We have some news to put in news, and some you’ll like, and some you won’t.

The good news: those people that like paying with PayPal but who are now getting gigged for the $1.50 fee for not having a card on file now have another option. Our billing system is now able to set up PayPal subscriptions for your hosting payments. Simply log in to your billing area, click to expand “Billing and Services” , click on “PayPal Subscriptions”, and then tick the services you want to set it up for. Email billing and let us know you set up the subscription, and we’ll take off the $1.50.

Currently you’ll need to update your card on file (should you need to) on the DrakNet site here. We’ve had to remove the ability to do it from within billing due to the appearance of fields that allow you to place a bank account on file - oddly enough, our billing software is not set up to take Echecks through our processor, authorize.net, even though it is set up to take credit cards. We’ve made a request for that to be added, and we’ll see what they say, so hopefully look for that within the next few months.

Our Billing prepayment discounts have changed! Annual discounts on standard accounts are now 15% due to the introduction of a new biennial (every 2 years) billing period. You can now order hosting as well as domain names in two year increments, and save 20%. If you’d like to switch, fill out the billing change form or let us know.

To thank you for reading our blather, we’re giving you a coupon! Through May 15, 2008, coupon code 3BZ6O8 will get you $25 off any new monthly billing installations on new or existing accounts! Give it out to your friends, use it yourself, and thanks!

We’re preparing for our once a month billing run, and since I’ve gotten in the habit of posting I thought I’d take some time to expand on the processes that we go through, and when we do what.

DrakNet’s monthly billing cycle runs once a month, every month, on the 25th, so if you’re monthly, or quarterly, or semi-annual your card on file will be hit around midnight central time as soon as the calendar hits the 25th. We run on 28 day cycles just like the moon, so your deadline to pay will be 28 days after that.

Now, what you need to understand is that there are two sets of dates, your invoice date and due date, and your package renewal date. On the 25th, the system takes a look at every package and when it renews, and if the package renewal date falls within that 28 day time frame, it will be put on the invoice. So, for example, your package renews on May 5th - it will be on tonight’s invoice of April 25th, and if you don’t pay it by May 5th, you’re using services that you haven’t paid for because come May 5th, your services are being utilized without having been paid for.

Since billing is one of my least favorite things to do and orders come in at all times of the month, that 28 days is the time you have to get that account in order if your card is declined or if you have refused to put a card on file. The due date listed on your invoice is your absolute deadline - since all packages that would have been on the 25th invoice would have had to renew within that 28 day time frame, by the time that 28 days is up we know that everyone who is outstanding is using services that they have, for whatever reason, chosen not to pay for. On your due date or very soon after, you are suspended until those service are paid for.

Now, we do have a pretty hefty warning system - we have standard reminders that go out whenever we try your card and it is declined again, or when we check to see who hasn’t paid. At two weeks before the deadline, we send you an email letting you know that you’re within two weeks of being suspended. We also try to get one out at 72, 48, and 24 hours (though sometimes you’ll only get one of those if we’re busy) to let you know that imminent doom is approaching. On your due date or within one or two days after, your account is suspended completely - your files are maintained, your system is maintained, but it is taken offline and your mail system will not accept mail. We email you and let you know you have seven days before you’re terminated, with a timestamp.

If you don’t pay within those seven days, your site is nuked. A backup may be maintained as we clean them out periodically and irregularly, but we don’t guarantee that and you shouldn’t depend on it. Once you stop paying and your account is terminated, you’re terminated and this eventually includes backups. If you want to come back, you need to open a completely new account and pay for the time that you used and didn’t pay for, as well as the new fees for the new account. If we hold the registration on the domain, we put the domain name up for sale as abandoned as an attempt to recoup the fees we lost.

It’s extremely important that you make sure that your email in your billing area is up to date so you will get these emails - we don’t call people to beg them for money. Since you have access to your billing area, we feel its your responsibility to keep that information up to date, and we do take the extra time to send you emails outlining exactly what the risk is when you don’t pay.

