This document explains the concepts and procedures of the H-Sphere billing system. If you find that explanations in this document are vague or incomplete, please e-mail writers@psoft.net.

• Plans
• Billing Types
• Billing Profiles
• Prices
• Limiting Resources
• Billing Periods
• Credit Limit
• Traffic
• Disk Space (Disk Space Quota and Summary Disk Usage)
• Money Returns

Plans

Hosting resources and services are sold in plans or packages. When a customers signs up for a plan, he gets an account with a home directory on the web server, a certain amount of free disk space, a certain amount of traffic he can use for free, a certain number of mailboxes he can create for free, and other resources. The quantity of such free resources is different in each plan and is changed with plan wizards.

When a user needs more disk space or mailboxes or any other resources, he can buy them at the price which is set for his plan. You can set prices when you create a plan or at any later time.

Should the need arise, customers can change their hosting plan. You can configure which plans customers can upgrade from and to as suggested in the Compatible Plans guide.

To create a new hosting plan in the system:

1. Select Plan Wizards in the Info menu.
2. Click Select for the type of the plan you would like to create.
3. Follow the wizard. Explanations to the wizard can be found here.

To edit resources or prices in an existing hosting plan:

1. Select Plans in the Info menu.
2. Click the name of the plan you want to edit.
3. Follow the wizard. Explanations to the wizard can be found here.

These are the types of plans you may need:

Billing Types

No Billing: Plans in H-Sphere can be commercial and free. Free plans are typically used to host your corporate site or to disable billing for any other reasons. To disable billing in a plan, select Without Billing in the Billing Type field of the Plan Wizard, and any references to billing information will disappear from the signup wizard.

Credit Cards: Commercial plans require payments by credit cards or checks. Once you have added and configured at least one Merchant Gateway, H-Sphere begins to accept credit cards and the credit card option appears in the signup wizard. Removing all merchant gateways will remove the credit card option from the signup wizard.

See also adding custom credit card brands and activating credit card accounts.

Checks: users send checks to the location you have specified. After you have received a payment, you should process it as suggested in Processing Check Payments. You can also enable or disable check payments:

1. Select Merchant Gateway in the Settings menu.
2. Turn Accept Checks on or off.

Turning off check payments will affect the whole system, not individual plans.

Online Payment Systems: Starting with version 2.3, you can collect payments using online payment providers, PayPal and WorldPay. See also Online Payment Providers.

Trial: Commercial plans can allow trial hosting for a limited period of time. Trial users are not charged for the resources they use, but when they decide to become pay users, they have to choose how they want to pay, by credit card or by check. When they become pay customers, they are charged for the resources they have used during the trial period. Their custom settings remain unchanged. See also Providing Trial Hosting.

Billing Profiles

A billing profile is a set of billing details that is required to collect payments from a customer. One customer can have multiple billing profiles, but only one active at a time. For instance, a user can have two credit cards, VISA and MASTERCARD, and a check account. This user can have three billing profiles, two for credit cards and one for checks. If the VISA billing profile is set active, the MASTERCARD won't be charged and no check payments will be necessary.

One billing profile can be used for multiple accounts. This means a user with several accounts can pay with one card or receive all bills at one mailing address.

Trial users don't have billing profiles until they choose to become pay users. The system, however, tracks all trial user's purchases and includes them into the first bill.

Once a billing profile is created, it cannot be modified: the user has to create a new profile. If a user several billing profiles, those that are not active can be deleted.

Prices

Prices apply to resources used beyond Free units. When we talk about free units, we actually mean free gigabytes of traffic, free megabytes of disk space, free subdomains and mailboxes, etc. a user will get for free with the hosting account. Free isn't applicable to resources that can't be measured in units, such as Directory Index or SSH Access. Changes to free units affect both existing and new users.

