An overdue payment occurs when your available credit, which includes your Alibaba Cloud account balance and coupons, is insufficient to cover your outstanding bill. This topic describes the effects of overdue payments on ECS resources, how to settle overdue bills, and how to prevent overdue payments.
Overdue payments can lead to service interruptions. You will receive a notification from the system. To avoid service disruptions, settle your overdue bills promptly.
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.
After your account has an overdue payment, you can continue to use your existing subscription ECS resources, but the following limitations apply:
You cannot perform operations that incur fees, such as purchasing, upgrading, or renewing instances.
If a subscription ECS instance has a pay-as-you-go disk attached, or if it uses pay-by-traffic for public bandwidth, the disk and bandwidth services become unavailable after a payment is overdue. For more information, see Pay-as-you-go ECS resources.
The detachment may fail depending on how the disk is used. If the detachment fails, no more fees are generated for the disk, but your data is at risk of being lost. You should stop using these disks.
Pay-as-you-go ECS resources
The system attempts to deduct payment for pay-as-you-go bills on three dates: the settlement date (Day T), Day T+7, and Day T+14.
Within 15 days after the payment is overdue: No service interruption
If the payment deduction fails on the settlement date (Day T), the instance enters a state of overdue payment. For the next 15 days, you can continue to use your existing resources, and the system does not automatically stop the ECS instance. However, you cannot purchase new resources, upgrade instance configurations, or enable auto-renewal. The system attempts to deduct the payment again on Day T+7 and Day T+14.
ImportantIf your instance is in economical mode, its computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are reclaimed. If your account has an overdue payment, the instance will fail to start. For more information, see What is economical mode?
More than 15 days after the payment is overdue: Instance is stopped
If all three payment attempts fail, the instance is stopped due to the overdue payment starting from Day T+15, and billing is suspended. After the instance has been stopped for 15 days, the system starts to release or detach the pay-as-you-go ECS resources.
The following table describes the retention status of ECS resources after they are 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 and memory)
Computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are retained, but the instance stops providing services.
When an instance stops providing services, you cannot remotely connect to it, websites deployed on it become inaccessible, and business exceptions may occur.
Computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are released.
NoteThe system sends a notification by email if computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are released due to an overdue payment.
Block storage
Disks and the data on them are retained, but the disks stop providing services.
Local disks and the data on them are retained, but the disks stop providing services.
NoteAfter a disk stops providing services, it cannot perform normal I/O read and write operations. This can cause instances with these disks attached to run incorrectly. The effects include poor application read/write performance, severe timeout errors for some operations, and shutdown or restart failures on some operating system versions.
Disks are released. The data cannot be recovered.
NoteData disks that are created with pay-as-you-go instances and pay-as-you-go data disks that are created separately on the disk page are released, regardless of whether they are attached to an instance.
Local disks are released. The data cannot be recovered.
Public IP
For instances in the classic network: The static public IP address is retained.
For instances in a VPC:
The static public IP address is retained.
The lifecycle of an EIP is independent of the ECS instance to which it is associated. If you use EIPs, see Overdue payments for EIPs for information about how overdue payments affect EIPs.
For instances in the classic network: The static public IP address is released.
For instances in a VPC:
The static public IP address is released.
The lifecycle of an EIP is independent of the ECS instance to which it is associated. If you use EIPs, see Overdue payments for EIPs for information about how overdue payments affect EIPs.
Snapshot
All snapshots and custom images are retained. However, automatic snapshots are no longer created, you cannot create manual snapshots, and operations to create custom images from the instance fail because snapshots cannot be created.
If you settle the overdue payment, automatic snapshot policies are re-enabled.
All of your snapshot resources are cleared and deleted. This includes snapshots, snapshot chains, and snapshots 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 settle the overdue payment, automatic snapshot policies are re-enabled.
ImportantIf you have subscription instances that were created from a custom image, the deletion of the custom image does not affect the normal use of the instances. However, you cannot re-initialize their system disks.
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.
Settle overdue bills
Overdue payments cause pay-as-you-go ECS instances to be stopped. To avoid service disruptions, settle your overdue bills promptly.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 settle the overdue bill.
After you settle the overdue bill, the system automatically restarts instances that were stopped due to the overdue payment. If an instance fails to restart automatically, you can also start it manually. For more information, see Start an instance.
How to prevent service suspension from overdue payments
Release unused resources
If you no longer need an ECS resource, back it up and release it promptly to avoid further charges.
Set a low balance alert
You can log on to Expenses and Costs and set a low balance alert on the Account Overview page. When your available account credit falls below the threshold, the system automatically sends an alert.
Set an automatic release time
You can enable the automatic release feature for pay-as-you-go instances to prevent unexpected charges or overdue payments caused by instances running longer than intended. For more information, see Release an instance.