Hosting.com 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 services 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 before the weekend in case 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 by 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 to not to go offline and drop to be registered by someone else and 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 will renew on the cycle on which you ordered in.

If you wish to change your billing cycle you can 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 (e.g. if you pay for three years you get a lower monthly price on average than if you paid 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 please get in touch and we can extend the due date in exceptional circumstances.

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 Renew. This generates a renewal invoice which you can then pay.

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

Outside of our money back guarantee, we do not issue refunds for services provided. If you sign up for a longer period, you receive a reduced rate for your commitment. In some cases we may be able to credit unused time to other services with hosting.com however.

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.