Phacility Billing Guide

Phacility User Documentation (Administrating Instances)

Explains how Phacility instances are billed.

Overview

Instances are billed monthly. For example, if you have 4 activated users and are on a $20/user/month pricing plan, you will be billed $80 per month. You will be invoiced at the end of each billing period.

Some types of accounts (including disabled users and bots) are not billed. You can find more details about billing below.

There are multiple pricing plans available. For a comparison of available pricing plans, see Phacility Pricing Plans.

Evaluation Period

If you'd like to evaluate Phacility and Phabricator, you can launch a test instance. Test instances are free, temporary instances you can use to understand and evaluate the software and service.

When you're done testing and want to proceed, launch a standard instance. Standard instances also have an evaluation period: the first billing period (or the first 30 days, whichever is longer) is free. After the first billing period you'll be notified that your evaluation period is ending, and you'll receive a normal bill after the second period (generally around 60 days after launching the instance). Billing periods are explained in more detail below.

If you choose not to continue with the service, disable the instance at any time and disregard any outstanding invoices. Even if you have already been billed (for example, because you forgot to disable the instance before the end of a billing period), you can just disable the instance and disregard any outstanding invoices.

For more details on terminating service, see Terminating Service.

Billing Periods

Instances are invoiced monthly, with the first billing period starting one month after you launch an instance. The billing period for an instance depends on when you launch an instance. For example, if you launch an instance on the 13th of September, your first billing period will end on the 13th of October.

The first billing period will mark the end of the trial period for the instance rather than generating an invoice. You'd get your first real invoice on the 13th of November.

If an instance's billing day is after the end of a month, you will be invoiced on the last day of the month. For example, if you launch an instance on the 31st of March, you will receive your first invoice on the 30th of April (because April has only 30 days), then your next invoice on the 31st of May.

Because months have varying numbers of days, some billing periods will be slightly longer or shorter than others. To make billing simpler and more predictable, this minor variation in period length is ignored when calculating bills. The average period length is the same as the length of an average month anyway, so this evens out over time.

Cost Per User

Generally, instances are billed at $20 per user per month under the standard plan (your rate may vary depending on which plan you have selected). Some types of accounts are not billed:

• Users whose accounts have been disabled on the instance are not billed, so if someone leaves your organization you can disable their account and stop paying for it.
• Bot accounts (which can be created on instances) are not billed, but these accounts can not use the web UI.
• When you invite a user to your instance, they aren't billed until they activate the invite.

All other user accounts are billed. Note that this includes users with active accounts who did not use the service during the billing period.

Users who joined the instance partway through the month are prorated. For example, if you are on a $20/user/month plan and launch an instance on the 1st of July and invite a second user on the 15th of July, you will receive an invoice on the 1st of August for about $30. This is $20 for your account, plus a prorated cost for their account which was only active for about half of the month.

(Prorating is calculated exactly and then rounded down to the nearest cent, so the actual bill you receive will probably be something like $29.74 or $30.06, unless you are very precise about inviting users at exactly the right second to get a perfectly even bill.)

Disabling Users

If a user leaves your organization, you can disable their account. This will prevent them from logging in to the instance and stop the account from generating a monthly bill.

To disable a user:

• Log in to your instance as an administrator.
• Navigate to the user's profile page by searching for their user account in the global search.
• Click "Manage".
• Click "Disable User".

Disabling Instances

If you wish to end service for an instance, you can disable the instance from the management console. You will no longer be billed for disabled instances. For more information, see Terminating Service.

Termination for Nonpayment

If you don't settle invoices for an extended period of time, we will eventually suspend your instance. You will be unable to use or access a suspended instance.

You'll be warned about this repeatedly in advance of automatic suspension.

When the system generates a new invoice, it checks how long overdue your oldest unpaid invoice is:

• If it is more than 25 days overdue, we'll send you a friendly reminder to pay when you have a chance.
• If it is more than 50 days overdue, we'll send you a more terse, less friendly warning you that you risk suspension for nonpayment.
• If it is more than 75 days overdue, we'll automatically suspend the instance.

Because invoices are billed at the end of a usage period and billing cycles are approximately 30 days long, this generally means an instance will be suspended after about 120 days of use without payment. You can monitor the billing status of your instance from the web UI at any time.

If an instance is suspended for nonpayment but you wish to continue service, pay the outstanding invoices and contact support. You have 90 days before we permanently destroy the instance.

If you do not wish to continue service, you can disable the instance or just ignore the warnings. We will not contact you again after termination, and will make no attempt to collect the outstanding balance unless you wish to resume service.