Subscription is an upfront billing method that enables you to reserve resources in advance and benefit from discounted pricing. This topic describes the billing rules for subscription.
Scenarios
Subscription is suitable for the following business scenarios:
Predictable resource usage periods.
It is suitable for relatively stable business scenarios.
Long-term resource usage, which offers lower costs than pay-as-you-go.
Billing Items
When you activate a WAF instance, Alibaba Cloud generates an upfront bill based on the selected version, specifications, and subscription duration. While using WAF, you can purchase value-added services to enable features beyond those included in the basic version. For more information about features supported by different versions, see Package and Version Overview.
Subscription billing items include the following:
Version features: Features and specifications included in the purchased version, along with their effective duration.
Value-added services: In addition to version features, subscription WAF supports value-added services such as bandwidth extension packages, extra domain packages, and exclusive domain resource plans. You must purchase these services to enable the corresponding features. For more information, see Purchase Additional Paid Items.
Billing Cycle
The billing cycle for subscription matches the subscription duration specified in your order (based on UTC+8 time). A billing cycle begins when you activate or renew resources—accurate to the second—and ends at 00:00:00 on the day after the expiration date.
For subscription, billing cycles measured in years or months refer to calendar years and calendar months.
Instance Expiration Details
The WAF instance expiration rules are as follows:
Seven days before expiration, Alibaba Cloud sends a text message or email reminder. Renew promptly.
If you manually renew within 15 days after expiration, the instance resumes normal operation immediately.
If you do not renew by the 16th day after expiration, the instance is automatically released.