Billing and invoices
You pay for bandwidth delivered to your viewers, at a price per terabyte agreed with our team when the account is opened, with a minimum monthly commitment where your agreement carries one. The previous calendar month is invoiced on the 3rd, any account credit is used first, the card on the account is charged for the rest the same day, and the invoice is on your Billing page and emailed, with the PDF attached, to everyone ticked for Billing emails.
What is charged#
Each month is itemised by zone: one line for every zone that delivered traffic to your viewers that month, a zone deleted during the month included, with its name and ID, the terabytes it delivered, your price per TB and what that comes to. Under the zones, one line takes off your monthly free allowance where your agreement has one, and in a month where what is left came to less than your minimum commitment, one line brings the month up to the minimum. When your account holds credit, one line of account credit is taken off before VAT. Nothing else is charged: requests, zones, hostnames, certificates, purges, API calls, the traffic we fetch from your origin, uploads your viewers send, and the traffic of server-sent event streams and WebSockets never are.
The month is priced on its total, and the zone lines share that total out exactly: each zone's terabytes and amount are rounded so that the lines add up to the month to the penny, which can put a zone a penny either side of its terabytes at your price. Traffic is shown to three decimal places, so a zone with almost none may have no line of its own.
A month whose charges, after any account credit, come to less than £5.00 before VAT is not invoiced on its own: it is added to the next invoice as a line of its own, at that month's own price and minimum, and the final invoice when the agreement ends includes anything still held over. So a first month with very little traffic produces no invoice, and its line appears on a later one. A month that account credit covers in full is invoiced with nothing to pay, so the traffic is on record and the credit is used.
A terabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, the decimal terabyte, and the quantity is shown to three decimal places: 62,512,345,678,901 bytes reads as 62.512 TB. It counts what the edge sent to your viewers, whether from our cache or from your origin. Not counted: what we fetched from your origin, uploads and anything else your viewers send, the traffic of server-sent event streams and WebSockets (see Server-sent events and WebSockets), a request your own blocking rules refused, the maintenance page of a paused zone, and traffic between our own locations. The zone's statistics show the same figure as it accumulates.
A monthly free allowance comes off first: with the first 10 TB free each month, 72.5 TB delivered is invoiced as 62.500 TB, the line says so, and a month that stays inside the allowance produces no invoice unless a minimum applies to it. A month in which your account is sponsored produces no line and no invoice.
The minimum monthly commitment#
The minimum is a monthly commitment, not a long contract: an amount of traffic you are invoiced for whether or not you deliver it. A month over the minimum is invoiced for what was delivered; a month under it is invoiced at the minimum, and the invoice line says what was actually delivered.
Unless your agreement says otherwise, the month your service starts and the whole of the month after it carry no minimum at all. Both are invoiced on usage alone, so traffic can be moved over gradually.
Worked through for an example agreement of £3.00 per TB with a 100 TB minimum, on a service that started on 13 September:
- September: 12 TB delivered. No minimum yet, so 12.000 TB at £3.00 is £36.00.
- October: 48 TB delivered. Still no minimum, so 48.000 TB is £144.00.
- November: 71 TB delivered. The minimum now applies and the traffic is under it, so the invoice is the minimum: 100.000 TB is £300.00.
- December: 162.400 TB delivered, over the minimum, so the invoice is 162.400 TB at £3.00, which is £487.20.
VAT is added where it applies (below). Terms are recorded against the month they start from, so a new price agreed in October to run from November invoices October at the old price. Your Billing page shows your price, your minimum and the month it applies from, and while a month is running, what it would come to if it ended now, which is an estimate and not an invoice.
Account credit#
Our team can add credit to your account: for a free trial, a service credit after an outage, a referral, bandwidth we agree came from an attack, or a correction. The Billing page shows the balance and every entry with its reason. Each invoice uses credit first, as a line of its own taken off before VAT, so VAT is charged on what is left: £300.00 of traffic with £100.00 of credit is invoiced as £200.00 before VAT. An invoice that credit covers in full is issued with nothing to pay and nothing is charged to the card; what an invoice does not use waits for the next one, and if what is left to pay comes to less than £5.00 the month is held over as above.
Credit does not expire while your agreement lasts, has no cash value and cannot be transferred; anything the final invoice does not use lapses when the agreement ends. The Terms of Service are the full text.
Before the CDN pages unlock#
A new account's CDN pages and API open once three things are in place: your company details under Account then Settings (company name, street address, city, postcode and country, and on a paid plan someone ticked for Billing emails under Email contacts and, for a business in the EU, its VAT number or the business evidence our team records for it), the agreement, which our team enters, and a payment card on the Billing page, unless our team has agreed that your account needs none. The Billing page shows them as a checklist and a banner names the first still outstanding. Account, Billing and Support stay open meanwhile, and a zone that exists keeps serving.
Email contacts#
Under Account then Settings, Email contacts lists every user on the account, and any other address you add, against four kinds of email: Billing (invoices, credit notes, receipts, failed charges, the card and account credit), Technical (certificates, and a zone paused or resumed), Account (suspension, closure and a paid plan to come) and Abuse (reports about content on your zones); the free usage emails go to everyone ticked for Billing, Technical or Account. Each person ticked for a kind of email gets their own copy. Every kind needs at least one person, so a user who is the only one ticked for a kind cannot be removed until somebody else is ticked. The Billing column appears once the account is on a paid plan or has one scheduled; until then there is nothing to invoice. Up to ten addresses that are not users can be added.
