The experience of a Game Hosting Provider The Villager People
How a Game Hosting Provider Automated Billing and Support with BILLmanager
About the company
The Villager People is a South African game hosting provider specializing in high-performance Minecraft server solutions. The company's mission is to deliver robust and reliable hosting services at a competitive price point. The Villager People has a core team of several in-house specialists and a network of freelance developers. This allows the company to be agile and to focus strongly on customer support and service quality. .
Project Background
Before implementing BILLmanager, The Villager People managed its infrastructure using a combination of custom-developed and open-source solutions. The technical stack was built on powerful hardware: enterprise servers with Xeon e5-2600v4 CPUs for standard hosting and custom-built servers with Ryzen 9950X CPUs for high-performance modded hosting, all virtualized via Proxmox (Ubuntu). Game server management was efficiently handled by the Pterodactyl panel.
The business processes—billing, customer support, and sales—relied on a proprietary billing system developed in-house. Initially, this system met the company's specific needs. Yet, as the customer base grew and the infrastructure expanded to include additional physical nodes, significant limitations emerged. Scaling the custom system required significant and costly rework of its codebase. Furthermore, an unexpected change in the relationship with the initial payment gateway created urgent operational complications, necessitating inefficient manual workarounds for payment processing. This situation highlighted the critical need for a professional, integrated, and scalable automation solution for core business operations.
Project Goals and Objectives
The Villager People have established clear goals for a new billing and management platform in response to the limitations of its custom solution. The primary objective was to find a reliable and scalable system that could grow seamlessly with the business, eliminating the need for constant and costly internal development. Key requirements included:
- Native integration with the existing Pterodactyl panel for automated server provisioning and management.
- A robust and flexible billing system supporting multiple payment gateways to ensure business continuity.
- A built-in, structured ticket system to replace disjointed email support, improving response times and task tracking.
- An intuitive user interface for both the administrative team and end customers, simplifying ordering and server management.
- Professional technical support from the software vendor to ensure smooth implementation and long-term reliability.
Why ISPsystem
The search for a suitable platform led The Villager People to evaluate several options, including both paid services and free open-source solutions. While initially considering open-source alternatives for cost reasons, the company quickly encountered a critical issue: the lack of reliable, accountable support.
ISPsystem's BILLmanager stood out during this evaluation. The decisive factor was the opportunity to test the product comprehensively through a 30-day free trial. This allowed the team not only to verify the functional compatibility with Pterodactyl and other requirements but also to assess the quality of ISPsystem's technical support firsthand. During the trial, the ISPsystem support team provided comprehensive assistance throughout the setup and testing phase. This proven combination of a feature-rich product and reliable, professional support solidified the choice in favor of BILLmanager.
Project Implementation and Workflow
The implementation of BILLmanager took just one month. Using the system's tools, the company quickly configured a service catalog, allowing new customers to order and provision game servers automatically and intuitively.
The process was significantly streamlined by the comprehensive documentation provided by ISPsystem and the proactive assistance of its support team, which promptly resolved any configuration questions. A notable advantage of BILLmanager was its ease of deployment. The setup and full testing of the platform's core functionality were handled by just one of the company's technical specialists, demonstrating the solution's user-friendliness and clear integration process.
Features of Products Used in the Project
Automatic delivery of a wide range of services and features
Thanks to ready-made integration modules, BILLmanager allows you to automate the sale of any hosting services and features—shared hosting, VPS/VDS, virtual data centers and IaaS, dedicated servers, colocation, backup, and other software.
BILLmanager also integrates with Pterodactyl. The integration allows to automate provisioning of game servers and frees provider from expenses related to manual deployment of stands. The client orders the required number of hosts using BILLmanager interface, then the platform transfers all information to Pterodactyl and deploys game server based on the client’s data. With that further life cycle of the service according to its selected tariff is implemented in billing, while server management is implemented in Pterodactyl.
Multifunctional billing
The BILLmanager platform supports various payment models for the IT services provided — pay as you go, allocation pool, hybrid schemes — mixed models of accounting and payment for resources, payment for one-time services and products.
With the help of BILLmanager you can set up the sale of any services and products. At the same time, for each service you can set up a separate consumption and cost accounting model.
The client can pay for services by postpaid or prepaid; BILLmanager has its own tools for all payment options — autopayment, advance payment, subscriptions, auto-renewal, promised payment.
Customer support center
The BILLmanager platform provides a ready-made set of tools for automating interaction with users.
- Ticket system for processing requests. BILLmanager contains a full-fledged system helpdesk module. Users can create requests to the provider's support team, receive responses, attach files, insert code and other necessary information into messages, leave ratings for support responses, and not only through the BILLmanager personal account, but also by email. Client requests sent by email are forwarded to the provider's mailbox and to the BILLmanager platform, which creates tickets based on them.
- Automation of work. Answers to frequently asked customer questions can be added to templates for quick insertion into a ticket window.
- Notification system. BILLmanager offers a ready-made user notification system. There are several delivery channels available — the notification menu in BILLmanager, email, SMS, Telegram. The platform provides a set of ready-made email notifications. If necessary, you can set up your own templates for sending notifications via SMS, the BILLmanager menu, and Telegram.
- Online chat. BILLmanager allows you to install an online chat on your website. The module allows you to authorize clients in the system directly from the chat window, view detailed information about them, and save dialogues in tickets for further work. All communication history with clients is saved in BILLmanager and is available for viewing.
By default, all support tools are free for users. If necessary, requests can be made on a paid basis.
Personal account
The client's personal account is a section of BILLmanager in which the user can manage services, control financial transactions and send requests to technical support.
The following operations are available to the user:
- Resource and service management — ordering new services and deleting old ones, changing the parameters of services already in use.
- Financial management — making payments for services, replenishing your balance, tracking your spending history.
- Working with documents — acts, invoices and contracts.
- Interaction with technical support — sending requests and receiving responses from technical support.
Results and Future Plans
The implementation of BILLmanager has brought tangible results for The Villager People. Since its launch, the system has proven to be exceptionally effective in streamlining core business operations.
The key outcomes include:
Automated billing, integrated payment processing, and seamless server provisioning via Pterodactyl have drastically reduced manual administrative work.
The structured ticketing system has brought order to customer communications. It has eliminated missed requests and made response times consistent and predictable, directly improving customer satisfaction. Positive feedback from users on the new system confirms this improvement.
The solution provides a scalable and professionally supported platform, freeing up the company's internal resources to focus on service development and customer relationships rather than maintaining custom software.
Having successfully automated key operational areas, The Villager People now plans to leverage the stable foundation provided by BILLmanager to further develop its service offerings and enhance its market position in the game hosting sector.