H-Sphere Menu Based Guide
Paying for Hosting |
Related Docs: | • Getting Technical Support
This document answers the most important questions connected with billing: How do I pay? How do I create a billing profile? How do I become a pay user? How do I pay with web based payment systems? How do I enable automatic email invoicing? When do I pay? What do I pay for? How do I view my billing history? How do I view my overall charges? How can I get my money back? How do I pay? You may have a possibility to choose between these types of payment: Credit card - this type of payment allows you to pay for resources online. Contact technical support if your credit card brand is not supported. Sometimes, the account may require system administrator to approve of your registration, in which case the account will not be available immediately. Check - you must send a check to the specified location. After the check is received, your account is made available for use. Check payments can be disabled. Trial - depending on the plan, trial registration may be disabled. If you don't like the services, you won't have to pay anything. If you like them and decide to become a pay user, you will be charged for the services you have used during the trial period. When the trial period expires, your account gets suspended and you receive a notification. How do I become a pay user? PayPal / WorldPay / 2CheckOut / GestPay / PaySystems - these systems offer a web interface to make payments manually. How Do I Create A Billing Profile? Billing profile is the collection of details used to contact you on financial or related matters. You can have several billing profiles and use them in turn, activating the one you would like to be charged. You can share one billing profile between your accounts, if you have more than one. This means you can pay with one card / receive bills at one address for all your accounts. Settings are configured individually for each billing profile. If you sign up as a trial user, no billing profile is created. The system, however, keeps track of all your purchases and includes them into your bills available in the Online Invoice. To edit a billing profile, select Billing Profile in the Billing menu. You would be taken to a page similar to this: Edit Billing Profile: After the edit, the old data will be preserved in an old billing profile. Receive the invoice by e-mail?: With this option ON, you will receive invoices that will inform you of accruals, charges and your current balance status. Change Billing Profile: If you activate an alternative billing profile, the current one becomes deactivated. Delete Billing Profile: Permanently delete the billing profile you don't need any more. How do I become a pay user? If you are a trial user, you will get this window at the end of the trial period: This means you need to become a pay user. For this, all you need to do is create a billing profile using the Billing Profile utility. Check payments: You need to send a check payment for the amount due plus, if possible, an amount to cover possible future costs. After the administrator receives your payment and credits it to your account, you will become a pay user. Credit card payments: If the credit card is valid, the outstanding amount is charged, and you will become a pay user. In either case, if the account was suspended, it resumes. How do I pay with web based payment systems? If you choose to pay with a web based payment system such as PayPal or WorldPay, you need to make an advance payment not less than the registration fee: Create a billing profile with a web based payment system if you haven't yet. A section with the amount due appears at the bottom of the billing info page. Click submit query. You'll be redirected to this gateway web interface to make the payment. You may have to create an account if you don't have one. Submit the payment. If the money is successfully charged to the credit card, the control panel receives a confirmation and the payment gets registered. Give your web host some time to processes the payment and enable the account. You will receive a welcome email upon account activation. Since you pay outside the control panel, your credit card info won't be stored in your billing profiles and billing info won't show in the control panel. How Do I Enable Automatic Email Invoicing? To receive invoices by email, do the following: Select Billing Profile in the Billing menu. On the page that shows, click the OFF icon to Enable Receiving the invoice by e-mail. With this option on, you will receive invoices by email. When Do I Pay? Upon the account activation, your new billing period opens. It defines WHEN the system charges the fees. For fee types see Online Price. A new billing period opens: when your account is activated after signup when your suspended account gets resumed when you switch to another plan when you change your billing period A billing period closes: when you quit hosting when your account gets suspended when you switch to another plan when you change your billing period Changing Billing Period Your hosting plan may be configured to allow you to switch between billing periods of different length, price and discount policies. To change your billing period, go to Account - > Quick Access and click the Change icon next to Billing Period in the Statistics section. You will be taken to the page with a drop-down box that lists all the billing periods you can switch between. What Do I Pay For? To see your plan's prices, select Online Price in the Billing menu. The following table will appear Free: the minimum number of units you initially get for free. In Use: the number of units you are currently using. Max: the maximum number of units you can have. Setup: single-time amount payable at the moment when a unit of this specific resource is purchased beyond free units. Recurrent: the amount payable at the beginning of each payment period for this type of resource. If a resource is purchased in the middle of the payment interval, the recurrent fee is calculated for the period from this moment to the end of the payment interval. Recurrent fee is refundable adjusted for refund percentage (see below). Usage (i.e. extra): payment for every unit of this resource used over the set quota. It is charged: - at the end of each billing period; - when you change to a different plan; - when you delete this resource, in which case it is calculated for the period from the beginning of the payment interval to the moment of resource deletion or plan change. Usage fee is nonrefundable. Refund Percentage: If you delete this resource, you will be returned recurrent fee adjusted for the refund percentage for the days left to the end of the current billing period when you quit using the resource. E.g.: Your billing period is 1 month long. It started on November 1 and will be closed on November 30. Recurrent fee for dedicated IP is $3. At the beginning of your billing period you were charged $3 for dedicated IP. On November 10 you are switching to shared IP. With 10% refund you will get back $0,2. Refund is calculated according to the following formula: money to be refunded = (recurrent fee x time left to the closure of the billing period)/ duration of the billing period. IMPORTANT: Refunds are not placed on credit card accounts. Instead, money is either put on your hosting account balance or is sent to you by check. Empty Fees fields mean that nothing is charged for this resource. If all fields for a specific resource are empty, this resource is completely free. Billing is the same for most resources. However, some resources have a special nature that requires a different billing scheme:
