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 blogs
• 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 (or connection groups).

Billing Period

Yearly/Monthly VPN is billed for the purchased duration. The billing starts when you activate or renew the subscription, and ends at 23:59:59 of the expiry date.

For example, if you purchased a one-month VPN gateway at 15:50:04 on March 08, 2023, the billing period is from 15:50:04 on March 08, 2023 to 23:59:59 on April 08, 2023.

Billing Example (Enterprise Edition VPN)

Suppose you purchased a one-month Enterprise Edition VPN gateway (associated with an enterprise router; specification: Professional 1; number of VPN connection groups: 20; bandwidth: 20 Mbit/s) at 15:50:04 on March 08, 2023, and renewed the subscription for one more month before the initial subscription expired. The following usage periods will be billed:

• 15:50:04 on March 08, 2023 to 23:59:59 on April 08, 2023
• 23:59:59 on April 08, 2023 to 23:59:59 on May 08, 2023

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

Billing Example (Classic VPN)

Suppose you purchased a one-month Classic VPN gateway (number of VPN connections: 20; bandwidth: 20 Mbit/s) at 15:50:04 on March 08, 2023, and renewed the subscription for one more month before the initial subscription expired. The following usage periods will be billed:

• 15:50:04 on March 08, 2023 to 23:59:59 on April 08, 2023
• 23:59:59 on April 08, 2023 to 23:59:59 on May 08, 2023

You will be billed for both usage periods. VPN resources of different types are billed individually, as described in Table 2.

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 console. The system will recalculate the price and either bill or refund you the difference.

In yearly/monthly billing mode, quota change is supported only by Enterprise Edition VPN, but not Classic VPN.

• Quota increase: You will be billed the difference.
  • If you increase the EIP bandwidth, the new bandwidth takes effect immediately in the current billing cycle.
  • If you increase the number of VPN connection groups, the new number of VPN connection groups takes effect immediately.
  • If you upgrade the specification of a VPN gateway, access via non-fixed IP addresses takes effect immediately in the current billing cycle.
• Quota decrease: Huawei Cloud will refund you the difference.
  • If you decrease the EIP bandwidth, the new bandwidth does not take effect in the current billing cycle. You need to select a renewal duration and will be billed based on the new bandwidth. The change will take effect in the first billing cycle following the current billing cycle.
  • If you decrease the number of VPN connection groups, the new number of VPN connection groups takes effect immediately.

The following provides a quota upgrade example where no discounts are available. Suppose you purchased a one-month Enterprise Edition VPN gateway (associated with an enterprise router; specification: Professional 1; number of VPN connection groups: 20; bandwidth: 20 Mbit/s) on April 08, 2023, and upgraded the quotas to 30 VPN connection groups and 30 Mbit/s bandwidth on April 18, 2023 (still associated with an enterprise router and using the specification of Professional 1). The price of the original quotas is $826 USD per month (excluding the price of the pay-per-use enterprise router), and that of the new quotas is $1232 USD per month (excluding the fee of the pay-per-use enterprise router). The price difference is calculated as follows:

Price difference for the quota increase = Price of the new quotas × Remaining period – Price of the original quotas × Remaining period

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

Remaining 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 valid 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 a reminder (by email, SMS, or in-app message) 7 days before yearly/monthly VPN resources expire to remind you to renew the subscription.

Impact of Expiration

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

• Change the number of VPN connection groups.
• Change the bandwidth.
• Change the specification of the VPN gateway.

If yearly/monthly VPN resources are not renewed before the grace period ends, they 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.

• Huawei Cloud defines that both the grace period and retention period of the VPN service are 15 days.
• For details about renewal, see Overview.