What billing model do you prefer for VPS?

sive

There are several ways you could be billed in order to provision cloud resources, the most popular here seems to be a prepaid subscription but I'm curious about what you think of others, if you are strongly in favor one way tell me about why.

Classic Prepaid Subscription

• You pay for the upcoming month up front.
• Stripe / Paypal subscription.
• Used on many WHMCS billing portals.
• Can be long term such as 3 years in order to have a lower price for the service.

Account Balance Credit

• You will top up your account balance before you can deploy services.
• Easier to implement crypto for purchasing.
• Some hourly based service providers use this model.

Pay As You Go / 1st of The Month For The Previous 30 Days Usage

• Many hourly based large cloud service providers bill you retroactively on the first of the month for the previous month because many of their services might only be used for a few minutes at a time or for the whole month.
• Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr.
• Need to have a card attached to your account.
• Limits are imposed on how much you can provision for your first few months in order to ensure they are paid.

Nanja

I think for people with many online services, prepaid subscriptions the way to go.
Less of a hassle, especially for many servers from various companies.

I use paypal subscription on everything, the paypal auto payments can be easily managed on the paypal website.

I personally feel more secure this way too, since if a host turns out to be a summer host. Go to paypal and turn off auto pay before I get scammed, if payment goes through I just file dispute. Ez pz

Lately though, I started converting to using privacy.com to make virtual cards that auto refills every month of the day payment will be made.
I create a one use virtual card if I feel off about a company/purchase.
I guess this is also a prepaid method.

Levi

I preffer this:

• I see the offer;
• I research provider: company info, exact person behind the ceo role, asn, network and if possible YABS;
• On a green light event I transfer X currency to the service provider and he in exchange provides me with resources described in offer;
• On a red light event provider added to shitlist and never seen again;

Straightforward algo. Helps to keep deadpool events to minimum.

nick_

I prefer paying upfront like 1-3 years if I'm confident in the provider. Having account balance credit is a big plus for paying in advance too.

vinhais

For production applications expected to last a long time, I prefer contracts. However, for idle services, tests or just doing a YABS and never accessing it again: prepaid is the best model.

COLBYLICIOUS

I prefer the first one, don't ask me why but I got used to it.

I never top up balance on websites, I prefer to pay in advance for the service.

ailice

I love second one, cause somehow I need some computing hourly for compiling and I okay to spend on account balance.

eris

Need to have a card attached to your account.

Hetzner allows "manually" billing for Pay as you go...

eris

Hourly billing FTW:

I start a lot of VM for maybe an hour or even less.

kait

Option 1 and 2 combined is best.

cybertech

prefer prepaid with paypal one time payment.

but free is always best.