Free Web Hosting Billing Software: Open Source and What Free Costs

Free web hosting billing software exists, and two projects are worth evaluating in October 2026: FOSSBilling and Paymenter. Both are open source, self-hosted and cost nothing to licence, and both shipped a release in the first week of October. BoxBilling is archived, and Upmind’s free tier is hosted rather than open source. What “free” leaves out is the server, the patching, the backups and your time.

How this was sourced. FluxBilling publishes this page and sells a competing product for hosting providers — one that is neither free nor open source. Every third-party fact below was read on 12 October 2026 from the vendor’s own website or its GitHub repository. Prices are quoted in the currency each vendor publishes and no exchange rate is applied anywhere. Nothing here is legal or PCI compliance advice. Sources are listed at the end.

Part of the FluxBilling guide to WHMCS alternatives for hosting providers.

Which web hosting billing software is actually free?

Four names come up when hosting providers search for free or open-source billing. This is where each one stood on 12 October 2026:

Both live projects are active: their repositories were updated on 12 October (FOSSBilling) and 10 October (Paymenter), and both October releases were driven by security fixes — the cost section below in miniature.

FOSSBilling: free, open source and still labelled beta

FOSSBilling is the community-maintained fork of BoxBilling, aimed squarely at classic shared hosting and domains. The core covers automatic invoicing with payment reminders, multiple currencies with exchange-rate sync, domain registration and transfers, and a ticket desk that accepts guest tickets. Provisioning runs through server managers for cPanel/WHM, Plesk, DirectAdmin, HestiaCP and CWP. The core ships Stripe and PayPal adapters plus a custom gateway and account balance; other gateways come from its extension directory.

On maturity, the project is candid. Its GitHub README says FOSSBilling is “under active development and currently considered beta”, and warns users to expect rough edges and limited support. Its FAQ calls it usable but still moving toward a 1.0 release, and recommends backups and staging tests for updates. Its own feature table marks two-factor authentication as planned before 1.0, and lists backups, imports, usage-based pricing and auto-updates as planned; updates are manual today.

Check the licence of the release you install. The repository’s LICENSE file and README say Apache 2.0; the fossbilling.org homepage said AGPL 3.0 on the day we read it. Both are open-source licences, but they are not the same deal: AGPL adds source-sharing obligations if you modify the software and offer it to users over a network.

FOSSBilling states it does not support Pterodactyl and does not plan to build an integration, so game hosts need a community module or their own. And the project is funded by donations through Open Collective and GitHub Sponsors; support is community-run, through its Discord, forum and GitHub issues. The core stays free, though third parties may sell extensions and themes for it.

Paymenter: MIT-licensed, with a paid edge

Paymenter is a Laravel-based panel under the MIT licence. Its repository bundles Stripe, PayPal and Mollie gateways; server extensions for cPanel, Convoy, DirectAdmin, Enhance, Plesk, Pterodactyl, VirtFusion and Virtualizor; and affiliate, announcement and Discord-notification extensions. That set leans toward VPS and game hosts. Paymenter also ships a command-line importer for WHMCS databases.

The paid edge is the marketplace. On 12 October it listed 253 items — 229 extensions and 24 themes — a mix of free and paid. The official Proxmox extension, published by Paymenter itself, cost $24.99; it is documented alongside the bundled modules but not shipped with them. The project also sells managed hosting: the homepage advertises it from $5 a month, while the PaaS shop lists it at €5.00 a month and says daily backups are included. The two pages disagree on currency, so check at checkout.

Self-hosting means PHP 8.3, MariaDB, Redis and nginx on Ubuntu, Debian or CentOS. Paymenter has published seven releases since 1 June 2026; v1.5.9 on 2 October alone fixed eight published security advisories.

BoxBilling and Upmind: one archived, one hosted

BoxBilling

GitHub shows the BoxBilling repository as archived and read-only. Its last release, 4.22.1.5, is dated 3 April 2022, and a README notice from October 2022 says the project is no longer actively maintained, points to FOSSBilling as the active fork, and warns of multiple bugs and vulnerabilities. Do not start a billing system on it in 2026.

Upmind’s free tier

Upmind’s pricing page says you can start free with no card, that the free tier includes all core features at no charge, and that most users pay nothing. Upgrading means choosing a plan from your dashboard, but on 12 October the page published no paid-plan prices, client limits or fees. A banner announced Tempo, described as the next generation of Upmind rebuilt from scratch. Upmind is free to use but not open source: the pricing page offers no source code and no self-hosted edition. We covered what to ask Upmind in Upmind vs WHMCS: what free actually means.

Paid platforms that show up in free searches

Several commercial platforms appear in “free” searches because of trials or readable source code. None is free to run past its trial:

On “free Clientexec”: there is no free Clientexec licence — every plan is in our Clientexec pricing breakdown. The trial issues automatically when you install, and the pricing page says that because of the trial it does not refund payments. Blesta is the interesting case: you can read and patch nearly all of its code, but Blesta describes its licence as commercial and source-available, not free software.

What does free billing software actually cost?

The licence is the one line that is zero. Every other line on a billing system’s cost sheet still exists; the question is who pays it.

Patching is the line people underestimate. Since 0.8.0 on 28 May 2026, FOSSBilling has published nine releases, and every set of release notes includes security fixes or advisories; 0.8.8 asks users to update as soon as possible. That is roughly two releases a month. A billing system holds customer records and gateway credentials, so each of those is an update to stage, test and apply promptly, not when convenient.

