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How much account credit is normal to have at a provider?
ServerBachelor
Member
Depending on the reputation of the company and the number of services I have with them, I keep anywhere between $20-$200 worth of account credit at any given provider.
I should also note that I’m a casual hobbyist and mostly just using my VPSes for learning or small personal projects and services.
Thanked by 1oloke
Comments
Why do small personal hobby projects require depositing money with so many different providers?
Their is no requirement, he deposits money because he can.
LET logic:
You buy idlers because you can.
You buy domains because you can.
You deposit account credit because you can.
@ServerBachelor depends on how much I spend monthly on the service.
I usually deposit balance for services that are billed monthly so they can be renewed automatically without me thinking about them.
Most often for the next 3-4 months so not astronomical sums, usually below $20 at a time.
0.00€ because anytime provider can flop. Except amazon.
Zero. I can change the provider anytime. I don't usually have account credit. For most of the accounts I get notifications to pay the invoices/
I have 1 provider account where I did a deposit just because I've earned some extra credit. But do you know what? I don't use that provider anymore. But the credit is still there, unused.
So, no credit account.
There's no reason to keep account credit with any company unless you're paying with a payment method that doesn't allow automatic/recurring payments (like crypto) and you don't want to deal with manual renewal.
Zero.
Not all providers allow this, but I like to have 1 month worth of credits if payment cycle is same.
Also I am a big hater of auto renewals
Pretty much this.
And because I’m lazy and don’t want to always manually renew from providers I already know I like
Why would I ever deposit funds at a provider?
Unless it's hourly billing or something. I have a few bucks in my account at Vultr but it's less than $10.
I can't think of any other provider where I have account credit. Myabe if I had some affiliate credit and knew I'd be buying more services for myself, I'd withdraw the funds and keep them on account rather than do another transaction cycle, but...
True that
Makes sense. I follow a similar thought pattern, only for annual billing.
True that as well. I do sometimes wonder if I’ll regret topping off too much in the case of a Deadpool etc, but I try to choose my providers strategically. But stability is never a guarantee.
Part of my rationale is protection against future inflation. The provider’s prices may stay the same, but my currency may weaken. If I pay for credit in the provider’s local currency in advance, there’s some buffer.
But this logic obviously doesn’t apply to everyone.
$0 million
True. Just copying from what I said to MikeA, Part of my rationale is protection against future inflation. The provider’s prices may stay the same, but my currency may weaken. If I pay for credit in the provider’s local currency in advance, there’s some buffer.
I would think "zero", but I admit your reason never occurred to me so there may be other reasons I hadn't thought of as well.
Yep. This is the one and only reason I ever keep credit with them. If I'm paying in crypto and they don't have an annual or triennial plan, I just top up my balance enough that it'll last at least a year.
In the ~40 providers I have, I think I've only had to do that with two of them.
For providers I trust and don't want servers to go offline or potentially be deleted, I keep a month's service costs as a balance but have automatic payments set up. Just some providers are very strict.
Blah blah not financial advice but the better way of doing this is to hold foreign currency in accounts with a fintech company of your choice. Mine has a decent spread (better than local ozzie banks) and lets me place FX trades, so for some small amounts I do forex hedging (for things like my hetzner invoice).
Whether I am making money doing this is a different story - theoretically I would be getting better returns in a HISA than I save with hedging, but on small amounts the difference is negligible and helps develop the skill. In any event, if my goal was to hedge currency risk, I'd rather keep money in my trading account than in a provider's credit balance which might evaporate any day.
Having said that, there are some providers where I do maintain a balance:
Providers occasionally run bonus top-up offers like 10% extra credit. Making use of those offers ends up having account credit at that provider.
$0.
provider is not bank.
There is no particular answer to this but depending on the service you have and trust, I usually do not have any credit out the gate but myself as some clients often leave approximately 2-3 months of credit for their bills, its a nice way to not have to worry about your billings for a quarter, I use to do it in Quarters, my bills were about just over $300 and so I would drop on 1st of January $300 for a bill due late January and hadn't been issued yet, then Id let it just sit there through Jan, Feb, March and repeat that. Some do Year up front in credit, no real answer to this.
Enough to pay the bill for a few months I cba logging in and renewing and I don't wanna attach my card so I just deposit crypto for a few months
I always pay invoice, i do not store credit.
and also no paypal no deal.
I have 190e at Berohost because they have top up program and im sure i cant make 20% interest irl so i rather store it on Bero
So $400+ is too much?
For $7/y? Yes
For $700/y? No
Never
Zilch. Why let the money earn interest for the provider instead of you?