This topic describes resource plans, their applicable business scenarios, and how to purchase, renew, and unsubscribe from them.
What is a resource plan?
A resource plan is a fixed amount of cloud resources (or virtual usage converted from cloud resources) that you purchase in advance. Resource plans complement pay-as-you-go billing and offer more competitive prices.
After you purchase a resource plan, when you use pay-as-you-go cloud resources, the system automatically uses the resource plan to offset the cloud resources to which the resource plan applies. After the quota of the resource plan is exhausted (or the resource plan expires), the billing method automatically changes to pay-as-you-go.
Resource plan types
Resource plans are classified into the following types based on the commitment period: by hour, by day, no cycle, by month (natural month), and by month (dynamic month).
Commitment period | Description | Typical products |
By hour/By day | A fixed quota is generated for each billing cycle such as hourly or daily. If the resource plan is not fully used within the current billing cycle, the remaining quota becomes invalid. A new quota is generated in the next billing cycle. | Reserved instance, storage capacity unit |
No cycle | After you purchase a resource plan, you obtain a specific total amount. The amount gradually decreases as you use the resource plan until the amount is exhausted or the resource plan expires. | PolarDB compute plan |
By month (including by natural month, by dynamic month, and free trial by month) | A fixed quota is generated for each natural month or dynamic month. The unused quota of a month cannot roll over to the next month. The quota is restored to full on the first day of the next month or at the start of the next billing month. | OSS Outbound Traffic Plan |
Notes
Resource plans have specific validity periods. After a resource plan expires, it becomes invalid. You cannot obtain a refund for or continue to use an invalid resource plan. Resource plans cannot be transferred across regions or products.
Before you purchase a resource plan, you must identify the region to which the resources belong and the instance type to ensure that the resource plan matches the resources to be offset.
The part that exceeds the quota of a resource plan is charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. You must reasonably evaluate your business requirements to avoid additional fees. You can configure resource plan balance alerts or expiration notifications to avoid unexpected pay-as-you-go costs caused by exhausted resource plans.
You can use resource plans to offset only fees that are generated after your purchase. Overdue payments cannot be offset by using resource plans.
Purchase suggestions
If you can accurately estimate your resource usage (such as duration and capacity), we recommend that you purchase resource plans to reduce costs.
To ensure that the resource plans you purchase can effectively offset your cloud service fees and avoid additional payments caused by purchasing incorrect resource plans, you can view bill details page to check bill details and usage details. This allows you to identify which billable items (pay-as-you-go) are the main sources of your expenses and view the resource usage of these billable items. This helps you reasonably predict business growth and select appropriate capacity or validity period.
Example: If you can accurately estimate that the Standard LRS capacity of all buckets under your Alibaba Cloud account will be approximately 100 GB for the next three months, you can consider purchasing a Standard LRS storage plan with a capacity of 100 GB and a subscription duration of three months to offset storage capacity fees. Compared with the pay-as-you-go billing method, you can save more cost if you use a storage plan to offset storage capacity fees.
Purchase and manage resource plans
Multiple resource plans can be purchased and stacked, and managed by priority. When multiple resource plans exist, the resource plan that is about to expire is used first for deduction.
When you purchase a resource plan, you need to select a validity period. After a resource plan expires, it becomes invalid. You cannot obtain a refund for or continue to use an invalid resource plan. We recommend that you pay attention to the expiration time of your resource plans.
First purchase
Log on to the console of each service and go to the buy page. Select the specifications based on your business requirements. Resource plans of some products support setting a specific effective time, such as purchasing a storage capacity unit (SCU), purchasing a GA resource plan, and ALB resource plan.
Renewal and re-purchase
Renewal: Before a resource plan expires, you can go to Resource Renewal to initiate a renewal. After the renewal is successful, the renewal cycle automatically takes effect when the current cycle expires. For more information, see Renewal management/Resource renewal guide.
Re-purchase: If a resource plan has expired, you need to go to the console of the product to purchase a new one.
Configure resource plan balance alerts
After the quota of a resource plan is exhausted, the system automatically switches to the pay-as-you-go billing method, which may result in unplanned cost expenditures. You can configure resource plan balance alerts or expiration notifications to receive timely notifications of insufficient quotas and reserve sufficient time to renew resource plans or adjust business usage.
View the validity period (expiration time) of a resource plan
You can query only resource plans that are currently valid or have been expired for less than one year.
Log on to the Resource Plan page. On the Instance Summary tab, click the
icon and select the Expiration Time option (to ensure that the expiration time of the resource plan is displayed in the instance list).In the last column of the instance list, you can see the Expiration Time of each resource plan, which is the expiration time of the resource plan.
(Optional) If you need to further view the detailed usage of a resource plan, you can click the Usage Details tab to view specific deduction records and usage information.
Unsubscribe from resource plans
Some resource plans support unsubscription. To check whether your current resource plan supports unsubscription, go to the Resource Unsubscription page, switch to the Resource Plan tab, and view the instances that can be unsubscribed from (if the instance does not contain purchased resource plans, the current resource plan does not meet the unsubscription conditions).
To unsubscribe, you can follow the unsubscription operation guide to unsubscribe from resource plans.
The unsubscription amount is calculated as follows:
Full refund for unused resource plans within five days: Regardless of the resource plan type, if the resource plan is purchased within five days and has zero usage, a full refund is supported.
Partial refund: This applies to resource plans that have been partially used but still have remaining unconsumed amounts. Refund amount = Order payable amount - Consumed amount, where the consumed amount includes linear calculation based on usage for total amount resource plans and calculation based on actual usage duration for periodic usage resource plans. For specific calculation rules, see Unsubscription rule description.