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I don't know anyone who does it this way but an idea I like would be metered, like Amazon, but with a twist: a safety net and "grace amount" for users: Customer signs up, gives a CC or other payment assurance, says "I am willing to pay up to $N/month for this." Ideally, the customers actual metered usage comes out at $(N-K) and you bill that lesser amount. Suppose on day 15, though, the customer has used up $N. Instead of suspending them, you float them for three days and alert them. If they ignore the alert, suspend them after 3 days or a max of $X overage. The customer can also respond to the alert by saying "please suspend for the month" in which case you eat the overage (< $X). Or the customer can raise their limit: "Ok, I'm willing to pay $(N+J)." In other words, a kind of "meter with circuit breaker and graceful failure mode". As a customer, it makes me paranoid that I might, through unforseen causes, rack up way more in some metered charge than I thought just because I didn't check the meter myself for a few days. The above would fix that. To avoid gaming, you might want to have rollover of overage charges towards the end of the billing period. -t |