client currency is changed then all invoices and transactions, even historic ones, show in the new currency. Upmind is truly multi-currency: clients can pay and hold balances in various currencies, and we can even convert prices to different currencies on demand. Upmind is natively mulit-lingual. Our app is translated into a growing number of languages already, and you can translate all text fields and notifications to the languages of your choice.

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Analytics and Marketing Tools

Powerful inbuilt support for Google Tag Manager events, including Google Analytics 4. We also implement our own version of urchin variables which let you pass site tracking information to the order form. These features would need to be custom implemented in WHMCS.

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Pricing

At Upmind we build great software. We have a freemium model which means a lot of users don’t pay us anything, and even larger businesses pay only a reasonable fee for our software. We are committed to keeping prices affordable and not increasing prices. WHMCS increased prices significantly since 2021.

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Ownership

WHMCS is owned by private equity (WebPros, who also own cPanel and Plesk). Upmind is privately owned by staff who all work full time for Upmind.