Billing Guide

Billing Items

Currently, SurferCloud virtual hosts are billed based on the configuration you choose and the duration of usage.

Billing Modes

Prepaid

For hosts participating in various promotional activities, the specific billing rules shall be subject to the official event rules.

Annual Pricing

Annual pricing means paying for the order in annual billing cycles. The purchase duration defaults to one year, with options for 2 or 3 years. This billing type is suitable for long-term stable business. At present, the maximum duration of a single order for a virtual host is 3 years. This type of billing is suitable for long-term stable business.

If auto-renewal is enabled, the system will automatically deduct the next period's cost if your account balance is sufficient. For details, see Resource Renewal. If your balance is insufficient, resources will expire after the purchase period. For recovery rules, see Resource Recovery. If you still need to keep this virtual host, please recharge in time, and the detailed operation method of manual renewal can be found in Resource Renewal.

1. Annual payment discounts apply to all virtual host models and disk types.
   
2. The annual payment order needs to pay the purchase period fee before the order starts. If you stop using the host and delete resources within the purchase period of the host product, the system will deduct the cost of the used duration and refund you. But in this way, you can't enjoy the annual discount and the deducted cost is the monthly price * usage duration. For details, see Refund Rules.
   

Monthly Pricing

Monthly pricing allows payment on a monthly basis, suitable for startups or businesses in growth phases.
If you are currently expected to use the period between 1~9 months, you can choose to pay monthly. But for 10 months or more at one time, it is recommended to use annual payment so that you can enjoy a discount for annual payment.

1. To meet the user's need for straight-line bills, the currently optional time for monthly payment is by default to purchase until the end of the month, and then 1~9 months in sequence.
   
2. Monthly payment orders need to pay the purchase period cost before the order starts. If you stop using the host and delete resources within the purchase period of the product, the system will deduct the cost of the used duration and process the refund. Refund amount = prepaid amount - (actual payment order amount × (used duration ÷ total duration of this month) × 1.5), which means under the situation less than one month, the used time is calculated at an hourly price. For details, see Refund Rules.
   
3. At the same time, you can turn on the auto-renewal feature. If your account balance is sufficient, the system will automatically deduct the cost of the next period when the resource expires to ensure the stable operation of your resources. If the account balance is insufficient and you have not renewed the fee in time, the resource will expire.
   

!> If the current resource is overdue for 10 days or more, the resource will be recycled. For details, see Resource Recovery.

For example: The user purchases a monthly paid virtual host at 8:00 on March 1, 2021, and chooses a billing period of 1 month. You must pay the monthly fee before using it. If you continue to use it after expiry at 8:00 on April 1, 2021, you should renew the fee in time within the expiry time.

Hourly Pricing

Hourly pricing means to pay the bill by the hour. This type of billing is suitable for temporary batch service opening to cope with promotions or sudden increase in business.

If you choose the hourly pricing method, you need to prepay 1 hour of the fee to use the host product. During the later use time, the system will deduct the cost of the next stage in advance.

Orders for hourly pricing are generated by the hour, meaning one order information is generated every hour.

1. The unit price of hourly pricing is about 1.5 times the monthly price if using the same resource for the same duration.
   
2. Users who pay hourly can change the billing mode to monthly or annual payment by themselves.
   
3. Currently, we only support upward changes in billing methods, that is, hourly payment can be changed to monthly payment or annual payment, and monthly payment can be changed to annual payment.
   
4. If you delete the resource during the period of use, the system will deduct the cost of the used duration (less than one hour will be made up to one hour) and refund the remaining cost to your account. For the specific process, see Refund Rules.

For example: If you pay for 1 hour at 12:00 on March 1, 2021, to successfully purchase a virtual host, the billing period is from 12:00 to 13:00. The system will pre-deduct the costs within the time period of 13:00-14:00 at 13:00, and so on. For users who choose hourly pricing (prepaid), please ensure sufficient balance in your account to pay the subsequent expenses.

Postpaid

The postpaid mode is billed hourly. There is no charge for selecting the host at the moment. When used until the point, the postpaid bill will be generated. Auto-renewal is turned on by default, and the system will automatically pay for your order under the condition that the current account balance is sufficient.

If you make configuration changes to the host, the original configuration will be immediately stopped, and the new configuration will take effect immediately. In this time period, the system will bill separately according to the usage time of the old configuration resources and the new configuration resources.

If you accumulate three arrears of orders, your resources may be recycled. Please renew the fee in time, the specific rules can be found in Resource Recovery .

!> Currently, only the virtual hosts with system disks and data disks as cloud disks are supported (local disk hosts are not supported yet), and they are gradually being phased out. You may not be able to apply.

Preemptive Billing

The preemptive billing is a billing model that can purchase virtual hosts at a lower discount. The virtual host under this billing model may face the risk of automatic recovery by the system and data will not be kept after running steadily for 1 hour. You need to do a good job of data backup. Once you purchase a preemptive cloud host, its use and operation of the virtual host under normal billing methods in terms of console operation, service deployment and other aspects are no different.

Preemptive billing offers discounts on hourly pricing, but the discount applies only to CPU and memory.

1. Range of discount effectiveness: only for CPU and memory;
   
2. Discount interval: 10% to original price;
   
3. Price fluctuation: discounts will fluctuate according to system inventory, subject to real-time discounts.
   

Current stage special strategy

1. Only a part of the discount virtual hosts will be automatically recycled according to the system inventory situation, that is, when the inventory is tight, some preemptive virtual hosts will be randomly recycled;
   
2. Only North China Second A Availability Zone supports preemptive billing mode for virtual hosts, and other regions' availability zones will successively open preemptive billing mode;
   
3. Only the Kojie O model supports the preemptive billing mode, and other models will gradually open the preemptive billing mode;
   
4. Only the specifications of 4 cores ~16 cores support the preemptive billing mode, and the opening situation is to be notified.
   

Restrictions on the operation of cloud hosts under the preemptive billing mode

1. Do not support the switch of billing methods;
   
2. Do not support configuration upgrade or downgrade;
   
3. Do not support shut down without charges;
   
4. Do not support reinstalling the system;
   
5. Do not support expansion of system and data disks.