Yearly/Monthly Billing

Application Scenarios

If you want to ensure resource stability over a certain period of time, yearly/monthly billing is a good choice for the following types of workloads:

• Long-term workloads with stable resource requirements, such as official websites, online malls, and blog websites
• Long-term projects, such as scientific research projects and large-scale events
• Workloads with predictable traffic bursts, for example, e-commerce promotions or festivals
• Workloads with high data security requirements

Billing Items

Yearly/Monthly VPN is billed based on your purchased duration, bandwidth, and number of VPN connections.

Billing Cycle

Yearly/Monthly VPN is billed for the purchased duration (UTC+08:00). The billing starts when you activate or renew the subscription (accurate to the second), and ends at 23:59:59 of the expiry date.

For example, if you purchased a one-month P2C VPN gateway at 15:50:04 on March 08, 2024, the billing cycle is from 15:50:04 on March 08, 2024 to 23:59:59 on April 08, 2024.

Billing Example (P2C VPN)

Suppose you purchased a one-month P2C VPN gateway (specification: Professional 1; number of VPN connections: 20; bandwidth: 20 Mbit/s) at 15:50:04 on August 08, 2024, and renewed the subscription for one more month before the initial subscription expired. The following usage periods will be billed:

• 15:50:04 on August 08, 2024 to 23:59:59 on September 08, 2024
• 23:59:59 on September 08, 2024 to 23:59:59 on October 08, 2024

You will be billed for both usage periods. VPN resources of different types are billed individually, as described in Table 1.

Price Change After Quota Change

If the quotas of yearly/monthly VPN resources no longer meet your needs, you can change the quotas on the management console. The system will recalculate the price and either bill or refund you the difference.

In yearly/monthly billing mode, the number of P2C VPN connections can be changed.

• Increasing the quota

  The VPN connection quota can be increased. The new quota is available immediately and you will be billed accordingly.

• Decreasing the quota

  If you decrease the VPN connection quota, you need to set a renewal period and pay for the renewal. The new quota will be available in the new renewal period.

The following provides a quota increase example where no discounts are available. Suppose you purchased a one-month P2C VPN gateway (specification: Professional 1; number of VPN connections: 20; bandwidth: 20 Mbit/s) on April 08, 2024, and increased the quotas to 30 VPN connections and 30 Mbit/s bandwidth on April 18, 2024 (with other settings unchanged). The price of the original quotas is $826 USD per month, and that of the new quotas is $1232 USD per month. The price difference is calculated as follows:

Price difference for the quota increase = (Price of the new quotas x Remaining service period) – (Price of the original quotas x Remaining service period)

The remaining service period is the sum of the remaining days in each calendar month divided by the maximum number of days in the corresponding calendar month. In this example:

Remaining service period = 12 (Remaining days in April)/30 (Maximum number of days in April) + 8 (Remaining days in May)/31 (Maximum number of days in May) = 0.6581

So,

Price difference = ($1232 USD x 0.6581) – ($826 USD x 0.6581) = $267.19 USD

For more information, see Pricing of a Changed Specification.

Impact of Expiration

Figure 1 shows the states that yearly/monthly VPN resources can go through throughout the lifecycle. After VPN resources are purchased, they enter the validity period and run normally during this period. If the VPN resources are not renewed before they expire, they first enter a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 1 Lifecycle of yearly/monthly VPN resources

Expiration Reminder

The system will send you reminders by email, SMS, or in-app message before yearly/monthly VPN resources expire to remind you to renew the subscription.

• For yearly resources, reminders are sent 30 days, 15 days, 7 days, 3 days, and 1 day before they expire.
• For monthly resources, reminders are sent 15 days, 7 days, 3 days, and 1 day before they expire.

Impact of Expiration

If your yearly/monthly VPN resources are not renewed before they expire, they will transition to the Expired state and enter a grace period upon expiration. During the grace period, you can access VPN resources but cannot:

• Change the number of VPN connections.
• Change the bandwidth.

If yearly/monthly VPN resources are not renewed before the grace period ends, they will transition to the Frozen state and enter a retention period. During the retention period, you cannot perform any operations on the VPN resources.

If yearly/monthly VPN resources are not renewed before the retention period ends, the VPN gateway, VPN connection, and EIP will be released and data cannot be restored.

• For details about renewal, see Renewal Overview.