How Our Billing Works: Automated, Impersonal, and Predictable Print

The one thing to understand

Almost everything in our billing is automated, and that is deliberately in your favour: invoices, reminders, renewals, and suspensions are handled by a system that runs the same way every time, for every client, around the clock. The two exceptions, the only points where a person is involved, are the review and acceptance of orders and the processing of payments. Everything else is a machine following rules, and once you know the rules, nothing it does will surprise you.

Automated means impersonal, and that is not a bad thing

When our system sees an account with money outstanding, it acts on exactly that fact: money is owed. It does not know whether the amount is one rand or one thousand, it does not know you have been a client for a decade, and it holds no opinion on why the balance is unpaid. This sounds cold, and it is, but it is also fair: the same rules apply to everyone, with no favouritism and no oversight born of a bad day. So if a reminder or a suspension notice arrives, read it as information from a system, not a judgement from a person. The fix is always simply to settle the balance, and normal service resumes automatically.

Everything is invoiced in advance

All our products are billed in advance, you pay for the coming period, not the one just past. An invoice is generated ahead of each renewal date so you always have time to pay before the service is due, and paying on time means the service simply continues without interruption. There is no billing in arrears and no surprise charge for something already consumed, you always know what is due and when.

No payment, no service, ever

Nothing is provisioned until payment is confirmed received. A new order sits waiting until its invoice is paid, and only then is it reviewed, accepted, and set up, the sequence covered in our article on what happens after you place your order. This applies without exception, and it protects you as much as us: it is part of how we keep fraudulent and abusive accounts off the servers your own site shares.

Renewal dates are fixed to your signup date

Your renewal date is set by the date you first ordered, and it recurs on that date for the life of the service:

• Domains renew on their registration anniversary, and this date is set by the domain registry, not by us. We cannot move it, it is a property of the domain itself, so a domain ordered on the 3rd renews on the 3rd every year, wherever it is registered.
• Hosting renews on the anniversary of its signup too, and here there is a little flexibility: if a due date genuinely needs adjusting, perhaps to align several services onto one date, we can change a hosting renewal date on request. This is the exception, not the rule, everything renews on signup maturity by default.

Because domain dates are immovable, the tidy approach when you hold several services is to align the hosting to the domain, not the other way around, ask us and we will sort it out.

Knowing a billing email is really from us

Billing notices are automated, which unfortunately is exactly what phishing imitates. So learn what genuine looks like: our billing emails come from our own domain, they address your account and services specifically, and they link you to your client portal to pay, they never demand payment to an unfamiliar account, never threaten instant deletion over a small balance, and never ask for a password. When in doubt, do not click the email at all, log in to your client portal directly by typing our address, and any real invoice is waiting for you there. If an email claims to be us and something feels off, forward it to us and we will confirm, the same principle our security articles apply to every channel.

The reminder schedule: we warn you, and warn you, and warn you

Nobody is ever suspended out of the blue. The system sends invoices ahead of time and reminders on a fixed schedule, and for domains it starts warning you two months out. Here is exactly what to expect.

Hosting and monthly services

The invoice is generated 8 days before the due date, with a payment reminder 2 days before as a nudge. If the due date passes unpaid:

• First reminder: 3 days after the due date
• Second reminder: 6 days after
• Third reminder: 9 days after
• Suspension: 12 days after the due date
• Late fee of 10%: added 30 days after the due date

Invoices for longer terms are generated with more lead time, so a larger amount never lands as a surprise: 10 days before for quarterly, 13 days before for semi-annual, and 16 days before for annual.

Domains

Because letting a domain lapse is the costliest mistake in hosting, as our article on domain expiry and redemption explains, domain renewal reminders start early and repeat: 60 days before the renewal, then again at 30, 10, 5, and 3 days before. By the time the ordinary invoice-and-reminder cycle above kicks in, you have already been reminded for weeks. It is, genuinely, more warning than you will get almost anywhere.

Good to know

The predictability is the point: because the system is automated and impersonal, you can rely on it behaving identically every cycle, invoice in advance, reminders on the schedule above, renewal on your signup date, and service continuing as long as the balance is settled. What the machine cannot do is know your circumstances, so if you foresee a problem paying on time, reach out through your client portal before a due date rather than after. We consider genuine situations on a case-by-case basis, being unable to pay is not an automatic reprieve, and we make no promises, but a client who talks to us early will always get a fairer hearing than the automation gives. The machine is impartial by design. We are the part that can choose to be understanding, when the situation warrants it.