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Control Panel has a fully automatic billing system. It allows
you to set prices and quotas for every resource in each specific
plan, automatically charges users every time they sign up
or buy new resources, monitors the usage of resource units,
calculates and charges the cost of the resources used, etc.
This document explains Control Panel Billing Principles:
Payment Methods
Control Panel supports several payment methods for users to choose
from at signup or when changing to a different billing
profile):
Credit card: this method of payment allows users
to pay for Control Panel resources automatically. By default,
you can offer Visa, Master Card, American Express and
Discovery credit card support.
*See related Adding Custom
Credit Card Brands.
*See related how
to activate credit card paid accounts.
*See related Credit
Cards ONLY on how to disallow payments by checks.
Check: users send checks to the location you have
specified. After you have received a payment, you can
moderate, activate or debit the account.
See Processing
Check Payments for details.
Trial: trial users are not charged for the resources
they use. However, when they decide to become pay users,
they must choose how they want to pay, by credit card
or by check. When users switch to a pay plan, they are
charged for the resources they have used during the trial
period. Their custom settings remain unchanged. See Providing
Trial Hosting for details.
Credit
Cards ONLY (version 2.08 and higher)
You can disallow payments by check so your system will sign
up accounts only with credit card payments.
Note: changing this parameter affects the whole system,
not individual plans.
See How
do I set the system to allow only credit card payment?
in Configuring
Plan Settings.
Billing Profile
To pay for services, a user must have at least one valid
billing profile which determines the type of payment, by check
or by credit card. A billing profile includes billing info
for checks or credit card info.
Your customers can have multiple billing
profiles, but only one can be active at a time. Also, one
billing profile can be used for several accounts. This means
a user can pay with one card or receive bills at one address
for all his accounts. Settings are configured individually
for each billing profile.
When a trial user signs up, no billing profile is created
until he chooses to become a pay user. The system, however,
keeps track of all trial user's purchases and includes them
into his bills.
Once a billing profile is created, it cannot be modified:
the user has to create a new profile. Neither can a billing
profile be deleted.
Billing Period (or
Payment Interval)
The billing period determines when fees
are charged off the customer. The beginning and the duration
of the billing period is different for each individual account.
The time count begins when the account gets registered.
A new billing period starts:
- on activating paid account (accounts can be created but
not activated as in case of account
moderation)
- on switching from trial to paid account
- on resuming suspended account
- on switching to another plan
- on switching to another billing period
A billing period is closed:
- on quitting hosting
- on suspending account
- on switching to another plan
- on switching to another billing period
Within one plan, you can create several billing periods for
your customers to choose from, for example 1 month, 2 months,
3 months, 6 months, 1 year, each with its own prices and discounts.
If you don't specify prices for the actual billing periods,
they will be calculated as the default billing period prices
multiplied by the duration of the billing period in months,
adjusted for the refund percentage if specified.
See How
do I create actual billing periods?
Discounts
In Control Panel, you can set discounts for --
each individual billing period and
each individual type of price (setup, recurrent, and usage).
All resources are discounted the same way (i.e. the account
registration discount will be same as the domain creation
discount).
See How
do I set discounts?
Money Return
Users may get their money back in two cases:
- Moneyback
When a user quits hosting during the
Moneyback period, he gets back 100% of all recurrent
fees for all the resources he has used. The Money Back
amount does not include the Setup Fee and is not affected
by the refund percentage*.
- Refund
When a user quits hosting after the expiration
of Moneyback period, he gets back his recurrent fees
adjusted to the refund percentage for the time left till the end of the
current billing period.
*Refund percentage: the part of the recurrent fee
that will be returned to the user who cancels the resource.
Here is the formula to calculate the refund:
refund = (recurrent fee x time left to the closure
of the billing period)/ (duration of the billing period
x refund percentage)
-
Example: A user's one-month billing period started on November
1 and closes on November 30. Recurrent fee for a dedicated
IP is $3. At the beginning of the billing period the user
was charged $3 for the dedicated IP. On November 10 this
user switched to a shared IP. With a 10% refund percentage
the user will get back $0,2 refund.
NOTE:
Setup fee is not included in refund or moneyback amount.
Control Panel doesn't support putting money back to credit cards.
Money is returned by either crediting the returned amount
to the account balance or by sending checks.
See How
do I allow my customers to claim their money back? in
Configuring
Plan Settings.
Trial
Trial allows users to sign up for any plan that you enabled
in your system. This way, they can try out the system without
paying for the services. If they like it, they will have to
switch to paid account and pay for the resources they have
run up during the trial period.
See How
do I allow and configure trial hosting for the plan? in
Configuring
Plan Settings.
Credit
You can let your customers buy
resources even when they have no positive balance.
*See How
do I set a different Credit for a particular account?
Debit
There are two types of account accruals: credits and debits. When you debit
account, user credit card is charged the accrued amount. If this is a check-paid
account, the accrued amount is subtracted from the account balance.
* See more on how to debit accounts.
Fees
Your profits include fees that you charge your users for
the resources that they use under the plans they signed up
for. Control Panel distinguishes between three types of fees:
- Setup: a single-time amount payable at the moment
of purchasing a unit of this specific resource.
- Recurrent: the amount payable at the beginning
of each billing period for the amount of resource a user
runs up. If a resource is purchased in the middle of the
billing period, the recurrent fee is calculated for the
period from this moment to the end of the billing period.
Recurrent fee is refundable and adjusted to refund percentage.
- Usage(i.e. extra): the payment for every resource
unit used over the set quota:
- at the end of the billing period;
- when the account is suspended;
- when a user changes the plan or switches to another billing
period and the current billing period is closed.
*See How
do I set/change prices for the plan resources? in Configuring
Plan Settings.
* Usage fee is non-refundable.
Free Resource Units: the number
of resource units user can initially create for free. Creation
of each extra resource will be charged fees that you set up.
See How
do I set/change amount of free resource units? in Configuring
Plan Settings.
Quotas
Quota is the amount of the traffic and disk space resource
that a customer expects to use and pays for in advance. It
is charged at the recurrent fee. However:
- if a user fails to run up all his quota resource, he is
not returned the payment for the unused resource;
- if a user exceeds the quota, he is charged a usage fee which
is usually higher.
This encourages users to buy additional amount of the resource
in order not to be charged an extra payment.
*Initially quota is the same as available free amount of the resource.
See How
do I set/change extra charges for overlimiting the usage of
a particular resource? in Configuring
Plan Settings.
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