We sent the following information to our existing clients on 14 February 2025:
As we advised on 29 November 2024, we have a new retail rate system. These rates are already in effect for new clients, and they go into effect today for existing clients. Invoices issued this month will use the new rates.
Our rates page will be updated next week, but here is a summary of the changes:
- Web hosting: Hosting a website will now cost only US$10/C$15 per month, down from up to US$40 per month. (More on exchange rates in a moment, especially for you Canadians.) As we said in November, this will cover websites of all sizes that we currently host. If a company with a website the size and complexity required by the likes of Google or Microsoft shows up, this will not apply, and we will quote on their specific needs. Aliasing additional domains to the same website will be done at no additional charge.
- DNS/nameserver hosting: NinerNet will provide DNS hosting for US$20/C$30 per year per domain, which is the same as our current rate. Almost all of our clients have only one domain. If a client has two domains (for example) aliased to the same email and/or web hosting we will offer significant discounts. So if someone has example.com and example.net pointing to the same website and/or the same email accounts, they will not both be US$20 but the second will be discounted.
- Email hosting: We will no longer offer “bundles” of email accounts: if you want one email account, you will pay for one email account; if you want a thousand email accounts, you will pay for a thousand. No longer do you have to upgrade to the next package if you want to go from five email accounts to six. Email accounts will be US$4/C$6 each per month and will include 25 GB of disk space — room for about 3.6 million average-sized email messages that don’t contain any attachments like cat videos. 🙂 Of course, some of your emails will contain cat videos, not to mention product catalogues, company videos, etc. That’s OK!; you’re allowed to send and receive those. For managing the amount of space you use on the server we have long recommended an archiving scheme. If you choose not to use an archiving scheme like that, that’s OK, you’re allowed to do that too, and when your email account grows to exceed the 25 GB we include, then we’ll start invoicing you for the additional space you need at the same rate of US$5/C$7.50 per 100 MB per month in 100 MB increments. You can use the mail server control panel to determine how much space each of your email accounts are using.
Other things you should know:
- Currency exchange rates: Our rates are based on the US dollar. This is because, as you know, international commerce is largely based on that currency, and American companies have largely cornered the market on providing top-of-the line IT services like data centres. (Largely, not totally.) For currencies like the Canadian dollar the exchange rate has generally remained fairly stable; for the Zambian kwacha this has not been the case, and we revised our kwacha rates quarterly, sometimes putting prices up, sometimes taking them down. Zambians are used to this but Canadians are not. However, due to the unpredictable economic landscape between the US and Canada these days (bad timing on our part!), the value of the Canadian dollar in US dollars has taken a dive. This has resulted in our Canadian-dollar rates increasing. Our current exchange rate of 1.5 will not remain that way for years though, as we’ll keep an eye on it and adjust it if necessary, but likely not more than once a year. When we start to accept payment in kwachas again, we’ll likely go back to quarterly revisions, while the US dollar rates on which other currencies’ rates are calculated will remain the same barring any major changes.
- Do I need to pay something different even if my hosting is not expiring for a few months?: No, if you have already paid for hosting and have an expiry date in the future, your rates and your hosting will not change until your next invoice.
- Can I continue to be invoiced annually?: This will likely depend on the nature of your account. For many clients you will continue to be invoiced annually if you had previously chosen to be. If you have managed your account in a more fluid fashion, changing the quotas of your email accounts with some regularity and adding and removing accounts more often, then you will likely be invoiced quarterly. This will actually affect very few clients, but it will affect some.
- Will the disk quotas of individual accounts be managed and charged for separately?: No, entire domains will be assigned a disk space quota based on the number of email accounts they need. So if a client needs 10 email accounts, their domain will be assigned a quota of 250 GB (10 x 25 GB). If you want to assign a small quota of 10 GB to one account and a quota of 50 GB to another, you can. This would mean one or more accounts could use more disk space than other accounts and not incur greater charges.
We look forward a new rate system that more fairly charges based on actual usage, and doesn’t railroad clients into accepting bigger packages just because they need one more email account. We emphasise once again that most clients will not see their total invoices change, and some will even see their charges decrease. We remain open to any feedback on the new system. Thank-you.
