If they fail to pay, the site goes into “suspension” and then sends another email to the client saying the site is now suspended with a link to make their payment.
I’m supposing you’re selling web hosting and related services?
If so, use WHMCS. Period.
That’s the go-to hosting automation solution, especially for the “little guy”.
The billing part is easy and there are several WordPress billing plugins out there already. Even normal forms, with a bit of ingenuity, can be made to handle this — as already suggested by @binarywc.
But you’re not likely to find a stand-alone WordPress plugin that will connect to your hosting and/or domain control panel and automatically activate, suspend and re-activate client websites based on billing status.
I did look at WHCMCS plugin but it looks too complicated….
If you need this to run a business that makes you money, hire someone to do the “complicated” set up for you and train you to use it. Don’t avoid the appropriate solution simply because it seems complicated to you, especially if you’re not an expert in the field.
But please note that whatever WHMCS plugin you’ve seen is NOT a stand-alone solution. It’s just a bridge that connects your WordPress site to WHMCS (client billing and hosting automation software)… allowing your clients to manage their hosting account from the WordPress dashboard, without the need to login to WHMC.
Personally, I prefer to customize the look of my WHMC customer billing portal to mimic the branding on my WordPress website — so customers can seamlessly jump between the two without even realizing they’re dealing with two different platforms — rather than use a plugin to bridge the two (one more chain in the link, one more potential point of failure).
But, if configuring a plugin is “too complicated” for you, I’m wondering what you’re going to say about setting up the WHMCS software itself (remember, again, the WHMCS plugin is useless without the WHMCS itself.)
… and reviews are not good.
These reviews are for the 3rd-party WordPress plugins (there are several WHMCS plugins, actually) that connect WordPress to WHMCS. These plugins are not developed by the developers of WHMCS, are not required to use WHMCS, and they say nothing about the quality (or others) of WHMCS.
