If you provide a stable hosting solution that keeps your customers happy they will generally pay on time anyway.

We operate a policy where by they have 2 days after the invoice due date to pay or their service gets suspended. 1 Week after due date a 5% charge gets added to their invoice. 1 Month after due date we arrange collection of funds.

We have never had any complaints about our policies and people always pay on time. I think sometimes you need to show clients that you do mean business. This also attracts a lot more business clients that are willing to pay more money and clients that expect an outstanding service.

Hope this helps

You always need to show they that you mean business I don't doubt that at all, but sometimes there are clients who think they can get away with things like that. I actually had someone ask me recently if they were allowed to try our services for 3 months w/o paying - it makes me wonder where these people come from sometimes.

I have many clients signing up with me, but most of them signs up just signing up for an e-mail account. No trail after that. Just a load full database with no currencies on line........yikes....

We follow a 3 warning process as stated in the client service agreement. it is not good customer service to take a site down on the first non payment. Sometimes they forget to change their card or they have other things that they are doing. Either way, giving them a warning save you from having to deal with upset customers when they call wondering why their site is down.

send reminder and give them 5 days.

I have to agree that-basically things come up some times. Sometimes people genuinely have an emergency that means that for a week or two they can't pay, or a credit card expires. Being able to work with people helps to keep customers loyal to you.

For my company.

Client gets overdue notice saying that in 3 days they will be suspended if they don't pay.

If they haven't payed in 3 days the account gets automatically suspended and we send a overdue notice again.

If by 7 days they haven't payed their account will be terminated.

You would not believe how many times in the past two months this has happened for some clients of mine. Its that time of year again it seems that everyone's CC's are changing all around.

I like working with subscription services for my hosting. It simplifies my life not having to worry about another bill to pay and the host knows he's getting his money.

Besides the random times when a CC changes for the exp. date the only issues I have is that subscriptions for paypal do not play nice with client exec. I am still working to get over that.

After a few friendly reminder had been sent, shutdown will be the last choice.

Paypal has had problems with repeat payments and subscriptions for a long time. I wouldn't be looking to them for a solution any time in the near future, but if you can make the system just about work for you then at least it is better than nothing.

We send 3 notices and then suspend the site down if we do not receive payment within 30 days of the due date.

Its important to also see the "background" on the client I think.

If I have a good client asking to pay the outstanding amount in 3 weeks, i'll allways start by checking their payment history and support tickets.

If the client does this over, and over again... I will gently tell him/her that we need to fix this problem, cos of the time and effort it takes from my side. I will propose solutions for him/her, and await response.

Solutions can be changing payment to yearly, sending out invoice notice earliere 1 month before due date... and so on...

If the client is a "good" client, i'll in most cases accept the delayed payment... Since this only can be considered as good support.

I would agree with this. It does happen sometime and some of our clients tend to pay later, however, they have been with us for years and have always paid, so as long as it's overdue by a few days, it's not really a problem for us.

We have been burned once when a solid (apparently not though) customer just dropped off of the face of the earth and we eventually killed off his account. That was the only time we got burned and due to this we are now watching the overdue accounts closer.