If the billing method for your Web Application Firewall (WAF) instance does not meet your business needs, you can switch it. To do so, you need to unsubscribe from your current instance and purchase a new one that uses the desired billing method. This topic describes how to switch between billing methods.
How to switch billing methods
WAF does not support directly switching the billing method for an instance. To switch the billing method, you must first unsubscribe from or release your current instance. Then, you can purchase a new instance that uses the desired billing method.
Unsubscribing from a subscription instance or shutting down a pay-as-you-go instance releases the instance. If you use a canonical name (CNAME) record to direct traffic to WAF, requests will fail after the instance is released, which will make your website inaccessible. Before you unsubscribe from or shut down an instance, make sure that all web traffic is routed back to your origin server.
Switch from subscription to pay-as-you-go
1. Unsubscribe from a subscription instance
Contact your account manager or architect to request to unsubscribe from the instance. The following conditions must be met:
The instance was purchased within the last 5 days.
The instance has not been used, which means no traffic has been generated.
2. Purchase a pay-as-you-go instance
Go to the Web Application Firewall 3.0 (Pay-as-you-go) buy page.
Select Pay-as-you-go for Billing Method and complete the configuration.
Click Buy Now and complete the order.
When you purchase a pay-as-you-go instance, you can also purchase a Security Capacity Unit (SeCU) resource plan. The resource plan can be used to offset request processing and feature fees, which helps reduce your costs. For more information, see SeCU resource plan.
Switch from pay-as-you-go to subscription
1. Shut down the pay-as-you-go instance
Refunds are not available for pay-as-you-go instances. If you no longer use a pay-as-you-go WAF instance, you can shut it down at any time. Billing stops after the pay-as-you-go WAF instance is shut down.
To unsubscribe from a SeCU resource plan, contact your account manager or architect to request to unsubscribe. The following conditions must be met:
The SeCU resource plan was purchased within the last 5 days.
The SeCU resource plan is not in use.
2. Purchase a subscription instance
Navigate to the Web Application Firewall 3.0 (Subscription) buy page.
After you set Billing Method to Subscription, complete the configuration for the instance version. For more information about the features of different versions for the pay-as-you-go and subscription billing methods, see Version Guide.
Click Buy Now and complete the payment.
Smoothly switch from pay-as-you-go to subscription (application required)
By default, switching from pay-as-you-go to subscription requires you to shut down the pay-as-you-go instance before you purchase a subscription instance. If you require a seamless transition to ensure business continuity, you can contact your account manager to enable this feature.
After the request completes, follow these steps to perform the transformation:
If you have enabled Simple Log Service (SLS), the Logstore will change. You must re-enable logging for your protected objects and reselect the log fields. The Logstore for the original pay-as-you-go instance is retained. You will be billed for it by SLS.
Log on to the WAF 3.0 console. In the top navigation bar, select the resource group and region of the WAF instance. You can select Chinese Mainland or Outside Chinese Mainland.
In the left navigation pane, click Overview.
On the Overview page, in the Instance Version Information area, select , and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the conversion.
References
For more information about how pay-as-you-go and subscription instances are billed, see Subscription billing details and Pay-as-you-go billing details.