Hi Everyone,
Now I know the old-fashioned British way is that we don't talk about money. However, I have never subscribed to that in business. It is important that we are all on top of our business costs and I have always been transparent in all my businesses where the pounds and pence are concerned.
Site Editing: How the Billing Works
We have a very simple and robust system in place here. When one of our awesome 3001Web nerds opens a support ticket from you, they will first read what you have asked for:
- Included (No Charge): If the issue is a problem with the server or the web hosting account itself then there is no charge for that support—that is included in your monthly hosting fee.
- Billable: If the ticket requires work on your site, helping you set up some kind of integration with another site, fixing an issue with another third-party service/plugin, or helping you set up your email on your phone or in an email programme (that's really the job of whoever provides the software), this work is billed.
The Bottom Line: Basically, anything that is not direct hosting account or server support will be billed. We love you all but sadly we cannot work for your business free of charge, we have bills to pay too.
At this point, our team member will simply start a timer for your ticket when they start working on it, pause it if they need more info from you, and stop it when they finish the task. This is then automatically added to a draft invoice on your account.
When Will We Bill You?
- Invoicing: We will publish and send that invoice on Friday or Saturday for any work we have done for you that week.
- Automatic Payments: The payment will be automatically claimed from whatever payment method you have added to your account.
- Manual Payments (PayPal): If you are using PayPal and paying invoices manually, it must be paid within 3 days.
"How Much Will It Be?"
A question we get asked a lot for site editing and can't always answer:
- If your site is broken, we may immediately know why and just fix it, and you might get an invoice for £4.
- Other times, we may need to spend an hour hunting for and pinning down the issue before we can fix it, and you might get an invoice for £40.
- For designing sites or re-designing, again it is really hard to estimate; it simply depends on how long the job takes.
The 3001Web Advantage: As you know by now, unlike most of our competitors, we do not do the rigid 1-hour increment nonsense. We bill you by the minute, so you are only ever paying for the exact time we are working for you, and not a penny more.
No Feet Dragging
While I am sure there are less scrupulous operators out there who might intentionally work more slowly to crank up the bill, you can rest assured that is not the case here. We have a constant queue of support tickets and a lot of business people like yourself to keep happy, so we do not drag our feet—we work quickly, diligently, and effectively.
That's it. As always, if you ever have any questions about billing or anything else to do with your site, please don't hesitate to reach out. We are here to help.
Gary McHugh
Chief Nerd, 3001Web