Resource | Free | In Use | Max | Setup | Recurrent | Usage | Refund
Standard resources | Units that you get for free | Units you are currently using | Maximum number of units you can have | Charged when you purchase a new unit of this resource beyond free units | Charged at the beginning of each billing period for each unit beyond free units | Charged at the end of each billing period for each unit beyond free units | % of the recurrent fee for the remaining part of the billing period debited to your account when you cancel he resource
Dedicated IP Address | Number of dedicated IPs that you get for free | Number of dedicated IPs you are currently using | Maximum number of dedicated IPs you can have | Charged when you purchase a new dedicated IP beyond free units | Charged at the beginning of each billing period for each dedicated IP beyond free units | Charged at the end of each billing period for each dedicated IP beyond free units | % of the recurrent fee for the remaining part of the billing period debited to your account when you switch to shared IP or otherwise cancel this resource
OpenSRS | N/A | Domains registered with OpenSRS | N/A | The cost of domain registration for 1 year | N/A | N/A | % of the prorated recurrent fee for the remaining part of the billing period debited to your registration with OpenSRS
Web quota Mail quota Real quota | MB of disk space that you get for free | MB of disk space that you are currently subscribed for. The size of your web site must be smaller than web disk quota by at least a couple of megabytes to ensure correct performance of web statistics packages, such as Webalizer or ModLogAn | MB of disk space you can have. For web quota, this amount includes both your web site and web statistics files | N/A | Charged at the beginning of the billing period for the difference between the limit and the free units | Charged at the end of the billing period for the amount used beyond free units | % of the recurrent fee for the remaining part of the billing period debited to your account for each canceled megabyte of disk quota
Traffic (all kinds) | GB of traffic you don't pay for | Prorated GB of traffic booked for the current billing month. The billing month can start on any day of the calendar month | N/A | N/A | Charged once at the beginning of the billing period for the difference between the limit and the free units. This is what you pay for 1 GB of additionally booked traffic | Charged at the end of each month of the billing period for the prorated amount you run up beyond the limit | % of the recurrent fee for the remaining part of the whole billing period
MySQL/ PGSQL db quota | MB of database disk space you get for free | MB of database space that you are currently subscribed for | MB of database space you can have | N/A | Charged once at the beginning of the billing period for the difference between the limit and the free units | Charged at the end of each month of the billing period for the amount you use beyond the limit. | % of the recurrent fee for the remaining part of the billing period debited to your account for each canceled megabyte of database quota
MS SQL db quota | MB of database disk space that you get for free | MB of database space that you are currently subscribed for. The size of all your MS SQL databases can take no more than half of the MS SQL database quota, leaving the rest of the space for transaction logs | MB of MS SQL database space you can have. This includes both your databases and transaction log files | N/A | Charged once at the beginning of the billing period for the difference between the limit and the free units | N/A | % of the recurrent fee for the remaining part of the billing period debited to your account for each canceled megabyte of database quota
Real User | Simultaneous connections to RealServer that you get for free | Simultaneous connections to RealServer that you currently have | Simultaneous connections to RealServer that you can have | N/A | Charged at the beginning of the billing period for the difference between the limit and the free units | N/A | % of the recurrent fee for the remaining part of the billing period debited to your account when you cancel the resource
How do I view my billing history? To see your charges by billing profiles for one account, select Online Invoice in the Billing menu. An invoice consists of consequent bills: Balance shows how much money you have on your balance. A negative balance shows how much you owe for the services used. This is usually appropriate for users who pay by check and for credit card users whose credit cards failed to be charged. Credit restricts your ability to buy new resources in case your credit card fails to be charged or you have run out of your 'check' money. Description: the name of your current account. Amount: the amount accrued for the billing period. This amount consists of accruals for all resources, including the setup, recurrent and usage fee. However, it does not include or depend on factual charges, nor is it related to debits and credits to the account. For example, if you were accrued $10 setup fee, the Amount will show $10.00, even if your credit card has been immediately credited by this amount. From: the beginning of the payment period. To: the end of the payment period. In the example illustrated above, Opened means that the billing period has not finished. A new bill is created for every new payment interval The initial setup fee is put in a separate bill. To view details of any bill in the invoice, click its Description in the first column. The picture below illustrates details of the initial setup bill: Total shows the amount due for factual services offered. It does not include most of the items highlighted by yellow, such as items that were immediately charged off the credit card, credits or debits to the account balance by the administrator, etc. *To get a printable version of your bill, click the Printer icon in the bill header which will open it in a separate window suitable for immediate printout (version 2.08 and higher). How Do I View My Overall Charges? To view charges for all your accounts, select Online Sum invoice in the Billing menu then select the billing profile. If you are just starting with your account, you will see something like this: Select the profile from the box and press the Get Invoice button. The Online Summary Invoice page will display your bills for all accounts. How Can I Get My Money Back? You can claim all your recurrent payments back if you decide to quit hosting during the MoneyBack period. Mind that the setup and usage fees for any resources are usually not returned. Not all plans allow to claim money back. To find out whether this feature is available under a plan, go to the signup/login page and click the link that says: To compare available hosting plans and price schemes, please click here. In the form that appears, check the boxes to the plans you want to compare or click the Plan group link to compare grouped plans and their price schemes. In the first section of the chart that appears find Money Back Guarantee. To claim the money back, click Money Back on the control panel home page. The following page will appear: After you click the first link, your account will be suspended: The amount due will be sent by check to the address you specified in the Billing Info.
Related Docs: | • Getting Technical Support

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