Modules Garden Interworx Extended Module for WHMCS

[8dwebllc]

Hi Folks,

It has been a while since I posted, I typically take issues straight to the dev team. This is more of a public service announcement for those who might want tighter Interworx/WHMCS integration.

I wanted to let you know that IF you utilize WHMCS then the ModulesGarden plugin called Interworx Extended is phenomenal.

In addition we had custom dev work done by ModulesGarden to remove the Interworx Email system (our company never runs hosting and email together) and do dev work to have their module interface with SmarterMail.

We do not, nor can we sell this custom module, nor do we receive any kickbacks in any manner, but since the coding has been done for over a year and is kept current to recent WHMCS updates, why not take advantage if this suits your needs.

At this point, setup and customer management of our hosting products located on Interworx servers and our Smartermail servers runs flawlessly.

It is our belief that Interworx is still one of the best hosting platforms available, and if we can point other users to tools that will make integration(s) easier, so be it.

- Matt
8Dweb General Manager

[mdeinhardt]

Hi Matt,

sounds intriguing, thanks for the info. Why did you go for SmarterMail, are they better then Kerio/Zimbra/whatever? Costwise its seems to quickly go into a few thousands per year, right?

And about the module, what are you able to provision directly? Surely the single mailboxes will have to be set up on the SmaterMail server, right? Did you do any integration of Siteworx, WHMCs customer portal and SmarterMail? Or do your users logon to each seperately.

I'm very interested to hear a little more, as this is kinda the next logical step for us (if we reach a certain critical mass).

Cheers,
Michael

[d2d4j]

Hi Michael

We use extended module in whmcs (works lovely) and we use the free smartermail whmcs plugin

If you want to test, just let me know and I'll email you after setting it free for you to test

We have a fully paid subscription with smartertools, but the version we run is old now, just need time to change server so latest version of snartermail can be installed.

We use smartermail as our enterprise mail platform

Many thanks

John

[mdeinhardt]

Hi John,

yes, that would be very interesting. Let's talk more about this...

Michael

[8dwebllc]

Michael,

Pricing
Smartermail can be pricey, but Kerio (which we utilized for over 8 years) was also expensive and unreliable and the recent purchase of Kerio has thrown tech support for that product into the dumper. Since we focus a lot on enterprise email, and our internal policy is to never mix email and hosting - we chose Smartermail years ago. We have extensive experience with Smartermail, Kerio and Icewarp - but of the 3, Smartermail is the most well-rounded product.
With Smartermail, using the Enterprise with some excellent anti-spam options in the open source community, we achieve a very stable mail system that easily handles mutliple thousands of users a day and keeps spam at a minimum. Cost is a bit under $1K a year at our level (and we have been customers a very long time)

Provisioning:
At product setup, the Interworx site and Smartermail domains are created, along with their respective site/mail domain administrative users.
Afterward, the end user can handle Applications (Softaculous); FTP Accounts, Email Accounts(tied to Smartermail instead of Interworx); Email Forwarders, Mailing Lists, MySQL Databases, Cron Jobs, Subdomains, Domain Redirects, Domain Aliases, Interworx Backups and Unban of IP addresses as well as a Login to Interworx Button

Most customers then give the webmail URL to their own end-users, but the site owners/managers can easily add email accounts, mailing lists, mail fowarders from WHMCS (one portal to rule them all...)
Screenshot: https://www.screencast.com/t/qNGpcY9t
Screenshot 2 of Mail: https://www.screencast.com/t/Hld60dBTAS

The Smartermail mailboxes may be setup through WHMCS or via a login to Smartermail from WHMCS - but having it handled in WHMCS has saved our team over 400 ticket request in the past 7 months compared to previous 7 months. Smartermail v15 and v16 (the new one is fantastic) are both supported, though dev for our company will focus on Smartermail 16 and above moving foward.

Integration:
It is fully integrated in WHMCS, a nearly year-long process for us. The end user simply creates their account(s) and POOF they manage Interworx and Smartermail via our portal... makes brand loyalty much easier to promote.

IF you did not want to utilize the Smartermail option, the base Interworx Extended (we utilized it for about a year before the customization) gives the same options - all using Interworx for Hosting and Email.

Some additional things, since an end user may have multiple sites and multiple domains per site, there is some logic in the custom Interworx_Extended with Smartermail to help manage that.

[8dwebllc]

John,

We had utilized the free plugin, but there were integration issues which did not work for our company requirements, so that is why we had a more sophisticated integration rolled into the Interworx_Extended. In the end, the customization works flawlessly and is basically a "one-step" process.

We have also done the same for the evil Pl**k product which we must support....

to Michael, try the free SM plugin first, if it doesn't work for you, at least the coding has already been done for a tighter integration.

Cheers!
Matt