You can set the following types of prices for resources and services:

• Setup: a single-time amount payable at the moment of purchasing a unit of this specific resource. It is also charged for disk space quota when the latter is changed. Setup fee is not charged for free resources. Changes to setup prices apply only to new users; existing users don't get affected.
• Recurrent: the amount payable ahead at the beginning of the billing period. If a resource is purchased in the middle of a billing period, the recurrent fee is calculated for the period from the moment of purchase to the end of the billing period. Recurrent fee is charged whenever a new billing period starts, including:
  - when a suspended account is resumed;
  - when a user changes plan or payment interval.
  Changes to recurrent prices apply only to new users; existing users don't get affected. Recurrent fees are refundable and adjusted for refund percentage.
• Usage (same as extra and overlimit): the payment for every resource unit used over the limit by the closure of the billing period:
  - when the billing period naturally expires;
  - when the account is suspended;
  - when a user changes plan or payment interval.
  Changes to usage prices affect both existing and new users.

See Creating And Editing Plans on how to set/change prices.

Limiting Resources

You can limit each type of resources a customer can have by setting the Max units value:

1. Select Plans in the INFO menu.
2. On the page that appears, click RESOURCE.
3. Select Edit next to the resource you want to limit.
4. You will be taken to the Resource Settings page:

   

5. In the Max field, enter the maximum of this resource you allow per one customer in this plan. For example, if you set Max disk space to 200, no single user of this plan will be able to set disk space quota higher than 200 MB.

Disk space usage and traffic are also controlled by disk space usage limit and traffic limit. Users set their disk usage and traffic limits based on how much disk space and traffic they are going to use, and pay for this amount at the recurrent price. If they exceed this limit, they pay for the excess at the usage (overlimit) price.

However you can't stop them from using more traffic, summary disk, MySQL database by just Max value utility.
Let's say you are providing 10 MB of traffic for free, allowing to use more at the price of $1 for MB and charging $5 MB for going over the user predefined traffic limit.

With 100MBs as Max value for traffic recourse you allow customers to increase their traffic limit to 100MB. However even if they raise their limit to 100 MB paying $90 recurrent fee, they will be able to go over it.

Setting higher overlimit prices doesn't always agree with you price policy.
In this case you can configure the system to automatically suspend customer accounts when they use more resources then set in percents of the user predefined limit.
To do this, go to Settings->User warnings. On the screen that shows up, set the percentage of user predefined limit, reaching which their accounts will be suspended.

Billing Periods and Discounts

Billing periods determine how far in advance users pay for resources and services. In each hosting plan, you can create one or more billing periods for users to choose from at signup.

Billing periods allow you to set discounts for each individual price type - setup, recurrent, and overlimit. The bigger billing period, the bigger the discount. For example, you can create a monthly, a quarterly, and a yearly billing periods, each with its own discounts. Prices for the actual billing periods will be calculated as the default billing period prices multiplied by the duration of the billing period in months, adjusted for the refund percentage if specified. All resources are discounted the same way, which means that account registration will be discounted by the same percentage as domain creation.

Also, you can explicitly set prices for each type of resource in actual billing periods using plan creation / edit wizards. IMPORTANT: If prices are set explicitly in the plan wizards, discounts won't apply.

When a new account is activated upon signup, a billing period opens, which makes it start differently for each individual account. A new billing period starts:

• on activating paid account (accounts can be created but not activated as in case of account moderation)
• on switching from trial to paid account
• on resuming suspended account
• on switching to another plan
• on switching to another billing period

A billing period closes:

• on quitting hosting
• on suspending account
• on switching to another plan
• on switching to another billing period

To create a billing period:

1. Select Plans in the INFO menu.
2. On the page that appears, click Settings for the hosting plan to edit.
3. Make sure Billing is ON.
4. In the Billing Configuration section, click the Add icon:

   

   • Interval: the time unit used to specify payment interval duration.
   • Size: the number of such time units in this payment interval.
   • Setup D, Usage D, Recurrent D: discounts for different type of fees.
   • Control: click the Edit icon to modify settings for the above parameters.

NOTE: In H-Sphere billing periods cannot be deleted, but you can change their duration. For instance, if you decide you don't need your yearly billing period, you can change its duration to two months.

