Why a balance
Every renewal paid on-chain is a network fee, a wait for confirmations, and a window in which the rate can move. A balance turns all of that into one payment a quarter. Renewals draw from it automatically, at the invoice amount in euro, on the day they fall due.
It also removes the most common cause of an unplanned suspension: a renewal nobody noticed because the person who watches the mempool was on a train.
Topping up
Any of the roughly thirty assets we accept through OxaPay. The quoted amount holds for the window shown on the payment page, and the credit lands when the chain confirms rather than when your wallet says sent.
curl -s https://paragonvps.com/api/v1/billing/balance -H "Authorization: Bearer $Paragon_TOKEN" | jq .curl -s -X POST https://paragonvps.com/api/v1/billing/topup -H "Authorization: Bearer $Paragon_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"amount":"200","currency":"EUR","asset":"XMR"}'The response carries the address, the exact amount in the asset, and the validity window. Send once, send exactly, and let the wallet add its network fee on top instead of taking it out of the amount you typed.
What the balance is denominated in
Euro. We convert at the rate in force when the payment settles, and after that the number stops moving. You are not holding a position with us: whatever the coin does next week, the balance buys the same number of server-months it bought on the day it arrived.
Spending it
Balance is applied automatically to renewals on the due date, to new orders when it covers the first cycle, to pro-rated upgrades at the moment you make them, and to add-ons on the cycle they attach to.
Downgrades and mid-cycle cancellations credit back to the balance rather than to a chain. Returning small amounts of coin costs more in network fees than the credit is usually worth, and a balance keeps its full value.
Low balance, and running out
Set a threshold and we email when the balance drops below it. One month of your recurring total is the sensible figure.
If a renewal cannot be paid:
- The invoice is issued and due immediately.
- A reminder goes out three days later.
- Seven days past due, the instance is suspended. It stops. The disk is untouched.
- Fourteen days after suspension, the instance and its snapshots are destroyed.
Paying at any point before the fourth step brings everything back exactly as it was. After it, there is nothing to bring back and no copy of it on our side.
Getting it out again
Unspent balance can be paid to an address you nominate, in the asset it arrived in, less the network fee. That one is a ticket. First orders inside the seven-day window are covered by the refund policy and need no ticket at all — the panel does it while you watch.
What it is not
A balance is not a credit line. There is no overdraft, no pay-later, and no account manager who can wave a month through. That is not sternness. It is the same property as everything else here: no identity sits behind the account, so nothing runs before it is paid for. More on how the payment side works at /payments.