Nuvabill vs WHMCS
Both help hosting companies sell plans, send invoices and set up accounts. They are very different in price, openness and age. Here is a fair look at both, so you can choose.
The short answer
WHMCS is the long-time market leader. It is mature, has a very large library of modules for registrars, control panels and payment gateways, and most hosting staff already know it. It is commercial software, and its core code is encoded.
Nuvabill is new. It is free, fully open source and built on a modern stack (PHP 8.3+ and Laravel). It covers the core hosting business today: store, invoices, payments, cPanel automation, renewals and support tickets. Many extras that WHMCS has are still on the roadmap.
Side by side
| Nuvabill | WHMCS | |
|---|---|---|
| License | Open source (AGPL-3.0) | Commercial license |
| Price | Free. A paid white-label license is coming. | Paid license. The price depends on your number of clients. |
| Source code | All code is readable on GitHub | Core code is encoded with ionCube |
| ionCube Loader needed | No | Yes |
| Store, invoices, renewals | Yes | Yes |
| Payment gateways | Stripe, PayPal, bank transfer | Many built in, more as add-ons |
| cPanel / WHM automation | Yes | Yes |
| Plesk, DirectAdmin, VPS panels | Planned for 0.2 | Yes |
| Domain registration | Planned | Yes, many registrars |
| Support tickets | Yes | Yes, plus knowledge base and announcements |
| Mobile client area, dark mode | Yes, designed for phones first | Responsive templates |
| Updates | Signed releases, backup and rollback | Built-in updater |
| Add-on marketplace | Planned | Very large |
| Track record | New (first release 2026) | Used by hosting companies for many years |
When WHMCS is the better choice
- You sell domain names and need registrar modules today.
- You rely on control panels or add-ons that Nuvabill does not support yet.
- You have thousands of clients and need a product with a long track record.
- Your team already knows WHMCS and you are happy with the cost.
When Nuvabill is a good fit
- You run a small or growing hosting company with cPanel servers.
- You want to stop paying a license fee that grows with your client count.
- You want to read, audit and change the code, or run it without ionCube.
- You want a simple, modern interface that works well on phones.
- You are starting a new hosting brand and want a clean setup.
Moving from WHMCS
A WHMCS importer for clients, products, services and invoices is planned for version 0.2. Until then, the safest path is to install Nuvabill on a subdomain, add your plans and test the full flow with a few new customers while WHMCS keeps running.
Try it yourself: the live demo has sample clients, invoices and tickets. It resets every hour.
WHMCS is a trademark of its owner. Nuvabill is an independent project by RapidNet Ltd and is not affiliated with WHMCS. Details about WHMCS are general and may change; check the WHMCS website for current features and prices.
Free to download. Free to run.
Install Nuvabill on your own hosting in a few minutes.