To set or change discounts for a billing period:

1. Select Plans in the INFO menu.
2. On the page that appears, click Settings for the plan to edit.
3. Make sure Billing is ON. In the Billing Configuration section, click the Edit icon for the selected billing period.
4. On the page that appears, enter discounts for each price type:

   

Example: Entering 2 in the Size box and 10 in the Recurrent Discount box will reduce the recurrent fee by 10% for all accounts with the payment interval of 2 months.
Users signed up for one month billing period pay $10 as a recurrent fee each month.
Users signed up for two months billing period pay $18 every two months.

Credit Limit

In credit card payment accounts, the system accumulates fees up to a certain amount called credit limit. When the cumulative fees reach or exceed the credit limit, the customers are charged.

When the credit limit is reached in check payment accounts or invalid/expired credit cards, users become unable to buy more resources. This will not, however, suspend the account, and the recurrent and usage fees, will still be accrued. This way, the negative balance will grows with every new billing period.

Example: If you set the credit limit to $10, a user with a $0 balance purchasing $5 resource won't be charged, although his balance will become -$5. This is also true of invalid credit card or check payments. If this user decides to buy some extra $10 of resources, he will get charged $15, and his balance will become zero. But in case of an invalid credit card or a check payment, this user won't be able to buy these extra $10 of resources, and his balance will remain -$5. If this is the case, and if his usage fee equals $20, at the end of the payment interval his debt will increase to ( $5 + $ 20 = ) $25.

Credit limit is set in plan wizards and is the same for all accounts in this plan. However, you can enlarge or reduce credit limit for individual accounts and reset credit limit for all users in the system in one go.

Traffic

User traffic in H-Sphere is calculated per server, e.g. web server, mail server, etc., and then is added up to make up summary traffic. It is not broken up into incoming or outgoing.

Initially, users get some free traffic they can run up without being charged. If they go beyond the free units, they are charged for each GB of excess at the usage (overlimit) price, which is usually quite high.

Regardless of account's billing period, traffic usage is calculated once a month - or less than a month if the traffic month is forced to close with a traffic limit change or other events. For example, if a customer signs up on March 7 for a billing period of 6 months, traffic will be closed and reset on the 7th of each month.

If users have or expect high hit rates, they can book more traffic in advance by setting higher traffic limit (initially it equals free units). After this, they will pay for the whole booked amount at the recurrent price, which is usually lower than the usage price. Recurrent fee is charged in advance for the whole billing period (not traffic month) for traffic limit minus free units and is non-refundable if the user fails to use it all up.

When a traffic month ends, total traffic is multiplied by months in the billing period, then the limit is subtracted to obtain the excess, and, if the result is positive, it is divided by months in the billing period and is charged as a usage fee. For example, you host a user with the account's billing period of 6 months, 0 free units, and the traffic limit of 6GB. During the first month, the user runs up 1.5GB, which is 0.5GB higher than the prorated monthly expectation. The payment for 0.5GB excess traffic is charged as the usage (overlimit) fee right at the end of the first traffic month.

When a user changes traffic limit, the current traffic month closes, the prorated usage fee is charged, and user's traffic is reset. As the result, the billing period for traffic becomes different from the billing period for the account. For example, you host a user with 0 free units, the traffic limit of 6 GB, and the billing period of 6 months starting 1 January. By 15 January, the user runs up 1 GB of traffic, which is 0.5 GB higher than the prorated expectation for 15 days. On 15 January, the user changes the traffic limit. The user is charged for the 0.5 GB excess traffic as a usage fee, user's traffic is reset, and the new traffic month will now start on the 15th of each month.

Actual use of traffic can physically restricted, which means when end users runs up a certain amount of traffic, their sites will get suspended, and visitors won't be able to see the pages, and mailboxes and virtual ftp accounts will stop working. Read here for instructions.

Also, you can restrict the maximum possible traffic limit end users can set. To set the Max value:

1. Select Plans in the Info menu.
2. Click Resource for the selected plan.
3. Click Edit for the Summary Traffic resource.
4. In the Max field, enter the maximum allowed traffic limit value (in GB).

This table uses examples, starting with easy further to more difficult, to explain how end customers are charged for using traffic.

Disk Space

Starting with version 2.3, you can choose whether to charge your customers by disk space quota (reserved disk space) or summary disk usage.

