Web Application Firewall (WAF) 3.0 supports both subscription and pay-as-you-go billing methods. This topic describes the applicable scenarios, billable items, billing cycles, and activation methods for both methods to help you quickly understand the billing rules.
Billing methods
WAF 3.0 offers subscription and pay-as-you-go billing methods to meet the needs of different scenarios. The differences between the two billing methods are as follows:
Billing attribute | Subscription | Pay-as-you-go |
How to activate | ||
Billing method | Pre-paid. You pay for resources before you use them. You are charged based on the subscription duration of your order. | Post-paid. You use resources first and pay for them later. Bills are generated based on your actual usage, and fees are deducted from your account balance each billing cycle. You can pair this with a pre-paid SeCU resource plan to reduce costs. |
Use cases |
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Billable item Important
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Billing cycle | The purchase cycle of the order, which is the subscription duration selected when you purchase the instance. | Pay-as-you-go fees are settled once per day (UTC+8). After settlement, a new billing cycle begins until you unsubscribe from WAF. |
Billing unit | CNY | SeCU Note SeCU is the unified unit of measurement introduced for pay-as-you-go WAF 3.0. 1 SeCU = CNY 0.05. |
Critical event protection fee | This fee covers the critical event protection feature and its effective duration. It is pre-paid with a minimum subscription of 30 days. For details on critical event protection and its billing, see Critical event protection. | |
Details | ||
Pay-as-you-go
Activate WAF service
Go to the Web Application Firewall 3.0 (Pay-as-you-go) buy page and activate a pay-as-you-go WAF instance.
Go to the WAF 3.0 SeCU Resource Plan buy page to purchase a SeCU resource plan to offset request processing fees and feature fees, thereby reducing your costs.
Billing and payment
You can offset fees with a SeCU resource plan or pay from your account balance.
After a SeCU resource plan is depleted or expires, fees are automatically deducted from your account balance. A SeCU resource plan can be used for deductions only when your account has no overdue payments.
View bills
After you activate WAF, you can view the actual usage and costs for the pay-as-you-go instance on the WAF bill management page, and view deduction bills in the User Center. For more information, see View bills.
Change billing method
WAF does not currently support direct billing method changes. To switch, unsubscribe from your current instance and then activate a new instance with the desired billing method.
For more information, see Change billing method.
Renewal
A pay-as-you-go WAF instance is billed based on actual usage of billable items on a post-paid basis and does not require renewal.
A SeCU resource plan cannot be renewed or upgraded directly. You can purchase multiple SeCU resource plans or a plan with a larger specification. For more information, see SeCU resource plans.
Overdue payments
If your Alibaba Cloud account has overdue payments and you want to continue using the pay-as-you-go service, go to the User Center to add funds promptly. For information on resource status after a payment is overdue, see Overdue payments.
Deactivate WAF
If you no longer need a pay-as-you-go WAF instance, you can release the instance after ensuring that your data is backed up or migrated and that your business will not be affected. Billing stops the day after you release the instance (T+1). For instructions on how to release a pay-as-you-go instance, see Release a pay-as-you-go instance.
If you purchased a SeCU resource plan to offset fees for a pay-as-you-go instance, and the plan was purchased within the last five days and has not been used, you can submit a ticket to apply for a refund.
Subscription
Activate WAF service
Go to the Web Application Firewall 3.0 (Subscription) buy page to select a suitable WAF edition.
Upgrades and downgrades
WAF provides instance upgrade and instance downgrade features, which allow you to upgrade the purchased WAF edition and adjust value-added features based on business changes.
View bills
After you activate WAF, you can view deduction bills in the User Center. For more information about how to view WAF bills, see View bills.
Renewal
If a subscription WAF instance is not renewed before it expires, your website protection will be affected. To prevent the protection service from stopping automatically upon expiration, you must manually renew the instance or enable auto-renewal before it expires. For more information, see Renewal.
Overdue payments
After your Alibaba Cloud account has overdue payments, you can continue to use your existing subscription WAF service because you have already pre-paid for the resources. However, operations that incur new fees, such as using Bot Management risk identification, burstable QPS, extension plug-in traffic features, upgrading the instance configuration, or renewing your subscription, will not be available. For information on resource status after a payment is overdue, see Overdue payments.
Change billing method
WAF does not currently support direct billing method changes. To switch, unsubscribe from your current instance and then activate a new instance with the desired billing method.
For more information, see Change billing method.
Unsubscribe from WAF
If your instance has expired and you no longer need WAF, you can unsubscribe from WAF. For the unsubscription rules and steps for subscription instances, see Release a subscription WAF instance.
If you have activated a subscription instance with multi-cloud/hybrid cloud protection, Bot Management for web protection, Bot Management for app protection, critical event protection, or API Security, you cannot unsubscribe from the instance through the console. To unsubscribe, submit a ticket or contact your account manager for assistance.