Release Version v2.2.4

Version v2.2.4 is our first stable, generally available release. After a long beta cycle that delivered VPC networking, load balancers, object storage, managed databases, and managed Kubernetes, the platform now graduates to stable. This release is headlined by Integrated Payments and Billing, a complete, built-in way to take real money from customers without bolting on an external billing system. Customers top up their account credit directly with a card or wallet, receive automated tax-compliant invoices by email, and can request refunds, all from the same panel they already use to run their infrastructure. Operators get connectable payment gateways, configurable tax rules, promotions, know-your-customer verification, and a revenue dashboard with exportable reports and a daily income summary email. The release also brings self-service plan changes with automatic proration, a major expansion of the AI Assistant so customers and operators can now create and manage resources in plain language, and a comprehensive Admin REST API for automation and integration.

• [Feature] Integrated Payments and Billing - A complete built-in billing system. Customers add funds to their account balance and that credit pays for hourly Cloud Service usage. No external billing platform required. Works alongside the existing WHMCS, Blesta, and HostBill integrations for operators who prefer them.
• [Feature] Payment Gateways - Connect Stripe, Razorpay, or PayPal and start accepting payments in minutes. Multiple gateways can run side by side, and customers pick their preferred option at checkout. Payment confirmations are verified securely before any credit is granted.
• [Feature] Automated Invoices - Every successful top-up generates a sequential, tax-compliant invoice. The invoice is emailed to the customer with a PDF attachment and is always available to view or download from the billing area.
• [Feature] Tax Rules and Tax Profiles - Operators define tax rules by region. Customers fill in a tax profile with their business and tax-identification details, with built-in validation for European VAT identification numbers so business-to-business transactions are handled correctly.
• [Feature] Refunds - Customers can request refunds against eligible transactions, and operators approve and process them from the admin billing area. Credit and revenue records stay consistent throughout.
• [Feature] Promotions - Issue promotional codes that grant bonus credit or a discount at top-up time. Codes are validated live in the top-up flow before a customer pays.
• [Feature] Know-Your-Customer Verification - Optionally require identity verification before a customer can add funds or cross a spending threshold, so operators in regulated markets can meet their compliance obligations.
• [Feature] Revenue Dashboard and Reports - A dedicated billing dashboard summarizes top-ups, consumption, taxes, and refunds. Detailed revenue and transaction reports can be exported for accounting, and a daily income digest email lands in the operator's inbox every morning.
• [Feature] Billing Module SDK - A documented module framework lets developers add new payment gateways and ship custom billing front-end panels without modifying the core application.
• [Feature] Self-Service Plan Changes - Customers can upgrade or downgrade an instance to a different plan directly from the instance settings. The instance is resized and the hourly rate is re-rated automatically, with the change prorated to the hour so the customer is only ever billed for what they used at each rate.
• [Feature] AI Assistant, Now Manages Your Whole Stack - The built-in assistant moves well beyond answering questions. Customers can now ask it, in plain language, to create and manage instances, private networks and subnets, NAT gateways, load balancers, VPN gateways, managed databases, and Kubernetes clusters and node pools, with guided step-by-step flows that confirm the details before anything is built.
• [Feature] AI Assistant for Operators - Administrators get a parallel set of assistant capabilities covering the platform itself: creating and modifying hypervisors and hypervisor groups, storage and backup configuration, service plans and plan groups, DNS providers, security groups and IP sets, object-storage servers and plans, currencies and credits, and users, roles, email templates, images, and access keys.
• [Feature] Comprehensive Admin REST API - A large, consistent administrative API now covers compute, networking, storage, backups, billing, Kubernetes, databases, DNS, users and roles, and platform settings. Build custom automation, dashboards, and integrations against the same operations the admin panel uses.
• [Improvement] Usage Report Export - The Cloud Service usage report can now be exported for offline analysis and accounting. This fulfills the export option that was previously marked as coming soon.
• [Improvement] Streamlined Admin Navigation - The admin sidebar has been reorganized so the most-used sections sit at the top, and section headings are now searchable, making it faster to jump straight to a feature on a busy install.
• [Improvement] Consolidated Billing Settings - All billing thresholds, currency display preferences, and suspension rules now live in a single settings surface, removing a long-standing source of confusion where related settings were split across two places.
• [Improvement] AI Assistant Conversation Memory - Multi-turn conversations now correctly carry context from one message to the next, so follow-up questions and step-by-step deploy flows continue smoothly instead of starting over each turn.
• [Improvement] AI Assistant Pricing Clarity - Credit balances and resource pricing shown by the assistant are now always denominated in the customer's selected currency, so estimates match what the customer sees everywhere else.

• [Fix] Plan-Change Region Scope - The plan selector now only offers plans that are valid for the instance's own region and hypervisor group, so a customer cannot accidentally pick a plan that the underlying host cannot satisfy.
• [Fix] Mass Mailer Recipients - The mass-mailer recipient pickers now show their placeholder text correctly and no longer attempt to send to records without an email address.
• [Fix] Instance Page Scrollbar - Removed a duplicate scrollbar that appeared on the instance management page on some screen sizes.
• [Fix] Backup Run Reconciliation - Master self-backup runs that were interrupted mid-flight no longer get stuck showing "started" forever, and an upload that throws an error is now correctly recorded as failed instead of hanging.
• [Fix] Cloud Network Provisioning Idempotency - Retrying a private-network creation through the AI Assistant no longer risks creating a duplicate network.

From Beta to Stable

The beta program is complete. Over the course of it the platform added private networking, managed load balancers, S3-compatible object storage, managed databases, and a full managed Kubernetes offering. v2.2.4 is the milestone where all of that, together with the new billing system in this release, is declared stable and generally available.

