How Billing Works¶
To make our billing model as transparent as possible, we put together this article that explains how and what you are billed. There are three different line items you may see on your monthly invoice:
- Subscription (prepaid, for the next month or year)
- Infrastructure and tooling (postpaid, for the past month)
- Active security layer (postpaid, for the past month)
Invoices generated by MedStack are in USD.
See our billing example below for a detailed walkthrough.
Subscription¶
Our pricing page shows the available subscription tiers, or you can contact us for a personalized quote.
Each subscription can be purchased as either a monthly or an annual subscription. Annual subscriptions are less expensive per month than monthly subscriptions.
All subscriptions are prepaid, meaning they are invoiced in advance of the month or year the subscription covers.
Monthly subscriptions¶
Monthly subscriptions are invoiced immediately and renew every month after the start date. The start date of the monthly subscription aligns with the start date of the infrastructure billing period.
Annual subscriptions¶
Annual subscriptions are invoiced immediately and renew every year from the start date. The start date of the annual subscription aligns with the start date of the infrastructure billing period. Annual subscriptions will not appear on the remaining monthly invoices during the subscribed year, which will only contain the postpaid charges for infrastructure, tooling, and the active security layer.
Infrastructure and tooling¶
When you build resources in MedStack Control, they're provisioned within MedStack's cloud provider and tracked as linked to your MedStack company ID.
Each month, we pass the costs incurred by resources linked to your MedStack company ID from the cloud provider through to you. We also install third-party tooling on your resources to enable MedStack Control's privacy, security, and compliance guarantees. The costs of these tools are also passed through to you.
Infrastructure billing covers a one month period of infrastructure, resource, and tool usage starting on the date of your MedStack Control subscription, and recurs every month.
Since these costs are based on usage, they are invoiced at the end of the billing period during which the usage occurred.
SKUs¶
The approximate costs are estimated for resources provisioned in the East US region and vary across different regions.
All virtual machines are installed with a 32 GB SSD that is accounted for in the approximate cost.
The network and bandwidth costs are excluded from the approximate costs below but will be invoiced based on usage.
📘 Backups use CPU, network, and bandwidth
Due to the nature of the Docker backup system on MedStack Control, which captures data snapshots every hour and retains them within the backup system's lifecycle rules, it is expected to see extra network and bandwidth usage each month. We also recommend planning for some extra capacity on nodes beyond your expected application usage, to account for backups and avoid unexpected behaviour due to resource exhaustion/constraints.
Nodes (Virtual machines)¶
| Product | SKU | Approximate cost (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Virtual machine | Small: B1ms | $15/mo |
| Virtual machine | Medium: B2s | $30/mo |
| Virtual machine | Large: D2s_v3 | $70/mo |
| Virtual machine | X-Large: D4s_v3 | $140/mo |
Databases (Flexible database servers)¶
| Product | SKU | Approximate cost (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Postgres flexible database server | Burstable: B1ms (1 vcore, 2 GiB memory) | $15/mo + $0.115/GB storage |
| Postgres flexible database server | Burstable: B2s (2 vcores, 4 GiB memory) | $50/mo + $0.115/GB storage |
| Postgres flexible database server | General purpose: Ddsv4 (2-64 vcores, 8-256 GiB memory) | $65/mo per vcore + $0.115/GB storage |
| Postgres flexible database server | Memory Optimized: Edsv4 (2-64 vcores, 16-512 GiB memory) | $95/mo per vcore + $0.115/GB storage |
| MySQL flexible database server | Burstable: B1s (1 vcore, 1 GiB memory) | $6/mo + $0.115/GB storage |
| MySQL flexible database server | Burstable: B1ms (1 vcore, 2 GiB memory) | $15/mo + $0.115/GB storage |
| MySQL flexible database server | Burstable: B2s (2 vcores, 4 GiB memory) | $50/mo + $0.115/GB storage |
| MySQL flexible database server | General purpose: Ddsv4 (2-64 vcores, 8-256 GiB memory) | $65/mo per vcore + $0.115/GB storage |
| MySQL flexible database server | Business Critical: Edsv4 (2-64 vcores, 16-512 GiB memory) | $90/mo per vcore + $0.115/GB storage |
📘 Want to get a cost estimate?
You can use the Azure pricing calculator to approximate the costs incurred by the cloud provider. These appear as "passed-through costs" on your invoice. See our billing example below.
Storage¶
The storage costs that are passed-through on each infrastructure invoice can include the costs incurred on the cloud provider for the following services:
- The Docker backup system
- Object storage
📘 Storage costs will increase over time
Due to the nature of the Docker backup system on MedStack Control, which captures data snapshots every hour and retains them within the backup system's lifecycle rules, it is expected to see the storage costs increase each month.
Storage costs are composed of:
- Operations on the object store (like create, read/list, write, etc.)
- Data volume (when retrieving and writing data)
Third-party tooling¶
| Product | Approximate cost (USD) |
|---|---|
| Intrusion Detection System | $20/virtual machine |
Active security layer¶
MedStack Control continuously monitors for and responds to threats and system vulnerabilities, as well as patches and maintains the underlying systems your applications run on.
The active security layer cost is 20% of the passed-through cost (i.e. infrastructure and tooling) and is invoiced at the end of each infrastructure period when those costs become available.
Billing example¶
Let's say you signed up for an annual Startup subscription to MedStack Control on July 4, 2024. Here is what the first two invoices could look like:
Invoice: July 4, 2024¶
| Item | Cost (USD) |
|---|---|
| Startup annual subscription | $14,388 |
Invoice: August 4, 2024¶
The following month's invoice on August 4, 2024.
| Item | Cost (USD) |
|---|---|
| Startup annual subscription | $0 |
| Passed-through cost: virtual machines | $268.92 |
| Passed-through cost: network | $4.26 |
| Passed-through cost: bandwidth | $9.09 |
| Passed-through cost: intrusion detection | $96.42 |
| Passed-through cost: storage | $22.01 |
| Active security layer | $53.78 |
Invoice: July 4, 2025¶
The following year's invoice on July 4, 2025, the annual subscription will automatically be billed for another year of service and the previous month's usage of cloud resources that are passed-through and the active security layer are also included in the invoice.
In this example, the user spun up a large flexible PostgreSQL database server as well, which you can see as a new line item in the invoice.
| Item | Cost (USD) |
|---|---|
| Startup annual subscription | $14,388 |
| Passed-through cost: virtual machines | $1655.08 |
| Passed-through cost: network | $11.12 |
| Passed-through cost: bandwidth | $24.85 |
| Passed-through cost: intrusion detection | $320.99 |
| Passed-through cost: storage | $72.66 |
| Passed-through cost: flexible database for postgresql | $1049.49 |
| Active security layer | $333.02 |
Invoice: August 4, 2025¶
And the following monthly invoice would have a similar structure as expected.
| Item | Cost (USD) |
|---|---|
| Startup annual subscription | $0 |
| Passed-through cost: virtual machines | $1865.98 |
| Passed-through cost: network | $15.18 |
| Passed-through cost: bandwidth | $32.11 |
| Passed-through cost: intrusion detection | $400.88 |
| Passed-through cost: storage | $101.12 |
| Passed-through cost: flexible database for postgresql | $1583.33 |
| Active security layer | $373.20 |