Annual hosting accounts (and the soon to be launched biennial accounts) are handled differently because of the history of irregular payment on these accounts. A lot of people forget when they’re due, or forget when they are coming up, or forget to maintain their card, information, or email and then are shocked when their account is suspended. Sometimes people wanted to cancel, and yet by the time they are invoiced for 28 days, it’s outside the 30 day cancellation (which applies to the package, not the invoice date). Because these accounts have a larger payment, sometimes 28 days isn’t long enough when people forget, so we elongated the grace period after averaging out how much time people would say they needed when they were late.

3 months before annual accounts are due, we will run the invoice that will coincide with the exact due date of the package renewal. If there is a card on file, it is charged. If it is decline, you will get reminders once a month and then as you get towards the deadline, the notices will follow the pattern laid out above for the monthly accounts.

This past week we’ve made a few changes on the DrakNet site, as well as launched a few new programs that we wanted to let you know about.

The first thing we want to announce probably isn’t of great interest to our current customers, but our potential customers may be fairly interested in it. We’ve gotten a lot of inquiries from people about moving here who have prepaid somewhere else and wish to be “bought out” of their contract for a variety of reasons, and to be quite honest with you we’ve never been all that impressed with the concept. I mean, let’s be honest - if your current hosting company sucks, it’s not a great idea to ask your future hosting company (who you presumably think doesn’t suck) to take financial responsibility for your old hosting company, and your choice to pre-pay before knowing whether or not they suck. So even when asked, our answer has always been no.

We’ve found that we have a little bit of a different attitude when it comes to Soholaunch folks. Years ago, we were a pretty techno-geek focused company. One day, Soholaunch popped up in Fantastico, someone installed it and complained that it needed a license, we checked into it, and decided to give it a go. In the intervening years, Soholaunch has grown to become a large chunk of our hosting company - 7.4% of all the sites on DrakNet now run on Soholaunch Pro, and that number is definitely growing. We have a good and familiar relationship with Soholaunch themselves, and are extremely active in the Soholaunch forums as well. We like the software, and we like when people are happy running it.

Recently, we’ve noticed other hosting companies advertising the software even though they don’t, in fact, “have it” - at least not in the way we do. The fact is any host that has Fantastico can offer Soholaunch, however, if they don’t pay to license their servers, and their client doesn’t pay $149 to license the software, they’ll see their site go from lovely and cool to covered with ads in 15 days with limited functionality. Sometimes, they don’t expect it to happen - in some cases, they simply license the software for $149 and are happy with that. In other cases, they are infuriated, and they feel duped, and they simply don’t have $149 to spend.

It’s the “other cases” that we wanted to address with our new Soholaunch Rescue Program. It’s difficult to watch people create something that they really love, and watch some of them feel as if they are being manipulated into a fee by extortion. There is something of a lack of clarity in Fantastico’s installation message, and there is something of a lack of either knowledge or deliberate misrepresentation on the part of some hosts regarding whether they actually offer Soholaunch Pro with all abilities, and no advertisements. We can understand how people can be mislead, and we wanted to create an option for people to be able to maintain their site and, should they not be able to afford to purchase the software, to move here and have it included even if (and especially if) they committed to a hosting company that represented that they offered it only to find out it was the trial and ad-enabled version.

Details of the Soholaunch Rescue Program are available here.

We’ve also discontinued Lifetime Hosting. Obviously, those who have already purchased their Lifetime Accounts are still going to be maintained the same as they ever were, and we have left the page up so that everyone can still look up the terms. With the software that we’re adding that does cost monthly recurring licensing fees for us (like Soholaunch) we’ve just found that Lifetime accounts are not longer terribly practical - as if they ever were.

We’ve moved the DrakNet News Blog to it’s new location, and have also changed the Network Status Page so that it, also, has an RSS Feed. You can now comment on both pages if you have something to say about anything we have to say. We’ve also created a new, simplified order form for current clients so that you don’t have to submit your address and telephone number and card information to get a domain on a current account, as well as added fields on the form for cPanel transfers so that you don’t have to fill out two forms.

We hope you like the changes - as always, we’re sure you’ll let us know if you don’t!