Alibaba Cloud DNS:Disclaimer for Alibaba Cloud DNS Free Services

How to get Paid Services

Alibaba Cloud DNS Paid Services (hereinafter referred to as "Paid Services") refers to the commercial editions of Alibaba Cloud DNS that you subscribe to, activate, or purchase on a paid basis and for which you are required to pay corresponding service fees, including but not limited to Public Zone paid editions (including various paid editions and instance specifications), Alibaba Cloud HTTPDNS paid services, Public DNS paid edition (Enterprise Recursive Gateway), enterprise editions, and various resource packages and traffic packages. Methods of obtaining Paid Services include but are not limited to:

• Placing an order or activating a paid instance in the Alibaba Cloud console, on the official website product page, or on the buy page (including subscription, pay-as-you-go, reserved instance, auto-renewal, and other billing methods).

• Upgrading, rebinding, or converting from a Free Service to a paid instance.

• Separately executing a paid service contract, order, quotation, framework agreement, or commercial terms with Alibaba Cloud or its affiliates.

• Subscribing through Alibaba Cloud's sales channels, agents, distributors, Cloud Marketplace, or other third-party channels.

• Completing a subscription by offsetting part or all of the fees through vouchers, discount coupons, promotional discounts, account balance, or similar means (the offsetting of fees does not affect the paid nature of the corresponding service).

Order records, activation and renewal records, console instance information, billing and invoice records, contracts, or commercial documents generated through the foregoing methods shall all constitute evidence that you have obtained Paid Services. Obtaining Paid Services does not require the separate execution of a written contract: as long as you have completed subscription or activation through any of the foregoing methods and incurred payable fees (including where fees have been offset by vouchers, discount coupons, or promotional discounts), the corresponding paid service agreement and its SLA shall apply to that paid service portion, and it shall no longer be treated as a Free Service.

Free quotas included in paid instances

Free quotas, free request counts, or free trial volumes included in paid instances, resource packages, or traffic packages that you have purchased (including but not limited to the free HTTP resolution request count included monthly in the Alibaba Cloud HTTPDNS paid edition) shall be classified according to the following rules:

The foregoing classification shall be based on Alibaba Cloud's billing records, billing details, and instance specifications. Where the free quota and the paid portion can be distinguished, the Free Service rules and the corresponding paid service agreement and its SLA shall apply respectively; where they cannot be distinguished, the service nature as determined by the billing records shall prevail.

Trials, public betas, and complimentary resources

Trials, public betas, private betas, complimentary resources, resources obtained through promotional events at no cost, or quotas obtained on a wholly gratuitous basis do not constitute Alibaba Cloud DNS Paid Services; unless Alibaba Cloud has made separate written commitments with respect to such resources, the relevant Free Service rules shall apply.

Criteria for determining applicability of Paid Services

The criteria for the applicability of Paid Services (including service availability commitments and the non-applicability of Free Service rate-limiting measures) shall be determined separately according to the billing model of each product, rather than based on whether the account has made any payment:

• Prepaid instance-based services (e.g., Public Zone paid edition): The criterion is "whether the domain name is bound to a paid instance." For domain names bound to a paid instance, the corresponding paid service agreement and its SLA shall apply to the resolution services for such domain names (e.g., the 100% resolution service availability commitment of Public Zone paid edition), and the Free Service rate-limiting and traffic control measures shall not apply; for domain names under the same account that are not bound to a paid instance, even if you have purchased paid instances for other domain names or are otherwise a paid user, the resolution services for such domain names shall still constitute Free Services, shall still be subject to Free Service rate-limiting and traffic control measures, and shall have no SLA guarantee whatsoever.

• Pay-as-you-go services (e.g., Private Zone): The criterion is whether the account has actually generated paid billing records for that service. Where the account has actually generated paid billing records for the service, the corresponding service shall be treated as a Paid Service subject to the corresponding service agreement and its SLA; where no paid billing records have been generated (including where only free features, free quotas, or free trials are used), the relevant rules of this document for Free Services shall apply.

• Services under other billing models: By reference to the foregoing principles, the service nature as determined by Alibaba Cloud's billing records and billing details shall prevail.

Regardless of the billing model, the delineation between free and paid shall ultimately be based on Alibaba Cloud's billing records, billing details, and instance specifications (see Free quotas included in paid instances in this section for the classification rules).

Product positioning

Free Services are provided on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis, positioned as basic, auxiliary resolution capabilities, and are intended solely for domain name resolution feature verification, configuration and workflow testing, technical learning and evaluation, and non-critical uses with low resolution request volumes and no material reliance on resolution continuity, accuracy, or timeliness.

Scenarios where use is not recommended

Free Services are not suitable for the following scenarios, and Alibaba Cloud does not recommend that you use Free Services for the following scenarios. You shall independently assess the compatibility of Free Services with your business needs and make your own decision regarding whether to use them. If you use Free Services for the following scenarios or other mission-critical business scenarios, this constitutes an independent choice made based on your own judgment, and all risks and consequences arising therefrom (including but not limited to business interruption, user complaints, customer claims, regulatory penalties, reputational damage, and economic losses) shall be borne entirely by you.

