enhancement: let’s make billing less boring👍

[aoripus]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Yes, the current billing system is quite rigid with fixed monthly plans, which may not be suitable for all users. I believe offering more flexible billing options could improve user engagement and satisfaction.

Describe the solution you'd like
I would like to see the addition of more granular billing options, including:

1. Automatic account balance renewal: Allow for automatic renewal through account balance with an option to enable/disable auto-renewal for already activated products.
2. Hourly billing cycle: Enable billing on an hourly basis, offering more flexibility for users who don't need a full month.
3. Product upgrades: Allow users to upgrade their product configurations (e.g., increasing CPU core count) after activation. However, downgrade should not be allowed, as it may lead to bugs that are hard to fix.
4. Dynamic pricing for high-performance products: Introduce a "premium" product with configurable pricing tiers based on resource usage. For example:
   • CPU usage could be a billing factor, with tiered pricing based on the percentage of CPU cores used.
   • For instance, 0-500% usage could be charged at $0.01 per minute, while 501-1600% usage could be charged at $0.02 per minute.
   • Before activation, users should have sufficient balance to cover one hour of full capacity usage (at maximum performance).

Describe alternatives you've considered
Currently, the system only supports fixed monthly billing plans. Other than this, I haven’t considered any other alternatives because more flexibility is needed in the billing system.

Additional context
This approach would allow users to scale usage according to their actual needs, while also providing the flexibility to control costs based on their actual resource consumption. It would also provide an opportunity to cater to a wider range of use cases, from occasional to heavy users.

For reference, you can check the tiered and dynamic billing options implemented by [pterosync](https://github.com/wohahobg/pterosync) when integrated with WHMCS. It may provide some useful insights on how to structure such a system.

Also, I want to express my overall support for the project. The current experience has been quite smooth, and I appreciate the team's work. These improvements would just make it even better and more adaptable to a variety of user needs.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me👍

[pteroca-com]

Hi @WetemCloud,

Thank you so much for your suggestions - they’re excellent and much appreciated! I’ve updated our current roadmap (https://pteroca.com/roadmap) to reflect your ideas and these changes will be introduced in future versions of the project.

If I have any questions while implementing the updates, I’ll reach out to you promptly. Also, if you have any other ideas or suggestions for the project, feel free to share them anytime – we’re always open to feedback.

Once again, thank you for your valuable input and contribution to the project :)

[Futuraura]

I say! You should not only add an hourly system but also make more for settings overhaul, so that they could auto calculate pricing per 1 hour, day, week, month etc. Also, make it all turn-off-able because not all users need it. Oh and maybe lowering costs or something like a price curve if you take for longer a host would be nice too :D

[ReclaimerGold]

Something I've noticed as of the latest releases - is that only Minute/Hourly/Daily billing is available now. I'm finding this a bit hard to work with, seeing as most of these types of services break things down on a Monthly basis. Could we additionally add 'Monthly', 'Quarterly', 'Semi-Annually' (6mo), 'Annually', Biennially, and Triennially as options?

I'd take a look at WHMCS for recommendations on how to build a recurring billing structure that scales well and has a history of working well with the hosting market.

At the very least, the ability to specify a daily rate, and have purchasers pick a monthly billing cycle that totals up the daily cost would be useful.