An overdue payment occurs when the available credit in your account, which includes your Alibaba Cloud account balance and vouchers, is less than the amount of an outstanding bill. This topic describes the impacts of overdue payments on Elastic Compute Service (ECS) resources, how to settle overdue bills, and how to prevent overdue payments.
An overdue payment may cause your services to be suspended. You will receive reminders and notifications from the system. Settle overdue bills promptly to avoid service interruptions.
Impacts of overdue payments
Subscription ECS resources
Subscription ECS resources have an expiration date. For more information about the effects of resource expiration, see Subscription.
If your account has an overdue payment, you can continue to use your existing subscription ECS resources. However, the overdue payment has the following impacts:
You cannot perform operations that incur fees, such as purchasing new instances, upgrading instances, or renewing instances.
If a subscription instance has an attached pay-as-you-go disk or uses the pay-by-traffic billing method for public bandwidth, an overdue payment makes both the disk and the public bandwidth service unavailable. For more information, see Pay-as-you-go ECS resources.
Detaching the disk may fail, depending on its usage. If the detachment fails, you are no longer charged for the disk, but you risk data loss. We recommend that you stop using these disks.
Pay-as-you-go ECS resources
Pay-as-you-go bills have three deduction dates: the settlement date (T), T+7, and T+14.
Within 15 days after the payment is overdue: The instance is not stopped
If the fee deduction fails on the settlement date (T), the payment for the instance becomes overdue. For 15 days after the payment is overdue, you can continue to use your existing resources. During this period, the system does not automatically stop the ECS instance. However, you cannot purchase new resources, upgrade instance configurations, or perform auto-renewals. The system attempts to deduct the fees again on T+7 and T+14.
ImportantIf you stop the ECS instance in economical mode, the computing resources (vCPUs, GPUs, and memory) are recycled. After the payment becomes overdue, the ECS instance may fail to restart. For more information, see Economical mode.
More than 15 days after the payment is overdue: The instance is stopped
If all three deduction attempts fail, the instance is stopped and billing ceases on T+15. After the instance has been stopped for 15 days, the system begins to release or detach the pay-as-you-go ECS resources.
The following table describes how ECS resources are handled after an instance is stopped due to an overdue payment.
Resource type
Within 15 days after the instance is stopped
More than 15 days after the instance is stopped
Computing resources (vCPUs, GPUs, and memory)
The computing resources (vCPUs, GPUs, and memory) are retained, but the instance stops providing services.
When an instance stops providing services, you cannot remotely connect to it or access websites deployed on it. Business exceptions may also occur.
The computing resources (vCPUs, GPUs, and memory) are released.
NoteIf computing resources (vCPUs, GPUs, and memory) are released due to an overdue payment, you will receive an email notification from the system.
Block storage
Disks and their data are retained, but the disks stop providing services.
Local disks and their data are retained, but the local disks stop providing services.
NoteAfter a disk stops providing services, it cannot process I/O read and write requests. This affects the instances to which the disks are attached. For example, the read and write performance of applications may decline, some operations may time out, and instances that run specific operating system versions may fail to shut down or restart.
Disks are released, and their data cannot be recovered.
NoteData disks that are created with pay-as-you-go ECS instances and pay-as-you-go data disks that are created separately on the Elastic Block Storage page are released, regardless of whether they are attached to an instance.
Local disks are released, and their data cannot be recovered.
Public IP
The static public IP address is retained.
The lifecycle of an EIP is independent of its associated ECS instance. For information about how an overdue payment affects an EIP, see Overdue payments for EIPs.
The static public IP address is released.
The lifecycle of an EIP is independent of its associated ECS instance. For information about how an overdue payment affects an EIP, see Overdue payments for EIPs.
Snapshots
All snapshots and custom images are retained. However, automatic snapshots are no longer created, and you cannot create manual snapshots. Attempts to create custom images from the instance fail because snapshots cannot be created.
If you add funds to your account to settle the overdue amount, the automatic snapshot policy is automatically re-enabled.
All snapshot resources are deleted, including snapshots, snapshot-consistent groups, and snapshots that are associated with custom images. The data cannot be recovered.
If a snapshot is associated with a custom image, the custom image is also deleted and cannot be recovered.
If you add funds to your account to settle the overdue amount, the automatic snapshot policy is automatically re-enabled.
ImportantIf you have subscription instances that were created from the custom image, the deletion of the custom image does not affect the use of the instances. However, you cannot re-initialize the system disks of the instances.
If you delete a custom image that is shared with other users, the other users can no longer view and use the image to create instances. The system disks of instances that use the image can no longer be re-initialized.
If you delete a custom image that is published as a community image, the community image is also deleted and cannot be used to create instances. The system disks of instances that use the community image can no longer be re-initialized.
Complete overdue payments
Overdue payments can cause your pay-as-you-go ECS instances to be stopped. Complete the overdue payments promptly to avoid service interruptions.Log on to the Expenses and Costs console. In the notification bar at the top of the Account Overview page, click the Pay Now button and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the overdue payments.
After you complete the overdue payments, the system automatically restarts any instances that were stopped due to the overdue payment. If an instance fails to restart automatically, you can start it manually. For more information, see Start an instance.
How to prevent service suspension due to overdue payments
Release unused resources
If you no longer need an ECS resource, back up its data and release the resource promptly to prevent further charges.
Set a credit alert
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console and set a credit alert on the Account Overview page. When your available account credit is lower than the alert threshold, the system will automatically send a notification.
Set an automatic release time
Enable the automatic release feature for pay-as-you-go instances to prevent unexpected charges or overdue payments that may arise if instances run longer than intended. For more information, see Release an instance.