VPS offers - quarterly and semi annual

[drmike]

Asking the community their thoughts on longer term plans for VPS accounts.

Typically, people get the monthly plans for many reason (low cost, letting the provider prove themselves, etc.).

I've been slowly transitioning from monthly plans. Reasons for doing such: constant emails about invoices (3+ from average provider a month), feeling the need to monitor/track/apply for credits and generally too much cost for an often idle resource.

Instead, I've been going with good, proven providers on annual plans.

While doing this, life is better, the down side with some providers is a high one time cost for the year.

Wondering about longer than a month, but less than a year style plans.  Why aren't they more commonly offered?  Specifically, quarterly plans.  

Seems like quarterly plans are more lucrative and less abandons for a provider while still being relatively low dollar amount for the customer. Eliminates the problems I have with monthly plans and surely others have too.

Your thoughts?

 

[HalfEatenPie]

This is a fantastic question.  

From my personal opinion and experience though, most of the time the monthly plans are usually the most commonly purchased service.  People prefer paying lower costs more frequently than paying more one-time for a period (justifiable for them to pay a little every now and then more frequently).  I've done the similar thing myself anyways though.  

Most providers though I can guarantee you can probably setup a quarterly payment plan if you request it (I mean if people want it, then they'll go to provide it), but I will admit sometimes raising the finger to type in the request is just too much effort for a provider that I"m not too sure of.

Honestly, I haven't thought of it too much until you brought it up.  Maybe I'll come back with more thoughts?  Who knows? 

 

[MannDude]

Asking the community their thoughts on longer term plans for VPS accounts.

Typically, people get the monthly plans for many reason (low cost, letting the provider prove themselves, etc.).

I've been slowly transitioning from monthly plans. Reasons for doing such: constant emails about invoices (3+ from average provider a month), feeling the need to monitor/track/apply for credits and generally too much cost for an often idle resource.

Instead, I've been going with good, proven providers on annual plans.

While doing this, life is better, the down side with some providers is a high one time cost for the year.

Wondering about longer than a month, but less than a year style plans.  Why aren't they more commonly offered?  Specifically, quarterly plans.  

Seems like quarterly plans are more lucrative and less abandons for a provider while still being relatively low dollar amount for the customer. Eliminates the problems I have with monthly plans and surely others have too.

Your thoughts?

Currently I use a quarterly plans with two providers for three VPSes, a yearly with one, and monthly also with one.

I sometimes overlook the monthly's bill sometimes because I get too many emails and it's easy to overlook. I just prefer to pay quarterly from trusted providers.

Most providers offer a quarterly option, just don't advertise it directly. At quarterly, I don't expect any discount for 'pre-paying' as it's only 3 months. If I pay a year upfront, I think a small discount is somewhat expected instead of it being the same as the monthly cost multiplied by twelve.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

I personally love Tim's pricing scheme.  Want yearly?  Two months are free.  Everything else is free game.  

 

[SkylarM]

The concern with going longer than monthly is you lose money if you no longer need the service, or run into too many issues with the provider and opt to switch to a different one. Ideally this is less of a concern if you go with a company you feel you can trust with your data and services, but it is still a concern nonetheless.

Financially/book keeping wise I find it easier to keep things on a monthly schedule, as I know what I need and when, rather than trying to save a few extra bucks every month in my account to make that quarterly payment. Monthly is just easier, I know what money is coming in, I know what money is going out. Having extra money lying about for that payment in a few months leads me to feel as if I have a bit of a buffer (Oh I can dip into this as long as I put more back next month) so on.

People's opinions will vary, but I don't get a slightly larger paycheck every 3 months, so why would I pay a larger amount every 3 months than pay every month.

Edit: What I WILL do though is throw a credit on my account if I have the extra money and I don't want to be bothered with the invoice emails. Wish there was a way for the system to go "oh this has a paypal subscription, lets only email once unless it goes overdue."

 

[BlueVM]

We average about 75% monthly, 25% yearly... Semiannual and quarterly vps are almost rare.

 

[TheLinuxBug]

Unless it is a provider that I have had more than a years experience with, I prefer to pay monthly or quarterly.  Usually the quarterly ones are for really low end services (64mb/128mb) where the quarterly payment is still under 10$.  One of these I believe is the small instance I have with IPXCore. I have 2 yearly account at the moment, one with Edis (their spacial for the smallest package) and one with MiniVPS.  The bulk of my services, however, are paid monthly.

Cheers!

