Overview

Old version: yearly/monthly.

New version: pay-per-use and packages.

Yearly/Monthly is a prepaid mode. You are billed for your subscription period in advance. The longer the subscription, the bigger the discount. This mode is suitable for long-term, stable services.
Pay-per-use is a postpaid mode. You are billed for your RCU usage. The fees are calculated in seconds and settled by hour. This mode allows you to adjust resource usage easily. You do not need to prepare resources in advance, and will not have excessive or insufficient preset resources. This mode is suitable for scenarios with traffic bursts, such as e-commerce.
Packages: You pay for a package before using the specified RCU duration quota in it. A ROMA Connect instance of the new version consumes the RCU duration quota in the package first, and the overflow (if any) is billed on a pay-per-use basis. If there are multiple instances, the total number of RCUs will be calculated. The package quota is valid only in one effective month. The remaining quota expires and cannot be transferred to the next month.

Table 1 compares the two billing modes.

**Table 1** Billing modes
Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly	Pay-per-Use	Package
Payment	Prepaid Billed by the required duration specified in your order	Postpaid Based on the number of RCUs and usage duration	Prepaid Billed by the RCU-hour quota and duration of the package
Billing Period	Billed by the required duration specified in your order	Calculated in seconds, settled by hour	Billed by the required duration specified in your order
Billing Mode Change	Not supported	Not supported	N/A
Specification Change	Unavailable for old-version instances	By adjusting RCUs for new-version instances	N/A
Billing Item	Old-version instances	RCUs	RCU-hour quota of new-version instances
Scenario	Recommended when resource usage duration can be estimated. Yearly/Monthly billing is more cost-effective than pay-per-use billing.	Recommended if you want more flexibility. Suitable for scenarios where resource demands fluctuate.	Recommended for long-term users. Packages are more cost-effective than pay-per-use billing.