Why CheapServ only accepts crypto

We do not take cards, and we never will. Every server on cheapserv.com is paid in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero or USDT, and that single decision explains more about our prices, our sign-up form and our refund policy than anything else we could write. Here is the reasoning in full, including the parts that are not convenient for us.

Chargebacks are a tax on honest customers

Hosting is the favourite target of card fraud for a simple reason: a server bought with a stolen card is worth money the minute it boots. It can send spam, host a phishing page or mine for a few hours before anyone notices. When the real cardholder disputes the charge, the bank reverses the payment, adds a dispute fee, and the provider has already spent the compute, the bandwidth and the IP reputation.

Providers that accept cards do not absorb that loss. They spread it over everyone. It shows up as a fraud-screening service on every order, as manual review queues that turn "instant" provisioning into a wait for an e-mail, as a surprise "verification" request for a copy of your ID and the front of your card, and finally as a few percent on every invoice to cover the disputes that got through anyway.

A crypto payment is final once it is confirmed. There is no reversal, no dispute window and no bank in the middle deciding who is right. That removes the whole category of fraud that hosting companies spend so much effort fighting, and with it the checks we would otherwise have to run on you.

Global access without a bank

Our customers are in more than a hundred countries, and a large share of them cannot pay a European or American hosting company with a card at all: their bank blocks foreign merchants, the card scheme is not supported, or the provider's fraud filter rejects their country outright. Those customers are not riskier than anyone else. They are simply invisible to a payment system designed around a few markets.

A wallet has no country. Anyone who can obtain some Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero or USDT can pay us in a few minutes, with the same terms and the same price as someone in Frankfurt. We think that is how infrastructure should be sold, and it is also why we keep the same price in every location: your address should not change what a server costs.

Privacy is a feature, not a loophole

Because we do not process cards, we do not need the data that card processing requires. There is no billing address, no legal name, no phone number and no identity document anywhere in our sign-up form. An e-mail address and a password create the account; a wallet pays for it. We store an e-mail, a password hash and the top-up records, and that is the entire record.

We are aware that this policy attracts people who value privacy for very different reasons. Our answer is the acceptable use policy, enforced on what a server does rather than on who rents it. Abuse reports are handled the same way for every customer, and a server that sends spam is suspended whether its owner sent us a passport or not.

How a crypto deposit actually works

Prices are set in USD so that a monthly plan costs the same in August as it did in March, regardless of what the market does. When you top up your balance, we create a deposit page and lock the crypto amount for 30 minutes at the current rate. Send exactly that amount to the address on the deposit page within the window, and the top-up is settled at the locked price no matter how the rate moves afterwards.

The payment is credited when the network has confirmed it. The number of confirmations we wait for depends on the chain:

Provisioning starts the moment the last confirmation lands, which is why a server is usually online well under a minute after the payment clears. If you would rather not wait for confirmations at order time, orders and renewals are always drawn from your prepaid balance instantly; the only confirmations you ever wait for are the ones on your top-up, and an order placed while the balance is short is provisioned by itself the moment the deposit confirms.

What this means for the price you pay

Card processing is not free. Between interchange, gateway fees, fraud tools and the disputes themselves, a typical hosting provider loses several percent of every invoice before it has paid for a single server. We pay network fees on the withdrawals we make and nothing on the payments we receive, and we have no fraud desk.

That saving is one of the reasons we can hold to our pricing rule of undercutting the cheapest credible competitor by 20% on every plan. It is not the whole story, but it is a real, recurring cost that our competitors carry and we do not.

The honest limits

Crypto-only has costs on your side too, and we would rather state them than let you discover them.

• No card means no card refunds. Refunds are paid in the coin you used, to the wallet you specify, and we deduct the network fee of the outgoing transaction. Unused balance is refundable within 14 days of the top-up; a cancelled server simply runs to the end of its paid month. The refund policy spells out the details.
• Volatility is yours between the deposit page and the payment. The 30-minute lock protects you from rate moves once the deposit page exists, but a payment that arrives after the window is settled at the rate of the moment it confirms, and any difference is credited or requested as balance. Sending promptly avoids the question entirely.
• Network fees and confirmation times vary. USDT on TRC-20 is cheap and fast; Bitcoin during a fee spike is neither. We show the fee-free amount on every deposit page, and you choose the chain.
• No subscription can charge you by surprise. This is a feature, but it puts the renewal in your hands. We e-mail you 7 and 2 days before each renewal, and a server whose balance runs short gets a 3-day grace period before suspension.