• Domain name resolution for production environments and production systems.

• Domain name resolution relied upon for the provision of services to end users or customers (including websites, apps, mini programs, open APIs, SaaS, e-commerce, audio/video, gaming, financial services, government services, healthcare, and IoT).

• Scenarios with explicit requirements or compliance requirements for business continuity, service availability, resolution latency, resolution success rate, or security protection capabilities.

• Scenarios with high resolution request volumes, high concurrency, significant traffic fluctuations, or risk of attack.

• Other mission-critical business scenarios where a failure could result in personal injury, property damage, or significant economic losses.

Recommendations for high availability

To safeguard your business continuity, you are advised to establish disaster recovery and redundancy mechanisms commensurate with the criticality of your business, including but not limited to:

• Configuring multiple authoritative resolution services or backup resolution paths for critical domain names.

• Setting appropriate TTL values for resolution records to avoid query amplification caused by excessively short TTLs.

• Deploying local DNS caches (e.g., nscd, systemd-resolved, etc.).

• Establishing resolution availability monitoring and alerting, with ongoing monitoring of resolution success rates, resolution latency, and quota utilization.

• Developing and rehearsing contingency plans, and regularly exporting and backing up resolution configuration data.

Traffic control and rate-limiting mechanisms

During the provision of Free Services, rate-limiting and traffic control mechanisms may be triggered automatically or manually due to natural growth in traffic volume, surges in resolution request volume or concurrency, a single domain name or single source exceeding its quota, anomalous queries, malicious queries, crawlers and automated programs generating bulk requests, DNS query floods, DDoS attacks, DNS amplification and reflection attacks, cache penetration, increases in server load or system resource utilization, hardware or software failures, network congestion, infrastructure resource adjustments, or other reasons necessary to maintain the overall stable operation of Free Services and the Alibaba Cloud DNS platform.

The triggering and execution of the foregoing mechanisms may occur without prior notice. Control measures include but are not limited to: random or policy-based rate-limiting of real-time DNS requests, limiting the request concurrency per node or per source IP, reducing request response rates, queuing or dropping (packet loss) requests, returning error response codes or empty responses, temporarily reducing service levels, rerouting to other nodes, and temporarily suspending some or all Free Services. The foregoing measures may directly cause resolution anomalies for some or all DNS requests. These measures are triggered automatically or passively when system load, traffic conditions, or security posture reaches defined thresholds, and constitute service operation management and protection measures.

Published control rules

Examples of published control rules are as follows (subject to the latest official Alibaba Cloud announcements):

Prohibition on circumventing controls

You shall not circumvent, bypass, or undermine Alibaba Cloud's rate-limiting and traffic control mechanisms by means such as splitting domain names, spoofing or rotating source IPs, abusing recursive resolution paths, or deploying proxy or forwarding clusters. Alibaba Cloud reserves the right to restrict or terminate services in response to such conduct, and reserves the right to pursue corresponding liabilities.

User-side optimization recommendations

To mitigate the impact of rate-limiting and traffic control on your business, you are advised to take the following measures:

• Enable and properly configure terminal or local DNS caches (e.g., nscd, systemd-resolved, etc.).

• Strictly follow best practices for resolution record TTL settings to avoid query amplification caused by excessively short TTLs.

• Consolidate and deduplicate resolution requests, and eliminate unnecessary polling and retry storms.

• Keep per-domain resolution request volumes within the published quotas.

• Assign a fixed public egress IP for scenarios with high request volumes.

• Upgrade domain names with high traffic volumes or availability requirements to Paid Services.

General principles

Alibaba Cloud will continue to invest resources in maintaining and optimizing Free Services and will not arbitrarily adjust, reduce, suspend, or terminate Free Services. Where Alibaba Cloud adjusts Free Services based on legitimate grounds such as business strategy, resource planning, technological evolution, security and compliance, or regulatory requirements, it shall do so in accordance with the principles of prudence, reasonableness, and necessity, and shall handle such adjustments differently depending on whether they constitute material changes, general adjustments, passive operational controls, or emergency situations.

Material changes and advance notice

A material change refers to an action that concurrently satisfies both of the following conditions:

• Proactive action condition: The action is proactively taken by Alibaba Cloud based on its own discretionary decisions regarding product planning, operational strategy, or similar matters, rather than being triggered by or attributable to system operating conditions, external compulsory events, or your actions.

• Type condition: The action falls within one of the following three categories: (1) a major upgrade to product features or technical architecture where Alibaba Cloud has assessed that such upgrade may affect resolution; (2) proactive decommissioning of a feature, product module, or access method of the Free Services; (3) proactive suspension or cessation of the provision of some or all Free Services.

Both conditions must be concurrently satisfied; the absence of either condition means the action does not constitute a material change and is not subject to the advance notice obligation. In the event of a material change as described above, Alibaba Cloud shall provide at least 30 days' advance notice through one or more of the following methods: official website announcements, console notifications, in-app messages, emails, or SMS messages, and shall specify in the notice the content of the change, effective date, scope of impact, and recommended response measures (including the method for migrating to Paid Services or adjusting resolution configurations), to allow you a reasonable transition and migration period. "At least 30 days' advance notice" shall be calculated from the date of publication of the announcement or the date of successful delivery of the notification.

