Opinion on pre-paying?
- Thread starter SrsX
- Start date
Prepaying can save you some decent cash if the host in question gives discounts, but you should be paying attention to how the host has performed within the last 6 - 12 months.
Has performance dropped much? Have they been making any rash decisions/migrations? Have they been releasing any offers that you feel are troubling? Has their support quality dived w/o just cause?
Francisco
Has performance dropped much? Have they been making any rash decisions/migrations? Have they been releasing any offers that you feel are troubling? Has their support quality dived w/o just cause?
Francisco
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professionalxen
New Member
When i order i always order for a month to see how it goes first.
I've ordered a game server for minecraft approx. 2-3 years ago from VeryGames. I've pre-payed it for 6 months in advance, it was so horrible i cannot even explain as i had a population of 100 players online at peek times. Good thing is they refunded my money beacuse i haven't provided proper documentation.
So i'd pick 1 month at first.
I've ordered a game server for minecraft approx. 2-3 years ago from VeryGames. I've pre-payed it for 6 months in advance, it was so horrible i cannot even explain as i had a population of 100 players online at peek times. Good thing is they refunded my money beacuse i haven't provided proper documentation.
So i'd pick 1 month at first.
I typically only host with providers with a good track record anyways as well as do my research, so typically I go 12 months to save money and not have to worry about it for another year.
I wonder if I'm reading this correctly. Did you abuse the server and then force a refund by not providing proper documentation?
OT Edit: I do not currently have VPS from outside companies.
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Month to month is my preference, for VPS or shared. I find too many hosts nose dive later on, leaving you wishing you didn't have to stick with them because you've paid for another 5 months.
I prepay from trust worthy providers so I don't get invoices each month. Not always to save money, just to save embarrassment of not seeing an invoice notice and paying late. Though getting a month or so for free for paying a year up front isn't bad.
I only pay month to month on servers I don't have long-term use for. If I need a dev box, one month payment. If I am launching something into production, I don't want to fuss with making monthly payments so it's pre-paid for sure.
I only pay month to month on servers I don't have long-term use for. If I need a dev box, one month payment. If I am launching something into production, I don't want to fuss with making monthly payments so it's pre-paid for sure.
If it's under $5/month then I only pay annually if possible, for bigger VPSs and dedicated servers I only pay monthly.
For the LEBs, it's not a huge hit if the company goes bust and so far I've never had that happen but on multiple occasions I've cancelled my VPS prior to the 12 months but the money I saved still came out to be cheaper than had I paid monthly for that time.
For the LEBs, it's not a huge hit if the company goes bust and so far I've never had that happen but on multiple occasions I've cancelled my VPS prior to the 12 months but the money I saved still came out to be cheaper than had I paid monthly for that time.
drmike
100% Tier-1 Gogent
I am with MannDude's approach on this.
I only do longer commits with companies proven to be stable and where I've been a month-to-month customer for a good period of time. Sometimes, I'll do a quarterly plan up front with established providers I haven't used, where the special is the right price. But I only buy low resource servers. (i.e. 256MB of RAM and under). So costs tend to be low regardless.
Dedicated servers and larger dollar items I only pay month to month. I'd hate to be chasing a refund/credit on prepaid, could be reason to sever relationship when/if such a company refuses to credit after major snafu. Had this happen with disk IO and facility not knowing how to properly tweak things related to the hardware / not informing customers of such. Disk was horrid, very slow. Wasted a month debugging calendar wise and went through both disk swap and multiple OS installs. Provider did credit for a month, which I was thrilled about, after I requested such.
The monthly invoices though, are an annoyance since there are 3+ emails on average for each one. Feels like I always have invoices due and keeping tracking of things is a part time job.
I only do longer commits with companies proven to be stable and where I've been a month-to-month customer for a good period of time. Sometimes, I'll do a quarterly plan up front with established providers I haven't used, where the special is the right price. But I only buy low resource servers. (i.e. 256MB of RAM and under). So costs tend to be low regardless.
Dedicated servers and larger dollar items I only pay month to month. I'd hate to be chasing a refund/credit on prepaid, could be reason to sever relationship when/if such a company refuses to credit after major snafu. Had this happen with disk IO and facility not knowing how to properly tweak things related to the hardware / not informing customers of such. Disk was horrid, very slow. Wasted a month debugging calendar wise and went through both disk swap and multiple OS installs. Provider did credit for a month, which I was thrilled about, after I requested such.
The monthly invoices though, are an annoyance since there are 3+ emails on average for each one. Feels like I always have invoices due and keeping tracking of things is a part time job.
This. I've looked high and low for an app for my phone that simply keeps track of my monthly invoices and lets me view a list based on the due date and lets me mark when they are paid.
If you find one, please let me know. This would be amazing.
I like my dedis and larger VPS's to be paid at least a full month in advance. With smaller vps's it's less of an issue to just pay the invoice that arrives a few days before the service will otherwise expire. The concern is what happens if there's a snag with renewal, e.g. because of (common) problems with Paypal. If that happens with a small VPS it's not a big deal to backup the files to another host or download them to a home PC. With a big server (100+ GB to multi-TB's of data) it's much more of a hassle to migrate in an emergency. You have to find a new host with plans of enough capacity, you need a way to sign up and pay for the new plan (maybe not easy if your paypal or CC is frozen), there's potentially a wait to get the new plan activated, and then there's the logistic hassle of transferring that much data over the snail-like internet. I went through this adventure (last minute migration of about 500GB) from a storage VPS to an OVH dedi, then later had some drama with OVH because of Paypal hassles, so now I have my main OVH server on a 3 or 6 month cycle and attempt renewal at least a month ahead of time. I figure if the renewal goes wrong, the 1 month runway will let me work out an alternative.
For selection purposes I give extra preference to hosts that can accept payment with the fewest possible intermediaries, e.g. it's a big plus if they can directly bill credit cards instead of requiring Paypal/Amazon/whatever. It's an even bigger plus if they can accept regular checks/money orders/wire transfers/cash/bitcoin, since there are even fewer ways for those to go wrong.
I'm fine with low end annual VPS plans ($15/year or whatever) since the amount of $$ at risk is not enough to get worked up about. I had one that sucked pretty bad so I didn't renew, no big deal. It was the first one I had tried and I figured the educational experience was worth the $15 all by itself. Once I got to understand the market a bit better, I haven't had any serious problems, though that partly results from generally not pursuing the lowest priced offers.
For selection purposes I give extra preference to hosts that can accept payment with the fewest possible intermediaries, e.g. it's a big plus if they can directly bill credit cards instead of requiring Paypal/Amazon/whatever. It's an even bigger plus if they can accept regular checks/money orders/wire transfers/cash/bitcoin, since there are even fewer ways for those to go wrong.
I'm fine with low end annual VPS plans ($15/year or whatever) since the amount of $$ at risk is not enough to get worked up about. I had one that sucked pretty bad so I didn't renew, no big deal. It was the first one I had tried and I figured the educational experience was worth the $15 all by itself. Once I got to understand the market a bit better, I haven't had any serious problems, though that partly results from generally not pursuing the lowest priced offers.
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![matt[scrdspd]](/data/avatars/m/0/318.jpg?1493429414){kind=avatar}
I often like to prepay. 3 or 6 month terms are usually my favorite. If I plan on using the service over that period of time, it's nice to not have to deal with invoices so often.
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