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Monthly billing is 12x a year or 30 days x 12 (360 days)?
HowLowCanYouGo
Member
in Providers
I'm curious what the hosting provider software usually does for billing. Unless I pay for annual bill, it seems many "monthly" billing is actually 30 days. So, one "year" ends up being 360 days. Some years are leap years, so host gets an extra 5 or 6 days a "year" of billing.
What are your thoughts?
Should monthly billing be a full month? Or is it just too hard to program such an arrangement? I can certainly sympathize. I cancelled some dedicated servers this month and they prorated me the charge and said I used 0.7732 month of service. So, I'm sure nothing is a system that everyone likes...
Comments
what? never seen this... monthly equals the same day every month, like ordered on 20th get the next invoice every 20th. only adaption needed would be if someone ordered on 31st as the last day of the month (or in february for 29/30).
if you keep in mind that the majority of small providers use WHMCS for billing and stuff, which automatically generates correct monthly invoices, I heavily doubt what you wrote is a mass problem or even existing.
Monthly bills are billed at the same date every month. Some exceptions because of 28-31 days/month
Annually billing is definitely not 12x a year (which ist twelve years). It's just as @Falzo explained.
to be honest I thought about it again, and there are some german providers who offer a so called 'prepaid' model, which might base their billing on a 30-day period. but that's clearly stated upfront and has its origins in the otherwise self extending contracts-model we use to have here.
so I like to correct my first post: things like this might exist but would then be related to more country-specific habits. I still doubt there are may providers in general telling you monthly and charging every 30 days.
Monthly billing usually is billed on the 1st of every month regardless of month length, so you do pay a little more per day in the shorter months. If you sign up in the middle of a month, that month is typically prorated.
funny you should mention German providers because I believe Hetzner does this.
I also rented a dedi from a Bulgarian host and they charged per 30 days.
I just thought it was interesting.
As a USA resident, I typically see billing on the same day each month counted as "monthly".
Hetzner bills 1st of the month, actually a day or so earlier.
Hetzner does create invoice the same date every month, regardless if the month has 30, 31 or 28 days (for me it is 18th of every month).
Besides, I have never found a provider that charges every 30 days. All of them do charge on monthly basis, on the same date you ordered the service (and if it is 31 of the month or a couple of days earlier for February, then, they are creating the invoice the day after).
There are some hourly billed providers (e.g. scaleway) that charge for 27 days worth of service if you chose or operate the whole month.
Can you please state even one provider that is charging every 30 days? Who is this "Bulgarian host"?
One of a very big provider that charges 30 days basis is Online.I was blind.
This is a lie. Online.net charges all of their clients every 1st of the month. That's why the cancellation rule on the 20th of the month. Besides, online.net do a pro-rate billing (means if you buy a product on the middle of the month, you are charged only for the days remaining until the end of it).
Don't post untrue claims here, please...
Some things are better left to run as the first thought in your mind when you hear a word. When it comes to potential complexities of variations in billing, this is definitely one of those things. People know what month it is because they have calendars, they don't want to think about how one month might technically be different from another in terms of the overhead costs behind it. Any attempt to burden them with it would likely erase any potential gains on either side.
This applies to anything on billing. From telephone subscription to cable and from your gym access to taxes. All of the companies or providers that provides services on monthly basis, are obviously calculating an average cost ans split it to 12 to decide on the price of the product.
Corrected it. Sorry. I don't know why I always think that my server at Online is charged for 30 days instead of a full month although invoice date is always the first of the month.
your believe is wrong ;-)
as @jvnadr said with hetzner you'll have a fixed billing date , e.g. 25th and your invoice will consist of all services billed based on their ordering day of month, like 20th-19th or 6th-5th etc.
for instance kms-hosting aka fastpipe.io bills per 30days - they clearly write this on their page and don't call it monthly though...
I like hetzner's approach. OK, they have strict rules on cancellation and not payment, they will send a collect agent on their try to take their money. But they are flexible on payment day and they will not cut off your service if you due your billing for some days. And they show trust even to new clients (after, of course they pass their fraud checks) and they will give them their new services billing them on the (upcoming) fixed day, not the minute the service went online.
This behavior is like a "you trust me, I trust you" kind of thing.
That's very normal in Germany. I don't know any business that doesn't do it.
That is not the rule in hosting industry in other countries.
I'll check again.
Maybe my start dates on my server was a bit fuzzy.