I paid for X hits but I haven't used them yet - why are you billing me again?

StatCounter upgrades are *time* based not *hits* based.

Payments are due each period whether or not the full log quota is used in the period. This is because the costs of maintaining an upgraded account occur on a time basis and are not related to the number of hits to your site.

Let's look at an example of a 10,000 upgrade for $19 per month. When you sign up for this upgrade, you sign up to pay $19 PER MONTH for a 10,000 log.

Note that the upgrade is NOT $19 PER 10,000 HITS. It's $19 PER MONTH.

Since the cost of providing increased server processing and database space to your account are recurring, billing must be periodically recurring also.