The card#
Invoices are paid by card through Mollie, our payment provider, in pounds sterling, and the card is added from the Billing page. Adding one takes a £0.00 verification rather than a payment; your bank may show a pending authorisation for zero or a few pence, which clears on its own. Mollie hold the card details and the number never reaches our servers; the account keeps the brand, the last four digits and the expiry month, and we email everyone ticked for Billing emails 30 days before the card expires.
An account holds one card. Adding another replaces it, and the replaced one stops working the moment the new one is accepted, so switch cards by adding the new one rather than removing the old one first. Removing the card locks the CDN pages and the API again until there is one, unless your account needs none; zones keep serving meanwhile. The same happens if Mollie stops accepting the card, for example because your bank cancelled or replaced it, and we email everyone ticked for Billing emails when it does. There is no bank transfer or Direct Debit facility: a payment that has to be taken another way is arranged with the team and recorded against the invoice by hand.
Free usage and pausing#
Our team can give an account free usage: a monthly free allowance on its agreement, account credit such as a free trial, or both. On an account our team has agreed needs no card, and while none is on it, the zones are served for as long as the free usage lasts and then paused. How far it goes is the allowance plus what the credit pays for at your price per TB: £300.00 of trial credit at £3.00 per TB is 100 TB, and with the first 10 TB free each month as well, 110 TB in the month it starts. Where the agreement carries a minimum, the credit pays the minimum first, and the account is paused when what is left cannot pay it.
The Billing page's Free usage box shows what has been used this month, the credit left, how far until the pause, and whether the account is paused and why; it updates by itself. Everyone ticked for Technical, Billing or Account emails is emailed when 80% has been used, when the account is paused, and when it resumes.
While the account is paused, every zone answers its visitors with a page saying the site is paused (503, see Error pages and status codes), nothing reaches your origin, and nothing is recorded or billed. A pause because the month's allowance is used lifts by itself on the 1st of the next month. Any other pause lifts as soon as a card or more credit is added. In a month that ends with no card on the account, traffic delivered after the free usage ran out and before the pause reached every location is not charged: where credit paid for part of that month, the invoice shows the rest as Not charged; otherwise no invoice is issued for it.
Adding a card ends the pausing: from then on the zones are served beyond the free usage, and a month that ends with a card on the account is invoiced as above for everything past it.
Sponsored accounts#
A sponsored account is served free: its usage is recorded and shown on its statistics and Billing pages, and no invoice is issued for a sponsored month. It needs its company name, address and country like any account, and no card or VAT number. A sponsorship can be scheduled to end, with the agreement priced from a month our team sets: from the moment that is scheduled, the Billing page shows the terms to come and the month they start, a banner names anything the account will need by then (a card, a VAT number, someone ticked for Billing emails), and nothing locks before that month arrives.
Invoices#
On the 3rd of each month, shortly after 04:00 UTC, we invoice the previous calendar month, which runs from the first second of the 1st to the last second of its last day in UTC. A month with nothing to bill produces no invoice, a month under £5.00 is held over as described above, and there is no other billing run and no separate statement.
The invoice prints the month it covers and any month brought forward with it, one line for each, the account credit it used, your company name, address and VAT number as they stood on your account when it was issued, the VAT treatment with its rate and amount, and that it is due on receipt. What it charges and who it is addressed to are fixed at the moment it is issued: changing your address afterwards changes your next invoice and never one already sent. Its payment status is live, so an invoice you paid yesterday prints as paid today.
Invoices are numbered CG-000001 upwards and credit notes CN-000001 upwards, one sequence of each across all our clients, so your own numbers are not consecutive. A number is never reused and no invoice is ever deleted. Your Billing page lists the most recent 200 documents newest first, with the PDF of each; every document keeps its number and its PDF for good.
VAT#
Which treatment applies is decided by the country on your account and, inside the EU, by whether we hold a VAT number for you in your country's format. It is printed on the invoice in words as well as figures.
| Where you are | What the invoice charges |
|---|---|
| United Kingdom, Isle of Man | UK VAT at the standard rate |
| EU or Monaco, with a VAT number | No UK VAT. The reverse charge applies and your VAT number is printed on the invoice |
| EU or Monaco, with no VAT number and business evidence on file | No UK VAT. The supply is outside its scope |
| Anywhere else | No UK VAT. The supply is outside its scope |
CacheGenie is sold to businesses. An EU business on a paid plan with no VAT number needs evidence that it is a business recorded by our team before the account can be completed.
Paying, and when a charge fails#
The card is charged on the day an invoice is issued, for what the invoice leaves to pay after account credit; nothing is taken in advance and there is no subscription behind it. The invoice email says whether the charge went through, is still settling (a receipt or a failure email follows) or was declined.
A charge that fails is tried again 3 days and then 7 days after the invoice was issued, with an email each time; an invoice with no card on file is not retried. An invoice still unpaid after that is marked overdue, a banner appears on every page of the panel, and the overdue email says what happens next. While an invoice is unpaid, its email carries a link that opens a payment page for that one invoice without logging in (the link lives for 60 days; every reminder email carries a fresh one, and the Billing page needs none), and the Billing page has a Pay now button on it (which reads Payment in progress while a charge is settling). Both open a Mollie checkout, and both accept a card that is not the one on file, which is how to settle an invoice while the stored card is being sorted out.
Your zones keep serving while an invoice is unpaid. Suspending an account is a decision a person at CacheGenie makes, never an automatic one, and a suspended account is emailed when it happens. The Terms of Service say when we may suspend, and their Credit notes and refunds section says what is and is not refundable. A refund goes back to the card that paid the invoice, and comes out of one payment: where a credit is larger than any single payment on the invoice, it is issued as two credit notes.