New Package Term: Hourly

[velaware]

Since Blesta seems primarily focused on hosting, why not also offer hourly packages?

 

A lot of companies offer hourly services (i.e.: DigitalOcean and many other *aaS and cloud providers).  I think this would open a few more doors for Blesta as well.

[Chris]

This would be great of such developers and server techs who want to charge hourly rate

[Michael]

Yeah it's a nice feature at the moment we can do it via the invoices but that's as far as it gets, it would be cool for a hour in a dropdown box on the packages.

 

AutoSave video: http://videos.blesta.com/video/64763991 that shows you how to do the invoice per hour .

[Paul]

This is more a function of proration than package term. Nobody wants to get an invoice every hour.

 

I think the way this would work is that you'd enter the hourly price in the package, after hourly billing is enabled through some option there. You'd still have a term of say 1 month, and the customer would be charged hourly rate * 24 * 30 for the month. If they cancel early, a prorata credit refund of the remaining hours could be made.

 

EDIT: Alternatively, we do nothing different in the configuration, other than to display the pricing on the order form as hourly. So, you'd save the price for the full term, and it would be converted to show the hourly price during checkout.

 

I always thought this was a bit of a marketing strategy. 25 cents an hour sounds a lot better than $180/mo.

[velaware]

This is more a function of proration than package term. Nobody wants to get an invoice every hour.

 

I think the way this would work is that you'd enter the hourly price in the package, after hourly billing is enabled through some option there. You'd still have a term of say 1 month, and the customer would be charged hourly rate * 24 * 30 for the month. If they cancel early, a prorata credit refund of the remaining hours could be made.

 

EDIT: Alternatively, we do nothing different in the configuration, other than to display the pricing on the order form as hourly. So, you'd save the price for the full term, and it would be converted to show the hourly price during checkout.

 

I always thought this was a bit of a marketing strategy. 25 cents an hour sounds a lot better than $180/mo.

Well, here's the thought I had regarding this...(and you wouldn't get an invoice every hour)

 

You create a package with an hourly term.  1 Hour = $15 for example.  Lets say this is for sysadmin work (there are some companies that do charge hourly for sysadmin).

 

When you create a service, you specify how many hours will be allocated, and the service adjusts based on that.

 

So, you send the invoice to the client, they pay for that many hours, boom.  Done.

 

But, in some ways you are right that its a bit of a marketing strategy.   That's why companies may also charge $x/month or $0.00x/hour for cloud instances (Amazon, DigitalOcean, etc...do this).

 

The idea is more so to accomendate people who don't do monthly work (like me, doing development and charge on the hour not a flat rate fee).  Granted, its up to the staff to make any adjustments, but this does have a viable use and is practical.

[Michael]

Is it like this for instance:

 

1 [hours] [5.00] [0.00] [0.00]

 

On the order form because it's set to a hour it configures the order form to do:

 

Number of hours: [ ] 

 

So if I put in 24 there, it then invoices me 24 x 1 hour = 5.00 x 24 = 120.00

[velaware]

Is it like this for instance:

 

1 [hours] [5.00] [0.00] [0.00]

 

On the order form because it's set to a hour it configures the order form to do:

 

Number of hours: [ ] 

 

So if I put in 24 there, it then invoices me 24 x 1 hour = 5.00 x 24 = 120.00

Yeaup, pretty much.  Most people want an estimate and doing this through a package once you know at least a rough idea, this package saves a lot of headache.

[Ken]

I feel like metered billing would be built into a module/plugin.  Blesta is handling "invoicing" and as Paul mentioned an hourly service would get billing out monthly with a line item report or whatever.  There's more than one way to bill hourly so that's why I suggest that it should be build into whatever service/provisioning module you have.

 

That's my plan anyway.