As many webmasters will choose to pay for their web hosting on a monthly basis it becomes important to make sure that payment is made to the web service provider when it is due, to ensure that your websites stay online.
Sometimes there may be a reason that you’re struggling to make payment on time, you might be having issues with the choice of payment method that you usually use, or may be experiencing financial difficulties or you might have had a hectic few weeks and haven’t got to dealing with your monthly web hosting bill.
Some hosting providers can be more lenient than others, even if you go past the payment due date, they may leave your account active, allowing your sites on stay online while they try to collect payment from you.
At other hosting providers though, they will temporarily suspend your account and not only does that take any websites hosted at that account offline, but it also looks bad to your visitors when they arrive at your website address and see a suspended account notice or similar.
A visitor, and possibly a customer may not know why your url shows that message, they may not understand that its because of payment for the hosting service being unpaid, but whatever goes through the visitors mind they usually will begin to wonder at why your site is offline and showing that message.
It may put a visitor off ever returning, already they have that feeling that theres something out of place about your site and possibly your business.
Some web hosting providers can be understanding about their customers not being able to make payment on time for whatever reason, they may even mention within their online information that if you feel that you cant make payment on time that you should contact them a week or so before payment is due.
There are the types of people that will try and get free web hosting from a paid service for as long as they can, simply by ignoring invoices and seeing how far they can push it, but even the most lenient of hosting providers is only going to let that run for a certain amount of time before suspending the customers account.
A customer like that isn’t going to be too bothered about a suspended notice displayed at their website address, he or she will just move on to the next thing but for website owners who are simply struggling to make payment and end up with a suspended account notice at their url it can be embarassing and leads to a loss of revenue for some sites.
Having an account suspended, even if just for a day, is going to be a headache and if you rely on your website being online as your main source of income then it makes it even more important to do everything you can to avoid your web hosting account being suspended.
It would be a shame for your visitors and customers to lose trust in you, your website and whatever it offers to them, they aren’t mind readers so they dont know why your website is offline and why it shows as account suspended.
If you do find yourself in a position where you might not be able to get payment to your web hosting provider on time, then its better to contact them and explain your situation to them.
Maybe you know you can make payment but a few days or a week late, or maybe its an issue with your credit card, or bank account and you are in the process of getting it sorted.
Any reasonable web hosting company is going to understand issues like this, most would probably prefer to receive payment late, rather than suspend your account and maybe even lose a customer completely, as long as it doesn’t become a regular occurrence.
Save the hassle caused by a suspended web hosting account by keeping up with payments or at least keeping your provider well informed if you do encounter any difficulties making payment on time.
