Expenses and Costs:service suspension protection for overdue payments

What is service suspension protection?

To ensure service continuity and stability, Alibaba Cloud provides service suspension protection. This feature lets you continue using cloud services within a specific quota or time frame after your account has an overdue payment. Services are billed as usual during this grace period. The system automatically calculates and updates this quota or time frame monthly based on factors such as your historical spending on Alibaba Cloud.

If your account has an overdue payment, the following scenarios apply:

• When your overdue amount (meaning your available balance is less than 0) is within your service suspension protection limits, your pay-as-you-go resources continue to run.

• When your overdue amount (meaning your available balance is less than 0) exceeds your service suspension protection limits, your pay-as-you-go resources are suspended.

  • If you top up your account to clear all overdue payments after your resources are suspended but before they are released, making your available balance greater than 0, the system automatically restores service to the suspended resources.

  • If an overdue payment persists and resources are released, you cannot recover them even after you clear the overdue payment.

Service suspension protection for pay-as-you-go customers

• All direct Alibaba Cloud customers receive a 15-day grace period. During this period, your existing pay-as-you-go services, resource plans, and subscription resources continue to run. However, you cannot create new subscription or pay-as-you-go resources.

• If you use pay-as-you-go cloud communications services, an additional suspension quota applies during the grace period. If your overdue payment exceeds this suspension quota during the grace period, your pay-as-you-go cloud communications services are immediately suspended. Your other cloud services remain protected by the 15-day grace period. For a list of the affected pay-as-you-go cloud communications services, see cloud communications services affected by service suspension protection updates. The system automatically calculates this quota based on factors like your historical spending on Alibaba Cloud.

The following examples illustrate how this works:

• Example 1: On January 1, 2025, Customer A's account has an overdue payment due to pay-as-you-go usage and enters a grace period. The customer uses pay-as-you-go cloud communications services, and the system calculates a suspension quota of USD 100 for the grace period:

  1. If the overdue amount reaches or exceeds the suspension quota during the grace period (for example, an overdue amount of USD 101, making the available balance USD -101), the pay-as-you-go cloud communications services are immediately suspended. The customer's other cloud services remain protected by the 15-day grace period and continue to run until January 15, 2025, without payment. If the customer clears the overdue payment during the grace period, the system restores normal service for their cloud communications services.

  2. If the overdue amount remains below the suspension quota during the grace period (for example, an overdue amount of USD 90, making the available balance USD -90), both the cloud communications services and other cloud services remain protected by the 15-day grace period. Without payment, all services continue to run until January 15, 2025.

• Example 2: Customer A's account has an overdue payment due to pay-as-you-go usage and enters a grace period. The customer does not use any pay-as-you-go cloud communications services.

  • The customer receives a 15-day grace period. If the customer does not clear the overdue payment by the end of the grace period, all running resources are suspended after 15 days.

Risk assessment: The suspension quota is not an overdue payment limit

The amount billed for pay-as-you-go services is affected by factors such as the billing cycle (for example, hourly or daily) and service specifications. A single large bill can create an overdue payment that immediately exceeds your suspension quota.

• Case study: Customer A uses a pay-as-you-go cloud communications service. Their suspension quota is USD 100 and their available balance is USD 200. On February 1, the customer's SMS message volume increases sharply. The bill generated on February 2 is for USD 1,000. After settlement, the account has an overdue payment of USD 800 (available balance of USD -800). Because the overdue amount (USD 800) is greater than the suspension quota (USD 100), the pay-as-you-go cloud communications service is immediately suspended.

  Important

  • You are responsible for paying all standard service fees billed during the grace period.

  • For Alibaba Cloud pay-as-you-go services, there is a delay of approximately 3 hours between resource usage and bill generation. In some cases, bill generation may be delayed. Therefore, you may still receive a bill after your resources have been suspended.

  • Pay-as-you-go services have a billing cycle. If your service usage suddenly increases, the fees for a single billing cycle may exceed your suspension quota.

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