Billing FAQ

This article covers some frequently asked billing-related questions.

​

How do I manage billing at hosting.com?

You can manage billing for your hosting.com account through the Hosting Panel. For detailed steps about how to do this, please see Managing billing in the Hosting Panel.

​

How do automatic renewals work?

Almost all services offered by hosting.com are subscriptions and renew at regular intervals. For instances, domains renew on a yearly basis. Web hosting plans can run at different billing cycles including monthly, annually and triennially. When you order a service with hosting.com, you order for an initial period. At the end of that period your services will renew automatically unless you cancel. That renewal date is visible when you order and also in your my.hosting.com client area. We generate renewal invoices in advance of your renewal date. If you have a payment method on file we will automatically renew your service by charging your payment method for the auto-renewal so you do not have to do anything. By default we charge for an auto-renewal 3 days before the service renewal date. We do this because some services like domain names and SSL certificates have a hard expiry date and will go offline immediately without payment, so we want to notify you to minimize downtime or gaps in your service, in the event of any payment errors. If you do not have a payment method on file, or if you want to pay manually or with a different payment method, you can log in at any time to my.hosting.com to update your payment details.

​

Manual renewal

Certain services such as domain names can be switched to manual renewal by turning off auto-renewal. This prevents invoice auto-generation and therefore payment capture. Please note you then need to actively renew domain names in the system in order for them not to go offline and registered by someone else. We recommend this for power users only. We do not allow manual renewal for hosting packages, because these do not have “hard stops” and we offer generous grace periods for late renewals. If you do not wish to renew your web hosting service you can cancel the service and set it to expire at the end of the billing term. This will prevent any automatic renewal and ensure that your service is taken offline when you no longer need it.

​

Can I change the billing cycle?

By default, your billing cycle renews for the term you chose when you first ordered. If you want to change your billing cycle, contact our support team and they will be happy to change it for you. Note that longer payment periods generally give discounted rates over shorter payment periods thanks to your commitment (for example, if you pay for three years you get a lower monthly price on average than if you pay monthly).

​

What happens if I pay late?

We offer generous grace periods if you cannot pay. You can view these under your billing area in my.hosting.com. Navigate to the service, and then click Billing. Typically web hosting packages offer at least 3 days grace, and we do not terminate the hosting plan for 30 days to allow for easy re-activation once the invoice is paid. If you need longer, ask us. We can usually extend a payment deadline by up to 7 days on request. An extension is not the same as changing your due date permanently — if you want the due date itself moved, raise a billing ticket.

​

Can I get the promotional website price when I renew?

The promotional prices on our website are for new orders and give generous discounts as sign up offers. We automatically discount annual, biennial and triennial renewals over our monthly renewal prices.

​

Can I renew early?

Yes. On most services you can renew your service in advance of the due date. You can navigate to the service in my.hosting.com and on the Billing tab, click Issue next invoice. This generates a renewal invoice which you can then pay.

​

Do I get a refund if I cancel a product or service?

A 30-day money-back guarantee applies from the date of your initial purchase. It covers web hosting, Enhance servers, and email products including Professional Email. It does not cover unmanaged VPS or managed cPanel servers, because we incur licensing costs when the server is provisioned, and it does not cover domains or third-party licences. It applies to the initial purchase and does not automatically extend to renewals. Outside the guarantee we do not issue refunds for services already provided, and we do not prorate unused time. If you sign up for a longer period you receive a reduced rate in exchange for that commitment. Refunds are handled by the billing team on a ticket. See Cancelling a product or service.

​

Can I upgrade my plan to a new plan?

Yes you can upgrade at any time. Note that if you upgrade within the same service (e.g. cPanel shared hosting -> cPanel shared hosting, VPS -> VPS, hosting.com Web Hosting -> hosting.com Web Hosting) then the transition is usually seamless and instant. If you are upgrading between hosting plan types or different systems, the migration may be manual or require you to reupload website data, and it is likely we will ask you to place a new order. Please talk to our sales team for specific advice.

​

Can I upgrade or downgrade the plan I bought to a plan that is no longer available?

You can always upgrade or downgrade your current plan to a plan that is compatible and available on our website. If you want to switch to a plan that is currently not listed on our website, please contact our support team at https://my.hosting.com.