Billing types indicate whether and how users pay for hosting services.
Generally, hosting in H-Sphere can be commercial and free. Free plans are typically used to host the corporate site of the hosting provider or to disable billing for any other reasons. Commercial plans require payments by credit cards or checks. Commercial plans can allow trial hosting for a limited period of time. Accounts in H-Sphere can have the following billing types:
No Billing: To disable billing in a plan, select Without Billing in the Billing Type field on the first step of the Plan Wizard, and any references to billing information will disappear from the signup wizard. Billing profiles won't be created, and users won't be charged for any resources or services including those provided by third parties, such as domain registration by Enom or OpenSRS. To collect payments only for Enom or OpenSRS services, create a paid plan and enter prices only on the second page of the wizard.
Credit Cards: H-Sphere begins to accept credit cards signups after you have added and configured at least one Merchant Gateway. Removing all merchant gateways will remove the credit card option from the signup wizard.
Credit card numbers can be encrypted (normally they are kept in clear text in the H-Sphere database) and are checked for cc verification number. But unlike CC numbers, it's not stored in H-Sphere DB upon the check-up to comply with legislation in force.
See also adding custom credit card brands and activating credit card accounts.
Checks: users send checks to the location you have specified. After you have received a payment, you should process it as suggested in Processing Check Payments. You can also enable or disable check payments:
- Select Merchant Gateway in the Settings -> Payment Settings menu.
- Turn Accept Checks on or off.
Turning off check payments will affect the whole system, not individual plans. After you have disabled check payments, existing check payment users will still be able to use this form of payment, but new customers won't see this option in the signup forms.
Online Payment Systems: You can also collect payments with WorldPay, PayPal, 2CheckOut, and GestPay. If your customers choose to pay with one of these systems, their credit card info won't be stored in their billing profiles and billing info won't show in the control panel.
Trial: Commercial plans can allow trial hosting for a limited period of time. Trial users are not charged for the resources they use, unless they decide to stay with you upon trial period expiration and become pay users. In this case they are charged for the resources they have used during the trial period and recurrent fees for an open billing period. Their custom settings remain unchanged. See also Providing Trial Hosting.
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