Quick Start

From zero to first invoice in under an hour. This walkthrough covers account creation, Stripe setup, product configuration, and sending your first customer-facing invoice.

1. Create your ProEcommerce account

Reach out via the demo request form — we'll provision your tenant with a dedicated subdomain (yourbrand.proecommerce.com) and grant you admin access within one business day.

When your tenant is ready, you'll receive:

• A login URL and temporary credentials
• Your tenant subdomain (which you can alias to a custom domain later)
• An onboarding checklist inside the admin dashboard

2. Connect Stripe

ProEcommerce uses Stripe Connect so that payments flow directly into your Stripe account — not through us. Nothing we do sits in the money flow.

1. In the admin dashboard, go to Settings → Payment Gateways
2. Click Connect Stripe Account
3. Log in to your existing Stripe account or create a new one
4. Authorize the connection — you'll be redirected back with the link confirmed

3. Configure SMTP

Customer-facing email (invoices, receipts, password resets) is delivered via SMTP. You can use the bundled MXRoute integration or bring your own provider (SendGrid, Postmark, AWS SES, etc.).

Settings → Email → SMTP
  Host: smtp.your-provider.com
  Port: 587
  Encryption: STARTTLS
  Username: mail@yourdomain.com
  Password: ••••••••

Click Send test email to verify the connection before saving.

4. Create your first product

A product is anything a customer can buy — a shared hosting plan, a VPS tier, a domain registration, a license. Products have pricing, billing cycle, and (optionally) a provisioning module attached.

1. Go to Products → Add Product
2. Fill in: name, description, pricing, billing cycle (monthly/quarterly/annually)
3. Optionally attach a provisioning module (cPanel/CloudPanel — see Provisioning)
4. Click Save — the product is now available at your signup URL

5. Add a client and issue an invoice

You can create clients manually or let them sign up themselves via your tenant's public signup page.

To create one manually:

1. Go to Clients → Add Client
2. Enter their email, name, and company details
3. Add a service (link it to one of your products)
4. Click Generate invoice — the client receives it by email with a payment link

6. Set up the automation crons

Billing automation runs on cron. If you're self-hosted, these are already wired up. If you're on the managed offering, we run them on your behalf. The full list:

*/5  * * * *  email-queue-worker       (outbound email)
15   * * * *  invoice-generator        (upcoming renewals)
30   2 * * *  payment-reminders        (due-soon notifications)
45   3 * * *  suspension-handler       (suspend overdue accounts)
0    4 * * *  termination-handler      (terminate long-overdue)
*/2  * * * *  provisioning-runner      (execute pending provisions)
0    1 * * *  sync-domains             (registrar reconciliation)
0    5 1 * *  renewal-invoices         (monthly domain renewals)
0    3 * * *  nightly-backup           (encrypted DB backup to S3)

7. Test the full flow

Before going live with real customers, run the end-to-end smoke test:

• Create a test client with a real email address you control
• Order a product on their behalf
• Pay the invoice using a Stripe test card (4242 4242 4242 4242)
• Confirm the service activates, the welcome email arrives, and the invoice shows as paid
• Refund the test charge from Stripe once verified