Some people associate cloud computing with pay-as-you-go pricing. With this payment model, a user accesses and utilizes a cloud-based service. The cloud’s host charges the user for the exact amount of resources that he or she utilized. Or the host charges the user by the minute or hour. This payment model contrasts with the cloud’s subscription payment model, where the user obtains a service for a monthly or yearly fee. The user of subscription service does not have to pay per resource or per minute or hour. Subscription users pay a monthly fee that depends on the size and power of their cloud service. They will be charged an extra fee if they need to add more storage space or processing power to their cloud.
Pay-as-you-go pricing lets companies quickly and easily expand IT systems and solutions. It works great for businesses that need on-demand or temporary IT resources. But pay-as-you-go does not work as well with long term hosting. This payment model makes it impossible to predict IT costs. Some pay-as-you-go services also include metering, the ability of the user to view usage statistics and costs on-the-fly. But this does not necessarily make company-wide costs more predictable. Metering also distracts from business processes. Employees will focus on their usage rates, costs, and budget of the cloud services instead of their work.
Companies seeking long-term hosting for their IT applications, platforms, and infrastructures should select subscription pricing. This pricing model makes IT costs as predictable as possible. With the subscription model, companies will be able to set firm IT budgets. Employees will be able to focus on their work, not on obeying restrictive usage limits.
IronOrbit can host all of its applications, platforms, infrastructures, and desktops on the monthly subscription model. More than that, we also offer flat fees for all of our solutions and services. Other hosting companies have fluctuating subscriptions rates that make it difficult to predict long-term IT costs. The ones that offer fixed fees compensate by limiting the quality and variety of their solutions. Only IronOrbit provides fully-customized, powerful, and reliable hosted IT solutions at flat subscription rates. As your dedicated off-site IT department, we combine the best in stability—with fixed fees, 24/7 technical support and monitoring, and complete data backups—and customization—with our ability to host any application, platform, or infrastructure on a private or hybrid cloud.