PD AWS SQL Server for WHMCS

PD AWS SQL Server lets a hosting company sell managed Microsoft SQL Server databases as its own product. Your customer orders in your WHMCS cart, a dedicated SQL Server Standard Edition instance is built on Amazon RDS in your AWS account, and your customer manages it from your client area: connection details, usage graphs, snapshots and a firewall, with no AWS console and no AWS login. The Microsoft licence is included in the AWS price, so there is nothing separate to buy. You set the price, AWS bills you its cost, and the difference is your margin.

It is built for hosts whose customers run Windows applications, line-of-business software and .NET back ends that need SQL Server, and who want to offer it without a Windows server to patch or a licence to track.

Why hosts choose PD AWS SQL Server

No Microsoft licence to buy. Every order is SQL Server Standard Edition on Amazon RDS, licence included. AWS builds the licence into the instance price, so your cost is one AWS line, and your margin is the gap between that and your price.

Four sizes, honest about what AWS runs. SQL Server Standard does not run on small burstable instances, so there are no toy plans to disappoint customers. One click generates the four documented sizes: db.m5.large and db.m5.xlarge for general workloads, db.r5.large and db.r5.xlarge when the working set needs more memory. Storage is a separate billable choice, so you price compute and disk independently.

Customers create their own databases. An order creates the server, not a pre-named database. The connection details show host, port 1433, username and password, with no Database field, and the customer creates databases with CREATE DATABASE after connecting, the way SQL Server is meant to be used.

Connect with sqlcmd in one paste. The page shows a ready-to-paste sqlcmd command that encrypts the connection (-N), and the Amazon certificate bundle can be imported to verify the server.

Every customer is isolated. Each order gets its own instance, master credentials and firewall group. Nothing is shared, even with another installation using the same AWS account, and the module refuses to take over a database it did not create.

Changes made safely. A snapshot is taken before a plan or storage change is applied, so a restore point exists. Storage is only ever grown, online. A change that cannot be applied is reported to you, never accepted silently while the bill changes.

How it works

1. Connect your AWS account. Add an access key once on a WHMCS server record. The secret is stored encrypted and never reaches a customer page. Test Connection makes one read-only call and creates nothing.
2. Create your product. Add a WHMCS product, choose the module on its Module Settings tab and switch on automatic setup. Set region, plan and storage, then press Generate plans to offer the four sizes and storage choices at checkout.
3. Your customer orders. The instance is built in the region they chose. The customer's page says it is being set up, then fills in with the connection details by itself.
4. You get paid, they manage it. WHMCS keeps billing as usual. Suspend, unsuspend and terminate follow your normal billing.

What you get in WHMCS

Selling and pricing

• Cart options generated for you: region, plan, storage, high availability and public access, linked to the product
• Every option starts at no extra charge and you set the prices under WHMCS's Configurable Options
• A "High availability (Multi-AZ)" choice that gives the customer a standby in a second zone
• A public-access choice; left off, the database is reachable only inside the AWS network
• Sync with AWS hides options AWS has retired and adds new ones, without touching prices or existing customers
• Billing stays yours: the service is charged at the prices of the product and its options, and nothing is metered into WHMCS

Provisioning you can trust

• A paid order provisions with no admin step once automatic setup is on
• Plan upgrades resize the instance in place and keep its data
• Failed setups are recorded with the real reason for you, and running setup twice never creates a second instance
• Suspend stops the database and keeps it stopped, even though AWS restarts stopped databases after seven days. Unsuspend starts it again with its data
• Terminating deletes the instance with its backups, snapshots and firewall group straight away; a host who wants a copy keeps one in the AWS console first

Running it day to day

• Clients & Databases lists every database with its service, plan, region, endpoint and live state
• An activity log of provisioning, resizes, snapshots and password resets across every service
• A report that checks your licence, the AWS SDK and how many credential sets and databases you have
• Read-only assistant tools that report a service's database state and recent provisioning activity, with no way to create, resize, delete or restore anything

What your customers get

• Start, stop and reboot, and a stopped database keeps its data
• Password reset with the rules stated on the form (8 to 128 characters), and a weak password refused before anything is queued
• A firewall of allowed IPv4 addresses and ranges for port 1433, applied on the next scheduled run
• Usage graphs for CPU, connections, freeable memory and free storage over the last 24 hours, from AWS's own metrics
• Snapshots they take and delete themselves, with the automated daily backups, kept seven days, listed beside them
• Activity in plain words, with the time and outcome of each action

Snapshots, Firewall, Connection details and Usage graphs are each a switch on the product. Turn one off and it disappears from the customer's page, and the request is refused however it is made. The pages render natively on WHMCS's Six, Twenty-One and Nexus themes, and every word can be translated or reworded with override files that survive updates. Customers see only your brand.

Security built in

• Your AWS keys live on the WHMCS server record, stored encrypted, and never appear on a customer page, in a message or in a log.
• Database passwords are stored encrypted on the service, including one the customer sets with Reset password.
• Only port 1433 is opened, and only to the addresses the customer lists.
• Customer data goes only to your own AWS account. We receive licence, module and version information, nothing else.
• Restores stay with you: customers take and delete snapshots, and you restore from the AWS console when asked.

One product, every feature

PD AWS SQL Server is one paid module with everything included. There are no tiers, no add-ons and no per-database fee from us: you pay AWS at cost, licence included, and keep the margin. SQL Server costs more to run than MySQL or MariaDB, so price accordingly. Each order creates a real, billable AWS resource, so there is no free trial.

If your subscription ever lapses, customers' databases are never touched or deleted. You get a 14-day grace period with everything working and a renewal reminder, then admin management locks while customers keep being served, and only after that do customer features pause behind a neutral "temporarily unavailable, please contact support" message. Renewing restores everything at once.

Requirements

• WHMCS 9 or later on PHP 8.2 or later, with the ionCube Loader
• An AWS account and an access key with the Amazon RDS permissions we list, plus the security group permissions every order needs
• PD Modules, the free control panel every PD module installs into