Alibaba Cloud CDN offers various resource plans to help you reduce costs. This topic describes how to choose the appropriate resource plans based on your business requirements, including specifications, regions, purchase periods, and cost comparisons.
Selection guidelines
You can choose the most suitable resource plan based on the services your business requires, your business volume, and the acceleration region.
Purchase resource plans: Purchase now.
Billing details for resource plan services: CDN pricing.
To purchase a CDN downstream traffic resource plan, set the billing method to pay-by-data-transfer. If the billing method is not pay-by-data-transfer, you can change it as needed. For ways to change the billing method, see Change the metering method.
CDN (Content Delivery Network), DCDN (Dynamic Content Delivery Network), and ESA (Edge Security Acceleration) are different Alibaba Cloud products. Each product has its own resource plans. If you use the CDN product, make sure you purchase CDN/DCDN resource plans instead of ESA resource plans. Purchasing the wrong type of resource plan will not offset your CDN usage fees.
Resource plan specifications and regions
Fixed specifications
CDN resource plans are available only in fixed specifications. You cannot enter a custom capacity value, such as 3 TB. If you need a non-standard capacity, purchase multiple fixed-specification resource plans in combination. For example, if you need 3,000 GB (approximately 3 TB) of traffic, you can purchase three 1 TB resource plans.
Combining resource plans for different regions
You can purchase resource plans for both the Chinese mainland region and outside-Chinese-mainland regions at the same time. The two types of resource plans do not conflict with each other and can be used in hybrid acceleration scenarios where you serve users in both regions.
Cost comparison and selection recommendations
Resource plans vs. pay-as-you-go
Purchasing resource plans is typically more cost-effective than pay-as-you-go billing. For specific pricing comparisons, check the CDN pricing page.
Understanding unit pricing for large resource plans
For large-volume resource plans, the unit price decreases as the plan capacity increases. Actual prices are subject to the pricing displayed on the buy page.
Traffic estimation for selection
Use the following formula to estimate your daily traffic consumption:
Daily traffic (GB) = Number of daily active users × Bitrate (Mbps) × Duration (seconds) ÷ 1024 ÷ 8
Daily active users | Estimated daily traffic | Estimated monthly traffic | Recommended approach |
10,000 | Approximately 17.2 TB | Approximately 515 TB | Resource plan is more cost-effective |
50,000 | Approximately 85.8 TB | Approximately 2,575 TB | Large resource plan combination is recommended |
100,000 | Approximately 171.7 TB | Approximately 5,150 TB | Large resource plan with tiered discounts |
For traffic estimation across different user scales, evaluate your peak bandwidth and daily traffic to select the most cost-effective resource plan. Resource plans offer significant savings compared to pay-as-you-go billing for high-traffic scenarios.
Selection example
Case scenario
Assume that you need to accelerate a small-to-medium community website with the following requirements and information:
Website acceleration service: A small-to-medium community website with content including images, text, and video on demand.
Acceleration region: Chinese mainland.
Additional services: Use Alibaba Cloud OSS to store images and video files. Use HTTPS encryption to ensure access security.
Estimated business resource consumption:
Resource item | Estimated resource consumption |
Downstream traffic | Peak daily bandwidth: approximately 1 Gbps. Downstream traffic: 3.09 TB/day, 93 TB/month, 558 TB/half year, 1,116 TB/year |
Static HTTPS requests | Peak daily QPS: approximately 3,000. Requests: approximately 78 million/day, approximately 2.33 billion/month, approximately 28 billion/year |
OSS storage traffic | Depends on the CDN hit ratio. A higher CDN hit ratio results in lower OSS charges. For example, if both the byte hit ratio and request hit ratio are 90%, only 10% of traffic and requests are forwarded to the OSS origin. For OSS origin charges, see the OSS pricing details. |
Resource plan selection analysis
Determine the resource plan types based on your billing items
Required services and billing items
Required resource plans
CDN basic acceleration: downstream traffic fee
Downstream traffic resource plan
Determine the resource plan specification and purchase period
Select resource plans based on your CDN downstream traffic consumption and the downstream traffic options on the official website. Multiple resource plans can be stacked.
Recommended resource plans
Downstream traffic resource plan:
Product type: CDN acceleration resource plan
Resource plan type: Downstream traffic
Downstream traffic: 200TB
Acceleration region: Chinese mainland
Purchase period: 6 months
Quantity: approximately 3, adjustable based on your website traffic.
Resource plan expiration and renewal
Can I renew a resource plan after it expires?
Resource plans do not support direct renewal after expiration. If a resource plan expires or is used up, billing automatically switches to pay-as-you-go. You can configure resource package alerts. When the remaining quota of a resource plan reaches a certain level, a notification is pushed to the account contact via email or internal message, reminding you to purchase a new resource plan in time.
Can I add more capacity to an existing resource plan?
Yes. If your initial resource plan specification is insufficient or your traffic grows over time (for example, a traffic surge during a promotion campaign on a corporate website), you can purchase additional resource plans to expand capacity. The new resource plans are stacked on top of existing ones without replacing them. The total available capacity is the sum of all active resource plans.
Is there a required order for purchasing resource plans and configuring domain names?
No. There is no required order. You can purchase a resource plan before configuring domain name acceleration, or configure domain name acceleration first and then purchase a resource plan. Both approaches are valid.
Why am I unable to use my account balance for payment?
If you cannot select account balance as the payment method when purchasing a resource plan, the issue may be caused by:
Insufficient account balance to cover the order amount.
Account balance is frozen due to outstanding bills or disputes.
An uncompleted order is occupying part of your available balance.
To resolve this issue, check your account balance status, clear any pending orders, or try clearing your browser cache and switching to a different browser.