DrakNet Annual+ Billing

If you hold an annual hosting package with DrakNet, your billing will take place three months prior to your invoice due date, which is 31 days prior to your package renewal date. DrakNet's annual billing is on the following invoicing schedule. DrakNet bills everyone in advance, but due to several factors the annual accounts are billed a bit further in advance. This policy has been incorporated into the Terms of Service since January of 2007, and the reasons behind it are explained below.

This affects only annual hosting packages and longer termed hosting packages. Stand alone domain names, as well as monthly/quarterly/semi-annual packages are not affected by the elongated lead time. You can figure out when your billing month is by looking at your package renewal date in your billing area.

The reasoning behind elongated annual invoicing.

DrakNet implemented elongated invoicing for annual accounts for the following reasons:

1. Larger amounts tended to surpise people who were not keeping up with their billing dates, leading to annual accounts being suspended more than any other type of accounts, usually without the client wanting to give up the site.
2. Resellers that wished to pay annually often had the most difficulty coming up with the larger payment within a short amount of time, and the longer time frame gave them far more of a warning. It also enabled them to make 3 payments instead of one, or partial payments, if they needed to.
3. Companies and organizations often needed a larger lead time to get invoices approved for payment, which tended to be submitted as one time payments as opposed to routine expenses.
4. It enables us to plan for server additions much better than before. As a smaller company that strictly controls each server "population", this change was very important for our ability to plan.
5. There is a higher than average rate of "client vanishing" on annuals, and this gives us a better alert as to who they are, as well as extra time to contact them.

Those folks who have a credit card on file are charged at the time of invoice. Unlike the previous billing method, refunds are available usually until the due date of the invoice (as all due dates should be 31 days in advance), if clients choose to cancel.

If people don't like the advance billing, they are free to not put a card on file and pay the invoice on the very last day with their credit card if they so choose to do so or convert to a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual billing period, so no one is "forced" to pay early if they don't wish to.