You shall promptly monitor the foregoing notification channels and complete any necessary adaptation, migration, or data export in accordance with the notice instructions before the change takes effect. If you do not agree with such material change, you have the right to cease using Free Services before such change takes effect; your continued use of Free Services after a material change takes effect shall be deemed your acceptance of such change and its potential impact. Alibaba Cloud shall implement material changes in accordance with the principles of prudence, reasonableness, necessity, and non-discrimination, and shall endeavor to minimize the impact on your existing configurations and business.

General adjustments

General adjustments refer to adjustments that do not constitute material changes, including but not limited to performance optimization, security hardening, defect remediation, console interface and documentation updates, adjustments to resolution node distribution and scheduling, the setting, adjustment, and execution of resolution volume quotas and traffic control thresholds for Free Services, and the rate-limiting and traffic control measures described in Free service usage restrictions and traffic control. Alibaba Cloud has the right to implement such adjustments without prior notice on an item-by-item basis; whether notice is given and the timing, method, and scope of any notice shall be determined by Alibaba Cloud at its sole discretion based on the specific circumstances, provided that such adjustments shall not eliminate the basic resolution functionality of Free Services; the setting, reduction, increase, and execution of resolution volume quotas, concurrency thresholds, and traffic control rules for Free Services shall not constitute the elimination or diminution of basic resolution functionality.

Circumstances that do not constitute material changes and do not require advance notice

Any action, measure, or event that does not satisfy either the proactive action condition or the type condition shall not constitute a material change, and Alibaba Cloud shall have no obligation to provide prior notice or advance announcement. The following circumstances are expressly not material changes:

• System-triggered passive operational controls: Rate-limiting, traffic control, concurrency limits, response delays, packet loss, degradation, node scheduling, and temporary suspension measures triggered automatically by the system or pursuant to established policies due to natural growth in traffic volume, surges in resolution request volume or concurrency, server load or system resource utilization reaching thresholds, anomalous or malicious queries, network attacks, or similar events.

• Setting and execution of quotas and control rules: The addition, reduction, increase, and execution of Free Service resolution volume quotas, concurrency thresholds, and traffic control rules (including adjustments to dynamic rate-limiting policies).

• Operations and maintenance and technical adjustments: Operations and maintenance management, defect remediation, configuration adjustments, and security hardening, as well as adjustments to resolution node distribution, capacity planning and scheduling policies, console interfaces, and official documentation updates.

• External compulsory events: Changes, restrictions, suspensions, or terminations that Alibaba Cloud is required to implement or cannot avoid due to laws and regulations, regulatory requirements, policy changes, government or judicial authority orders, basic telecommunications network operators, or third-party causes. Alibaba Cloud shall implement such measures within the timelines required by the relevant authorities, and the 30-day advance notice requirement shall not apply. Alibaba Cloud may, at its discretion and to the extent permitted by law, determine whether to provide notice.

• Emergency response: Necessary measures taken in response to security incidents, network attacks, major failures, data risks, or other emergencies.

• Actions against non-compliant users: Warnings, restrictions, suspensions, or termination measures taken by Alibaba Cloud with respect to your account, domain name, or service due to your violation of laws and regulations, governing rules, or the provisions of this Disclaimer.

With respect to each of the foregoing circumstances, Alibaba Cloud generally does not provide notice. Whether notice is given and the timing, method, and scope of any notice shall be determined by Alibaba Cloud at its sole discretion based on the specific circumstances, and the 30-day advance notice requirement shall not apply.

Emergency situations

In the event of or in anticipation of security incidents, network attacks, major failures, data risks, requirements under laws, regulations, or regulatory authorities, government or judicial authority orders, or other emergency situations, Alibaba Cloud shall have the right to immediately take necessary measures, including rate-limiting, degradation, suspension, disconnection, and decommissioning, without prior notice. Whether post-event notice is given and the timing, method, and scope of any such notice shall be determined by Alibaba Cloud at its sole discretion based on the specific circumstances.

Non-compliance actions

If you engage in conduct that violates laws and regulations, governing rules, or this Disclaimer, abuses Free Services, endangers network security, uses Free Services to resolve illegal or non-compliant content, or interferes with or attacks the services of Alibaba Cloud or other users, Alibaba Cloud shall have the right to immediately take measures such as issuing warnings, imposing restrictions, suspending, or terminating services without notice, and shall have the right to retain relevant records, report to the relevant competent authorities, and pursue liability in accordance with law.

Service termination and data processing

Upon termination of Free Services or your cessation of use of Free Services, Alibaba Cloud shall have the right to clean up and delete the configurations and data generated under your Free Services in accordance with the governing rules and relevant announcements. You shall independently export and back up all resolution configurations and related data before ceasing use. Data, once deleted, is irrecoverable.