Understand cloud costs and billing
Managing cloud costs and billing can be complex. Here’s an overview of key concepts and terms used in the STACKIT platform.
Key Concepts
Section titled “Key Concepts”Billing Account
Section titled “Billing Account”A billing account defines who pays for STACKIT cloud resources. It is connected to a payment profile that holds your payment information. For more information, see Billing accounts.
Billing Reference
Section titled “Billing Reference”The billing reference can be maintained inside the project settings and is shown on the invoice next to the project name and project ID. It provides a way to allocate the costs of a STACKIT project (e.g., to a cost center).
Consumption
Section titled “Consumption”Consumption refers to the total amount of a resource you use over a period of time. For example, if you use a virtual machine (VM) for 6 hours, your consumption is 6 hours.
Costs are the amount you pay for the services consumed. Costs are usually consumption-based, meaning they result from metered usage. All amounts are expressed in euros (€).
Resources and Products
Section titled “Resources and Products”Price components
Section titled “Price components”Some STACKIT products consist of several price components. For example, a PostgreSQL database resource includes four price components: Flavor, Storage, Storageclass, and Backupstorage. Each price component is linked to one SKU. This SKU is metered and shown on the invoice and inside the cost dashboard.
A price component is the smallest billable unit of a product variant, identified by a unique ID. As long as it’s active, it’s measured and priced.
Product
Section titled “Product”A product is a type of STACKIT cloud resource, such as File Storage or MongoDB Flex. Each specific, configurable variant of a product is represented by a Stock Keeping Unit (SKU).
Stock Keeping Unit (SKU)
Section titled “Stock Keeping Unit (SKU)”A SKU is a unique identifier assigned to a specific, sellable product variant. For example, the SKU number ST-0036301 uniquely identifies the product variant PostgreSQL-Flex-16.128-Single-EU01.
Resource
Section titled “Resource”A resource is a general term for a virtual cloud service. When you order a product, a single resource is provisioned. If the product has multiple price components that are billed separately, the resource includes all those price components.
Other Terms
Section titled “Other Terms”Invoice
Section titled “Invoice”An invoice is a detailed commercial document that lists the products you ordered, the total amount due, and the preferred payment method.
Organization, Folder, and Project
Section titled “Organization, Folder, and Project”An organization is the root entity for structuring cloud resources.
A folder is a hierarchy element that is connected to an organization and can contain projects and other folders.
A project is the foundation for creating and using STACKIT cloud products. Each project contains the provisioned cloud resources.