FAQ

The following provides detailed information about the Cloud Savings Plans.

General

What are Cloud Savings Plans?

The IONOS CLOUD Savings Plans model provides a lower hourly rate on compute resources in exchange for a planned term of one or three years. It is designed to offer substantial savings for customers with consistent, predictable workloads.

How do Savings Plans help me save money?

Choosing a plan for a set usage and term provides a substantially lower hourly rate rate on your eligible cloud usage compared to Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) prices. Regular PAYG rates apply to any usage exceeding your plan.

What terms are available?

You can choose either a one-year or a three-year term, based on your needs.

How do I get billed?

For detailed information about various billing use case scenarios, see Use Cases. The invoice also reflects resource distribution applying the oldest Virtual Machines (VMs) first rule, and the incurred cost for resource usage. For more information, see Invoice.

Are the Savings Plans similar to a Reserved Instance (RI)?

They are similar in that both offer optimized prices for usage.

Reserved Instances	Savings Plans
- It often requires you to select specific instance types, regions, and operating systems. - Usually includes a capacity reservation.	- Offers broader flexibility. - Applies to usage across various CPU models, sizes, regions, and operating systems. - Continues to apply even if your workload changes. - Applies only at the financial level and does not provide capacity reservation.

How can I determine if Savings Plans is better for me than PAYG?

Choosing between Savings Plans and PAYG depends on your workload patterns and financial goals. For stable and predictable usage, Savings Plans offer better value. For flexible, short-term, or variable usage, PAYG provides more adaptability. The table below outlines the criteria for evaluating and selecting the most suitable plan based on your workload and usage patterns.

Cloud Savings Plans	PAYG
Your workloads are stable and consistently running.	Your workloads are sporadic or subject to sudden spikes.
You aim to reduce costs through long-term plans.	You operate short-term or temporary workloads. You are in an exploratory, development, or testing phase.
You have a fixed workload.	Your workloads vary frequently.
You want to benefit from loyalty-based plan rates and long-term investment returns.	You need maximum flexibility, including for multi-cloud environments.

Why should I opt for the Savings Plans, and what value do they add?

• Resource-based commitment: Savings Plans are based on a commitment to a total amount of resource usage rather than to specific VM families. Example: 50 cores and 200 GB of RAM.
• Flexible resource allocation: The resource-based model enables workloads to migrate across VM types and families without compromising the benefits of the Savings Plan's pricing. This flexibility ensures that savings follow the workload, regardless of instance configuration.
• Change VMs anytime: You can upgrade, downgrade, or change the CPU family of your VMs at any time. The Savings Plans are automatically applied to the new VM configuration, provided it is within your resource limits.
• Availability across regions: The Savings Plans apply across all eligible usage in supported IONOS CLOUD data centers and regions. You need not restrict workloads to a specific location to benefit from the pricing of the Savings Plans.
• Kubernetes integration: Savings Plans extend to IONOS CLOUD's Managed Kubernetes environments. Resources consumed by nodes are eligible for coverage under Savings Plans. You can scale or resize node pools, and the savings adjust accordingly.
• Capped coverage: The preferential pricing applies only up to the selected amount of resources. For example, if you select 50 cores but use 60, the Savings Plan's rate covers the first 50, and the remaining 10 are billed at the standard PAYG rates.
• Chronological application: IONOS CLOUD applies the Savings Plan benefits in a chronological order, starting with the oldest eligible VM. The rates are applied until the selected amount is reached.

Purchase and Management

How can I get started with the Savings Plans?

1. Fulfill the prerequisites: Make sure you meet all prerequisites before proceeding.

2. Review the use cases: Explore the Use Cases to understand different scenarios. This will help you choose the plan that best fits your needs based on your past resource usage.

3. Understand the Cloud Savings Plan's lifecycle: Go through the lifecycle to learn how the Savings Plans work from creation to completion.

4. Create and manage your plan: Use the Data Center Designer (DCD) to create and manage your Savings Plans.

Can I pay upfront for my Savings Plans?

No, we currently only accept monthly recurring payments for your Savings Plans.

Can I change or cancel Savings Plans after I have purchased them?

Savings Plans cannot be modified or canceled once purchased. They commit you to a specific level of usage for the selected term. If you need additional resources, you will need to purchase additional Savings Plans. Therefore, you must carefully analyze your usage and choose your plans accordingly.

What happens if I do not use the full quantity defined in my Savings Plans?

Accurate usage forecasting is key to getting the most value from your plan. The full amount of resources in your plan is billed on a recurring basis, whether or not your actual usage reaches that level. Any unused resources do not roll over to the next billing period.

Monitoring and Optimization

How can I track my Savings Plan's utilization and savings?

You can monitor your resource usage costs using the invoice, Cost & Usage, in combination with Cost Alert, which allows you to manage your cloud expenditures proactively. With these alerts and reports, you can leverage your plans and identify potential areas for optimization.

Do the Savings Plans apply to all cloud products in my contract?

The Savings Plans apply to the following products:

• Compute Engine - Dedicated Core Servers
• Managed Kubernetes - Dedicated Core Node Pools

Invoice

How are Savings Plans represented in my invoice?

• Resource consumption billed at PAYG rates appears under its respective VDC.
• Resource consumption covered by a Savings Plan is moved from its VDC and grouped under the plan's name.