Paying in USD or GBP: How Our Currency Pricing Works Print

ZAR is our base currency

We are a South African business, our costs are in Rand, and all our pricing is built in Rand. The USD and GBP options exist so that clients outside South Africa can pay in something familiar, and everything you see in those currencies is our Rand pricing converted across.

How the exchange rate is set

Our system updates its exchange rate automatically every day at 11am. That gives us a current, market-based rate rather than a figure someone picked and forgot about.

The rate you order at is the rate you keep

When you order a service, it is priced at the exchange rate applying at that moment, and that rate stays with that service through its renewals. Your invoice does not move up and down with the currency market every month, which is the whole point: you can budget.

One consequence surprises people, so it is worth spelling out. If you order a hosting plan today and an identical plan next month, and the rate has moved between them, the two services can carry different prices in your currency even though they are the same product. Each one is anchored to the rate on the day it was ordered.

When we do adjust

Two things cause a price in your currency to change:

• A change to our underlying Rand pricing, which is handled with notice as set out in our Terms of Service.
• A sustained move in the exchange rate beyond our internal thresholds. We hold thresholds in both directions, and when the rate moves past one and stays there, we step in manually and bring all services onto the corrected rate together.

The word doing the work there is sustained. The Rand is volatile, and a rate that spikes for two days and settles back is noise, not a trend. We do not chase it, and we do not repackage a bad afternoon on the currency market as a price increase. It takes a genuine, prolonged move before we act, and when we do, everything is unified rather than left as a patchwork of historical rates.

Any realignment takes effect at your next renewal, for hosting and domains alike. Nothing changes partway through a term you have already paid for.

Changing the currency on your account

The currency selector at the top of our website changes what prices you see while browsing. The currency your account is actually billed in is a property of your profile, and it cannot be switched from the client portal.

To change it, open a support ticket and we will make the change for you. Worth thinking about before you ask: if your income is in Rand, being billed in Rand removes a layer of currency risk from your business entirely, and the same is true in reverse if you earn in dollars.

A note on GBP

We offer GBP, and at present it simply follows the daily rate without the threshold arrangement described above, since we have no clients billed in it. If you are considering GBP billing, talk to us first and we will tell you exactly how your account would be handled.

Connectivity products are Rand only

Our Fibre and LTE services are sold across South Africa and cannot be sold outside it, so they exist in Rand and nothing else. Hosting, domains, and our other services are available wherever you are, and the currency options apply to those.

Good to know

Currency conversion is a convenience we offer, not a hedge we are selling you. Whichever currency you are billed in, the underlying cost of running your service is a Rand cost, and our approach is to keep that as boring and predictable for you as we can: a rate fixed when you order, held through renewals, and adjusted only when the market genuinely moves rather than merely twitches. If you ever want to know why a particular invoice reads the way it does, ask us and we will walk you through the numbers on it.