Disk Space Quota

If you configure the system to charge end users by disk quota, they will pay recurrent fees for all the disk space they have reserved by setting disk quota. They can't upload more files than their disk quota, and will get an error message if they try to do so. Initially, disk quota equals Free MBs, and when end users need more disk space, they can increase the disk quota or, in other words, purchase more disk space.

In disk quota, recurrent fee is calculated by the formula:
( Disk quota - Free Units ) x recurrent price
and is measured in $/MB. The recurrent fee is charged at the beginning of the account's entire billing period and IS refunded. Usage fee is not applicable for the disk quota resource, because disk quota can't be exceeded.

Note: All files with the user's ID including those outside user's home directory are counted toward used disk space usage including Transfer, Referrer, Agent and Error logs that are used for user site's statistics. This accounts for frequent differences between used disk space shown by the control panel and the actual files in user home directory.

To restrict users from increasing their disk space quota:

1. Select Plans in the Info menu.
2. Click the Resource link next to the plan.
3. Click the Edit icon next to the Disk Space Quota resource.
4. In the Max field, set the maximum allowed disk space quota in megabytes.

This table uses examples, starting with easy further to more difficult, to explain how end customers are charged for disk space quota.

How do disk space quota changes affect users?

Summary Disk Usage

Alternatively, you can configure your system to charge end users by disk usage, which works similarly to traffic. Used disk space on different types of servers (web, mail, MySQL, etc.) is summarized every 24 hours to make up Summary Disk Usage.

Initially, users get some free disk space they can use without being charged. If they go beyond this free amount, they are charged for each MB of excess at the usage (overlimit) price, which is usually quite high. Usage fee is charged at the end of disk usage month regardless of account's billing period. The disk usage cycle can be less than a month if it is forced to close with a disk limit change or other events. For example, if a customer signs up on March 7 for a billing period of 6 months, and then changes disk limit on March 21, the new starting date for the disk usage cycle will then become the 21st of each month.

If users have a lot of web/mail/etc content, they can raise their disk limit (initially it equals free units). After this, they will pay for the whole booked amount at the recurrent price, which is usually lower than the usage price. Recurrent fee is charged in advance for the whole account billing period (not disk usage month) for disk limit minus free units. Recurrent fee is non-refundable if the user fails to use it all up, but is refunded for the unused days of a prematurely closed disk usage cycle.

Example: If a user has 5MB free and the actual files take 5MB, but the disk limit is 10MB, the user would pay for ( 10MB - 5MB free = ) 5MB as recurrent fee. However, if this user's files total to 15MB, the user will pay for the same 5MB as recurrent fee at the beginning of the billing period plus ( 15MB - 10MB limit = ) 5MB as overlimit fee at the end of the disk usage month.

Every day all servers are scanned, and all actually used disk space including free units is added up throughout the disk usage month, then the cumulative amount is divided by the number of days elapsed since the beginning of the current disk usage month, and the resulting average is displayed in the end user's control panel. This accounts for numerous questions why disk usage in end user's control panel is different from the disk space actually occupied by user's files.

At the end of the disk usage month, the cumulative amount is divided by the number of days, and if the resulting average exceeds the disk limit, the customer is charged overlimit fees for the excess amount.

Example: You enable the summary disk usage resource, set free summary disk usage at 100 MB, monthly at $1 and extra at $2. Also, you zero all quota prices. If the customer sets disk limit to 200 MB, he will pay monthly recurrent fee for the ( 200MB - 100MB = ) 100MB of disk space. Now imagine that on the first day of the billing month the user uploaded several big files, and the used disk space became 210MB, and so it was until the end of the billing month. At the end of the billing month, the user will pay ( 10MB x $2 = ) $20 overlimit fee.

The next billing month, the customer uses 210 MB for 15 days, then deletes several files, and stays with 190 MB for the second half of the billing month. As the result, the prorated disk usage will equal ( (15days x 190MB + 15 days x 210MB) / 30days = ) 200MB, which stays within the disk limit, so the customer is not charged the overlimit fee.

