With any kind of recurring service or subscription model, being able to bill your customers automatically makes a huge difference in renewal rates. Reseller hosting plans are no different — being able to automatically bill your customers on their preferred term, be it monthly, quarterly, or annually can streamline your operation and boost revenues across the board.
Think about it — anytime your create friction points between the customer and their purchasing (or, in the case renewal) decision, you are increasing the opportunity for that customer to not renew, This may be intentional, if they have been considering other options, or unintentional, if they are otherwise busy and just can’t get to the renewal on time.
Aside from being better for business, it’s actually also more convenient for the customer. Many customers prefer to be billed regularly, instead of being bothered to be invoiced and then have to pay via check or online, which takes from their otherwise valuable time. Being able to automatically bill customers also adds another level of professionalism for your business. It’s a customer feature many people ask for.
How to Bill Customers Automatically
Automatic billing requires you to keep customer credit card information on file. As you can imagine, this is quite sensitive, and there are regulations you have to abide by to ensure that data is sufficiently safe. Thankfully, there’s another option: third party services that have the right infrastructure for processing recurring transactions can do the automatic billing for you.
There are a number of service providers in this space. Here are a couple that are time-tested and at the top of their field:
Hostbill — one of the most popular automatic billing platforms, Hostbill includes regular automated billing as well as a number of more sophisticated options like:
- Metered Billing – fee based on resource usage over time
- Bandwidth Billing – measure & bill total transfer, 95th percentile
- Cloud Billing – fee based on cloud instance sizes deployed
- One-Off Billing – one time fees for products & services
WHMCS – another leader in this space, WHMCS handles all aspects of automated billing. It:
- Integrates with all major payment gateways
- Uses tokenized storage to Securely process credit card payments and reduce your liability
Using either of these vendors will give you the option to automatically bill your hosting clients for their convenience, while also providing you with improved renewal rates and more predictable payment schedules.
CanSpace will provide you with our industry-leading web hosting services, allowing you to provide enterprise-level hosting services without the cost and overhead of managing your own hardware. We handle all the technical aspects of running a hosting business, leaving you free to work with your clients, and profit from the services you offer. All you need to do to create a new hosting account is click a few buttons!
Become a CanSpace hosting reseller today! Check out our plans for resellers!