 

[D. Strout]

I'm paying quarterly on two VPSes from Ramnode. I agree with @ that's it's a good term - you have the VPS for a decent amount of time without being bothered with an invoice. Really I have the whole gamut: monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and yearly. Most of my plans are yearly, I'm a sucker for cheap yearlies. Basically, I like the idea of set it and forget it, and monthly is just too short for that. Anything less frequent and I'm actually more apt to go for it.

 

[wlanboy]

It all depends on the price. Everything above 60$ (a year) is payed monthly.

 

[WSWD]

We have a total of 2 clients paying quarterly.  Not really sure why, but it has never been a popular option.  Monthly is #1, Yearly is #2, Semi-Annual #3, and then Quarterly with basically 0% of our clients.

 

[DalComp]

I pay most of my VPS monthly. I don't like annual because I have to spend relatively big money at one time, unless for small servers like 128MB, 256MB, or if there's a good deal on yearly plan (URPad, BlueVM's birthday, etc.). I would like to pay quarterly and sometimes semi-annually, but these terms rarely provide incentives/discounts. Those people on Finance would say there is a "time value of money", so I would rather "invest" the money on something else.

 

[KuJoe]

I focus on annual payments for my VPSs, mostly because it usually includes a discount and it saves the provider money (1x Paypal fees versus 12x Paypal fees). And when it comes to monthly invoices, I usually forget to pay them.

I was just working on a revision for our website and I took note that I won't be including prices for Quarter and Semi-Annual payments mainly because they are just Monthly * 3 or Monthly * 6, we include annual cost because it's discounted so we like to let the clients know that.

Now we also have a few plans that we don't allow monthly payments for so there's a bright red X in that box, this is because if we accepted monthly payments we would be losing money for every VPS sold after payment processing fees.

 

[Supicioso]

The concern with going longer than monthly is you lose money if you no longer need the service, or run into too many issues with the provider and opt to switch to a different one. Ideally this is less of a concern if you go with a company you feel you can trust with your data and services, but it is still a concern nonetheless.

Financially/book keeping wise I find it easier to keep things on a monthly schedule, as I know what I need and when, rather than trying to save a few extra bucks every month in my account to make that quarterly payment. Monthly is just easier, I know what money is coming in, I know what money is going out. Having extra money lying about for that payment in a few months leads me to feel as if I have a bit of a buffer (Oh I can dip into this as long as I put more back next month) so on.

People's opinions will vary, but I don't get a slightly larger paycheck every 3 months, so why would I pay a larger amount every 3 months than pay every month.

Edit: What I WILL do though is throw a credit on my account if I have the extra money and I don't want to be bothered with the invoice emails. Wish there was a way for the system to go "oh this has a paypal subscription, lets only email once unless it goes overdue."

This is probably how all providers look at it. Unless you have an extremely high influx of monthly revenue. Monthly makes more sense, since you know exactly what you have by months end, and how much is going to be left after fees and such. When people pay yearly. You get one lump payment, and with people expecting discounts on yearly it makes things that much more eh. After that money's gone. "Which isn't long mind you" Since w're talking VPS and not dedicated. You're basically providing that service for free... For the rest of their yearly term. I don't provide yearly options for that very reason. It's not a very plausible one from a VPS provider stand point, and everyone involved is left with a very unpleasant feeling if things turn south.

 

[KuJoe]

Annual clients are more likely to renew than monthly clients and the profit is so much larger than monthly payments over 12 months.

 

[willie]

Monthly is kind of stressful for high storage plans (hard to migrate quickly) or for anything running services where downtime would cause disruption. After a couple of near-drama experiences due to problems with payment processors with just a few days left on a plan, I now do these things quarterly (for expensive plans) or at least pay monthly renewals far enough ahead of time that I can figure out migration plans if something goes wrong with the payment. My most expensive plan right now is a $60/mo OVH dedicated server that I pay quarterly. I figure that in late 2013 they may announce some new configurations that are more attractive than what I have now (think 4TB disks), so I'd rather not be locked in.


For low cost plans where there's just a few bucks involved, annual or semi-annual is fine. Another thing I do is have a credit balance with some providers, enough to cover at least a month or two of expected new invoices.


I guess there's a potential scenario where I'm unsure of a new provider and want to put minimal cash up front, but even in that case, I'd probably start with a small plan.


I do feel more assured by providers who offer wider ranges of payment options. That's hard to come by for some reason, though.

 

[SkylarM]

In regards to credits (@Willie) I've noticed quite a few of my clients are doing that now too on some of the smaller packages. I didn't initially offer the option to pay quarterly etc so they just tacked on a balance equal to 3 months of service.

 

[necs]

In my opinion, people who wants smallest prices pay monthly and people who wants quality services and good support pay quarterly/semi-annual or annual. Monthly clients are looking for low-cost VPS...