Billing and Refund Policy

1. Prepaid balance

• The Service is prepaid. Top up your account first; the minimum top-up is HK$10.00. Top-ups are paid online through Stripe, by card or another method offered on Stripe's payment page (such as Apple Pay, Google Pay or Alipay).
• If online payments carry a fee, it is shown before you pay. The fee is not added to your balance and is not refundable.
• Your balance can only be spent on the Service. It is not a deposit, earns no interest and cannot be transferred or exchanged for cash, except as section 6 allows.
• Prices exclude any taxes that may apply where you are.

2. Hourly instances

• Hourly instances are charged from your balance for every hour that starts, from creation until the instance is deleted. A stopped instance still holds its resources and is still billed; only deleting it stops billing.
• To create an hourly instance your balance must cover at least 1 hour.
• Hourly charges for one instance never add up to more than the plan's monthly price in any 30 days.

3. Monthly instances

• Monthly instances are paid 30 days at a time, in advance, from your balance or by a one-off online payment through Stripe.
• With auto-renew on, the next period is taken from your balance when the current one ends; we remind you 3 days before. If the balance is short or you don't renew, the instance is suspended when the period ends.

4. Outbound traffic

• Plans include no traffic. Each instance's outbound traffic is metered and charged per GB from your balance, for hourly and monthly instances alike. Inbound traffic is free.
• The price per GB depends on the region and is shown on the pricing page and when you create an instance. Traffic is read and charged about every 60 minutes; amounts under one cent carry over to the next charge.
• Traffic has already been used when it is charged, so traffic charges can take your balance below zero. While it is negative your instances are suspended until a top-up brings it back to zero or more, and the amount owed must be paid.

5. Low balance, suspension and deletion

• We email you when your balance covers less than 24 hours of your hourly instances.
• Hourly instances are suspended when the balance runs out, monthly instances when a period ends unpaid, and all instances while the balance is negative. Suspended instances are powered off and cannot be reached.
• Topping up or renewing within the grace period brings them back. Instances suspended for more than 72 hours are deleted for good, and the data on their disks cannot be recovered.

6. Refunds

• If an instance fails to be created, its charge is refunded to your balance in full, automatically.
• Hourly: hours that have started are not refunded. Deleting an instance stops billing from the next hour.
• Monthly: deleting an instance early does not refund the rest of the period.
• If a long outage is our fault, we may credit your balance at our discretion.
• When you close your account you can ask for a refund of unused balance topped up in the last 30 days. It goes back to the payment method you used, less payment fees and anything you owe. Promotional credit is not refundable. Email [To be completed: contact email] to ask.
• Nothing is refunded when we suspend or terminate an account for breaking the Terms of Service or the Acceptable Use Policy.
• If you question a charge, contact us first. If you file a chargeback with your bank, we may suspend the account while it is resolved and charge you the resulting dispute fee.

7. Price changes

New prices apply to new instances straight away. For existing instances we give at least 7 days' notice, and monthly instances keep their price until the end of the period already paid.

8. Records and receipts

Every charge and top-up appears on the Billing page in the console, and we email a receipt for each payment.