PCI scope follows the same logic. Even when card numbers go straight to the gateway, the panel that renders your checkout is part of the payment flow, so its server, operating system and admin accounts become part of what you secure. Our PCI DSS checklist for hosting billing walks through it.

Price it with your own numbers

No dollar figures here, because they depend on you. Fill in four lines for a year:

1. Server: your monthly cost for the VM, database and off-site backup storage, times 12.
2. Patching: releases per year (FOSSBilling’s 2026 pace is about 24) times the hours to stage, test and apply one, times your hourly rate.
3. Extensions: any paid modules or themes you need, such as Paymenter’s Proxmox extension.
4. Incidents: your estimate of hours spent on restores, cron failures and broken gateway callbacks, times your hourly rate.

Compare that total with a paid licence or a managed subscription at your client count. Our table of published hosting billing prices across vendors gives you the other side of the sum.

Where free software wins

Plainly, a free open-source panel gives you things FluxBilling does not:

• A $0 licence with no client meter. Neither FOSSBilling nor Paymenter licenses by client or server count. For a host with a handful of clients, free beats €4.95 a month.
• The source. You can read it, audit it, fix it and fork it. If a gateway callback misbehaves, you can patch it yourself instead of waiting on a vendor.
• Licence freedom. MIT and Apache 2.0 allow commercial use, modification and redistribution. No vendor can raise the price, change the tiers or revoke a licence key.
• Community. Both projects have active Discords, public issue trackers and outside contributors, and FOSSBilling’s finances are published on Open Collective.
• Module breadth. Paymenter’s repository alone ships eight server modules; FluxBilling has six provider plugins.

To be equally plain about us: FluxBilling is not free and not open source, on any plan. The cheapest plan is Lite at €4.95 a month ($5.95 for US accounts) for 10 clients and 5 servers. There is no free trial; subscriptions carry a 14-day refund, and a public live demo lets you click through before paying anything.

Where FluxBilling fits

FluxBilling is managed billing for web hosts, datacenters and colocation operators. On managed plans, the rows in the cost table that land on you with a free panel — server, database version, patching and backups — are ours, and updates roll out continuously. Billing, DCIM and IPAM are included on every tier, from Lite to Business.

Self-hosting exists, but only on Business: €25 a month plus a one-time €50 ($29 and $59 for US accounts). The operating system, network and backups are then yours, as with any panel you run yourself — see self-hosted billing software for hosting providers. FluxBilling is also pre-1.0, so we are not in a position to hold FOSSBilling’s beta label against it. If you are leaving WHMCS, our WHMCS migration importer reads your WHMCS database and never writes to it.

Whichever way you go, run a test import before moving a single customer; the vendor-neutral migration checklist applies to free and paid platforms alike.

If the cost table convinced you that the licence is the small part, FluxBilling plans start at €4.95 a month with a 14-day refund — or try the public live demo first.

Frequently asked questions

Is there free web hosting billing software?

Yes. FOSSBilling and Paymenter are free and open source, and both shipped releases in early October 2026. Upmind offers a free hosted tier. Either way, you still pay for the server, backups and patching.

Is there an open-source WHMCS alternative?

Yes. The two maintained open-source WHMCS alternatives are FOSSBilling (Apache 2.0 per its LICENSE file) and Paymenter (MIT), and Paymenter ships a WHMCS importer. BoxBilling is archived. Blesta’s source is mostly readable, but its licence is commercial.

Is FOSSBilling production-ready?

The project itself labels FOSSBilling beta and is still working toward 1.0. Its FAQ calls it usable but advises backups and staging tests for every update, and two-factor login and built-in backups are on its planned list. If you run it in production, budget for frequent security updates.

Is Paymenter free?

Yes. Paymenter is MIT-licensed and free to self-host. Some marketplace extensions and themes are paid — the official Proxmox extension was $24.99 on 12 October 2026 — and the project sells managed hosting, listed at €5.00 a month on its PaaS shop.

What does free billing software actually cost?

The licence is zero; the server, database, backups, security patching, PCI scope for your checkout server, paid extensions and your time are not. FOSSBilling has averaged about two releases a month since late May 2026, each with security content. Multiply that by your hours before comparing with a paid licence or a managed plan.

Sources

• FOSSBilling — fossbilling.org homepage; github.com/FOSSBilling/FOSSBilling README, LICENSE and release notes 0.8.0 to 0.8.8; docs.fossbilling.org FAQ, Features & Functionality and Server Managers pages; read 12 October 2026.
• Paymenter — paymenter.org homepage, installation docs and marketplace; github.com/Paymenter/Paymenter releases and extensions folder; paas.paymenter.org shop; read 12 October 2026.
• BoxBilling — github.com/boxbilling/boxbilling repository and README; read 12 October 2026.
• Upmind — upmind.com/pricing; read 12 October 2026.
• Blesta — blesta.com/pricing and blesta.com/features/developers; read 12 October 2026.
• Clientexec — clientexec.com/pricing; read 12 October 2026.
• WHMCS — whmcs.com/pricing; HostBill — hostbillapp.com/pricing; read 12 October 2026.

FOSSBilling, Paymenter, BoxBilling, Upmind, Blesta, Clientexec, WHMCS, HostBill and the control panels and hypervisors named above are trademarks of their respective owners. FluxBilling is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Third-party prices and release details are as published on the dates above and may have changed since.