Ran an ISP, saw the other side. Prepaid yearly customers are pure gold for cash flow. That's why the discount exists -- they're buying your money today, not selling you compute tomorrow. From the operator's chair, monthly churn is the nightmare. From the customer's? Yearly is an unsecured loan to a corporation with no credit check.
In Argentina we know this game. Prepay anything in pesos and watch inflation eat the provider before they eat you. I do monthly with local ARS pricing, or yearly only if I can pay in USD stablecoin. CloudCone takes crypto, so I did one year with them once. Worked out.
Finally somebody who understands finance. I should frame this.
I mirror to two providers plus local. Yearly on primary, monthly on secondary. If primary dies I promote secondary within hours. RAID logic but for billing.
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This thread is making my head spin. So I need backups of backups and also not pay yearly? I just wanted to know if the poll meant most people do monthly or yearly. Can someone just tell me that?
Read the thread from the top. Short answer: monthly wins for safety, yearly for price. Your call which you value more.
Following this. Currently monthly everywhere after reading Nadia's story. Might reconsider for Hetzner only.
I did the math on my five boxes. Yearly discount saves me about $340/year. I put that $340 into a separate "provider death" fund instead of more backup hardware. If a provider dies, fund covers migration. Three years running, fund is now $1020 and no deaths. Feels like I'm winning a game I didn't know I was playing.
This.