Even if you charge your customers for summary disk usage, disk quota can't be removed, because it's an obligatory system resource. Instead, you need to do all of the following:

• set free units for Summary Disk Usage;
• set Summary Disk Usage prices;
• delete all Disk Space Quota prices to make sure that your users aren't charged twice for the same disk space;
• enter some free megabytes of Disk Space Quota, so the system doesn't keep end users from uploading their web content.

1. Select Plans in the Info menu.
2. Click Resource for the selected plan.
3. Click Edit for the Disk Space Quota resource.
4. In the Max field, enter the maximum allowed disk space quota value (in MB).

To enable Summary Disk Usage for a certain plan:

1. Select Plans in the INFO menu.
2. Click the name of the plan to start the Plan Edit wizard.
3. Include Summary Disk Usage on the first step.
4. On the subsequent steps, don't set prices for web, mail, and other disk quotas unless you want to charge your customers twice, for disk quota and disk usage. Instead, set prices for Summary Disk Usage.
5. Log into each existing user/reseller account under this plan, go to Account (regular user) / Info (reseller) -> Quick Access and press the Add button in the Summary Disk Usage section.

To enable Summary Disk Usage for all your user/reseller plans:

1. Log into your control panel server as cpanel user:
   su - cpanel
2. Execute the SummaryQuotaUpdate class:
   java psoft.hsphere.converter.SummaryQuotasUpdate --enable
3. Login as root and restart H-Sphere. The Summary Disk Usage resource will be added to all plans, its free units will be set to equal Free Disk Space Quota, its monthly and usage prices will be removed.
4. Enter each plan where you want to charge for Summary Disk Usage instead of disk space quota, set prices for Summary Disk Usage and delete all disk quota prices. Also, enter Free units for the Disk Space Quota resource.

To disable Summary Disk Usage for all your user/reseller plans:

1. Log into your control panel server as cpanel user:
   su - cpanel
2. Execute the SummaryQuotaUpdate class:
   java psoft.hsphere.converter.SummaryQuotasUpdate --disable
3. Login as root and restart H-Sphere. The Summary Disk Usage resource will be removed from all plans.
4. Enter each plan and set prices for Disk Space Quota.

This table uses examples, starting with easy further to more difficult, to explain how end customers are charged for summary disk usage.

Money Returns

Customers can get their money back in two cases:

• Complete refund:

  When a user quits hosting during the Moneyback period, he gets back 100% of all recurrent fees for all the resources he has used. The Money Back amount does not include the Setup Fee and is not affected by the refund percentage.

• Partial refund:

  When a user quits hosting after the Moneyback period, he gets back his recurrent fees adjusted for the refund percentage for the time remaining till the end of the current billing period.

Partial refunds are calculated according to the following formula:

refund = (recurrent fee x time left to the closure of the billing period)/ (duration of the billing period x refund percentage)

Example: A user's one-month billing period started on November 1 and closes on November 30. Recurrent fee for a dedicated IP is $3. At the beginning of the billing period the user was charged $3 for the dedicated IP. On November 10 this user switched to a shared IP. With a 10% refund percentage the user will get back $0,2 refund.

IMPORTANT: Refunds can't be issued to credit cards. The money must be returned either by check or by crediting the account balance.

To set the moneyback period:

1. Select Plans in the INFO menu.
2. Click the name of the plan to start the wizard.
3. Scroll down to the Settings section and check Enable in the Money Back Guarantee field. Enter the duration of the Money Back period in days.
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and check Don't change resources prices.
5. Complete the wizard.

To set the refund percentage:

1. Select Plans in the INFO menu.
2. Click Resources for the plan.
3. On the page that appears, click Price next to the resource to set refund percentage for:

   

4. In the Refund Percentage field, enter which part of the recurrent fee that will be returned to the user:

   

Example: User's billing period started on November 1 and is closing on November 30. The recurrent price for dedicated IP is $3. At the beginning of the billing period the user was charged $3 recurrent fee for dedicated IP. On November 10 the user switched to shared IP. With 10% refund percentage he will get back $0,2 refund. The refund will be added to the account credit.