Nothing about the deployment model changes. The platform remains self-hostable on your own hardware, and the same control panel, user portal, and slave-agent architecture you have been running through the beta carry forward. Stable simply means the feature set and the data model are now considered production-ready, and that upgrades from here forward prioritize backward compatibility.

Integrated Payments and Billing

The headline of v2.2.4 is a complete, built-in billing system. Until now, taking real money from customers meant connecting an external billing platform such as WHMCS or Blesta. Those integrations remain fully supported, but they are no longer required. Operators can now run a self-contained pay-as-you-go cloud where customers top up an account balance and that balance is consumed by the hourly Cloud Service billing already in the platform.

How It Works for Customers

A customer opens the billing area, chooses an amount to add, and selects a payment method. They pay with a card or wallet through the connected gateway, and the moment the payment is confirmed their account credit goes up. That credit is what pays for their running instances, volumes, load balancers, databases, and other hourly resources.

Every top-up produces an invoice automatically. The invoice carries a proper sequential number, reflects any applicable tax, and arrives by email with a PDF attached. Customers can revisit every invoice and every transaction at any time from their billing history, and download a fresh copy of any invoice whenever they need one for their own records.

Customers who represent a business can complete a tax profile with their company and tax-identification details. For European customers, the platform validates the VAT identification number so that business-to-business transactions are taxed correctly. If a charge needs to be reversed, the customer can request a refund against an eligible transaction, and the operator processes it from the admin side.

How It Works for Operators

Operators connect one or more payment gateways. Stripe, Razorpay, and PayPal are supported out of the box, and more than one can be active at the same time so customers can choose how they pay. Each gateway is configured with its own keys, and incoming payment confirmations are verified before any credit is granted, so a forged or replayed confirmation cannot create free balance.

Tax handling is rule-based. Operators define which regions are taxed and at what rate, and the platform applies the right rule based on each customer's tax profile. Promotions let operators issue codes that add bonus credit or apply a discount during a top-up, validated live before the customer pays. For operators in regulated markets, optional know-your-customer verification can be required before a customer is allowed to add funds or cross a configured threshold.

On the reporting side, a billing dashboard summarizes the money flowing through the platform: top-ups taken, credit consumed, tax collected, and refunds issued. Detailed revenue and transaction reports can be exported for accounting, and a daily income digest email gives operators a quick read on the previous day without logging in.

Extending Billing

For operators with specific payment needs, a documented module framework lets developers add new payment gateways and ship their own billing panels alongside the built-in ones, without changing the core application. This is the same approach used for the existing external-billing integrations, now extended to the built-in payments system.

Self-Service Plan Changes

Customers can now move an instance to a different plan on their own, straight from the instance settings, without opening a support ticket. They pick the new plan, confirm, and the platform resizes the instance and switches it to the new hourly rate.

The billing is handled cleanly. The change is prorated to the hour, so the customer pays the old rate up to the moment of the change and the new rate afterwards. There is no double billing and no awkward partial-hour rounding that works against the customer. Plan options are scoped to what the instance's own region and host can actually deliver, so a customer is never offered a plan that cannot be satisfied where their instance lives.

The AI Assistant Grows Up

The AI Assistant began as an in-panel helper that could answer questions and look up information. In v2.2.4 it becomes a way to actually run the platform in plain language.

For customers, the assistant can now create and manage the full range of resources: instances, private networks and their subnets, NAT gateways, load balancers, VPN gateways, managed databases, and Kubernetes clusters and node pools. Rather than firing off a single opaque command, it walks through a short guided flow, gathering the details it needs and confirming them before anything is created. Everything it does is scoped to the customer's own account and respects the same limits and permissions as the rest of the panel.

For operators, a parallel set of capabilities covers the platform itself. An administrator can ask the assistant to set up hypervisors and hypervisor groups, configure storage and backups, build service plans and plan groups, manage DNS providers, security groups and IP sets, configure object-storage servers and plans, manage currencies and credits, and administer users, roles, email templates, images, and access keys.

Two smaller but important improvements land alongside the expansion. Multi-turn conversations now keep their context properly, so a follow-up message continues the same thread instead of starting fresh. And every price or balance the assistant quotes is shown in the customer's chosen currency, so its estimates always match what the customer sees elsewhere.

Comprehensive Admin REST API

Automation and integration get a major boost in v2.2.4 with a large, consistent administrative API. Where earlier API coverage focused on day-to-day instance operations, the administrative surface now spans the whole platform: compute, networking, storage and backups, billing, Kubernetes, databases, DNS, users and roles, and system settings.

The API mirrors the operations available in the admin panel, so anything an operator can do by clicking can now be scripted. This makes it practical to build custom provisioning workflows, sync the platform with external systems, drive bulk changes across a large fleet, or back a custom dashboard with live data, all against a stable, documented interface.

Upgrade Notes

1. Refresh dependencies and rebuild the frontend bundles. The new billing pages, the plan-change controls, and the expanded assistant surfaces are all part of the user and admin panels and need the bundles rebuilt before they appear.
2. Run database migrations to create the new billing tables and columns.
3. Restart queue workers so the new billing jobs, invoice and notification emails, and the daily income digest are picked up.
4. Restart the WebSocket broadcaster so the new billing events are registered.
5. Payments setup: to take payments, open the admin billing settings and connect at least one payment gateway with its keys. Start in the gateway's test mode to confirm the end-to-end flow before going live.
6. Tax and compliance: define your tax rules for the regions you operate in, and decide whether to require know-your-customer verification before top-ups. Review the invoice template so the issued invoices carry your business details.
7. AI Assistant: the assistant remains optional. If you want customers and operators to use the expanded capabilities, enable it in settings and select your model provider.
8. External billing still works: if you already run WHMCS, Blesta, or HostBill, nothing changes. The built-in payments system is additive, and the two can coexist.