Rental or Lifetime
Introduction
ZAP Hosting has been offering its services on a rental basis for over a decade, with the exception of the lifetime servers for the Minecraft game. These have also been available with us for many years. Considering the positive feedback and growing demand for a lifetime server option from our customers, we decided to expand our offer with the lifetime server option at the beginning of 2023. Since April 2023, it is therefore now possible to purchase a lifetime server for a large variety of our product offerings.
How it works
You're probably wondering how such a lifetime server option is financially profitable and feasible over a longer period of time. No worries, you're not the first one to ask this. Our lifetime server prices have been carefully calculated to cover long-term operating costs. Furthermore, there is also the possibility to make upgrades afterwards. These have also been calculated to provide additional support to cover running costs such as stand or electricity fees.
Benefits & Differences
Both the rental and lifetime options have their advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the use case, one option may therefore be more suitable than the other. In the following, we will explain the small but nevertheless considerable advantages and differences.
Rental option
The rental option offer is especially interesting for those who want to realize their projects rather spontaneously and on short term or want to change them flexibly. If you decide not to continue with your project, the rental option gives you the flexibility to simply terminate the service. This prevents you from spending a large sum upfront on a lifetime option, and then not actively using or needing it and regretting it accordingly.
Another advantage of the rental option is that you can upgrade and downgrade your package. This allows you to flexibly reduce or expand resources later on. With the lifetime option, downgrades are not possible. Furthermore, there is the possibility to change the game at any time with our game server products. The change of the game itself is free of charge. However, the slot prices can differ depending on the game. This difference would then have to be adjusted and covered.
Lifetime option
The lifetime option is especially interesting for those who want to plan and realize their projects in the long term. In the long run, the lifetime option may well be more profitable than the rental option. This is due to the fact that it is a one-time payment instead of an ongoing payment. This means that after a certain period of time you will profit, as you will no longer have any ongoing costs.
The use of ZAP Coins is generally not possible for ordering or subsequent customization through upgrades.
Apart from that, there are no really significant differences. There are no differences in the choice of hardware. Both rental and purchase based services are operated on the same hardware (host systems). This also means that if we expand or renew the infrastructure (choice of hardware) over the years, you will also benefit with both options.
Rental and Lifetime availability
Both rental and lifetime options are available for the majority of our products. The emphasis is on majority, because not all products, for example external products such as licenses or comparable, cannot be implemented on the basis of a one-time payment. In the following you will find an overview of our offered services and the corresponding rental and lifetime options.
| Product | Rent | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| Gameserver | ✓ | ✓ |
| vRootserver | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dedicated Server | ✓ | ✓ |
| Domain | ✓ | X |
| Webspace | ✓ | ✓ |
| Plesk License | ✓ | X |
| Voicebot | ✓ | ✓ |
| Voiceserver | ✓ | ✓ |
| Jitsi Meet Server | ✓ | X |
| FiveM Upvotes | ✓ | X |