Personal cellphone contracts can be difficult to choose, among the many on offer. If a hapless user selects a contract ill-suited to her needs, the bill can spiral beyond her budget. Switching from a pay-as-you-go option to a fixed-term contract can greatly influence monthly costs.

The bills for cloud computing also depend on the way the service provider charges the customer. Subscription-type billing has been the norm in South Africa. Recently, billing engine technology to charge only for resources actually used became widely available. The majority of local service providers appear in no hurry to implement this riskier approach, however, citing an immature market. Many customers are ill-prepared to understand even the basics of their real IT costs, after all.