Understanding commitments

There are several ways to approach this, depending on how much visibility you already have into your project’s resource needs:

1. Use our recommended sizing guides for common stacks

For many traditional CMS and eCommerce workloads, we provide reference architectures and recommended starting configurations at https://sizing.pltfrm.sh/upsun/ 

Each sizing profile includes an explanation of the recommended components, along with an integrated cost calculator to help you understand the expected monthly spend.

2. Start on Upsun without a commitment

You can set up and run your project in pay-as-you-go mode. This lets you observe real provisioning patterns with no long-term obligation. Once your project stabilizes, the usage graphs, resource details, and billing insights in the Upsun console will give you a clear view of what a realistic baseline looks like. You can then move into a commitment for predictable budgeting and discounts.

3. Generate a quick estimate with the pricing calculator

If you already know your approximate resource footprint, the Upsun pricing calculator gives you an immediate projection: https://upsun.com/pricing/calculator 

4. Talk with the Upsun team

If you’d like guidance on architecture, stack-specific expectations, or how to interpret your early provisioning data, our team is here to help. We’re happy to walk through your scenario and provide recommendations based on thousands of real deployments.

In practice, most customers combine one or more of these approaches to arrive at a baseline that feels both realistic and comfortable. The goal is to give you confidence, not to rush your decision.

You can choose between monthly or annual commitments, depending on what best fits your financial planning.

Annual commitments usually require upfront payment and may offer lower discount levels, while monthly spending commitments offer a more incremental payment structure.

In both cases, the commitment amount defines the baseline of what you expect to provision, and usage in excess of that baseline is billed monthly in arrears.

If your project grows or you need more capacity,

commitments can be adjusted upward during the contract period to give you deeper discounts. When you increase your commitment:

• A new contract is created.
• This new contract replaces the previous one.
• The contract term resets, starting a fresh commitment period (e.g., 12 months from the update date).
• The commitment amount cannot be reduced during an active contract term.
   

This approach ensures stability in the agreed baseline while still giving you the flexibility to expand as your projects evolve.

If you’re at the early stage of development and your future provisioning levels are not yet clear, you have several options:

Start without a commitment

Some teams choose to commit only once the project moves from development into a stable production phase. During development, provisions tend to be low and predictable; after launch, you can establish a more accurate commitment baseline.

You can begin in a pay-as-you-go/self-service mode (credit card or SEPA), provision only what you need, and observe your real project behavior. Once your resource profile becomes clearer, you can enter into a commitment to take advantage of discounted rates.

Begin with a lower, conservative commitment.

A modest commitment allows you to receive the discount while keeping the risk of overspending low. You can always increase the commitment later if your needs grow.

All options ensure you stay in control and only commit once you have enough data and confidence in your long-term provisioning needs.

Unlike some other options, we never adjust your resources without your direct input.  While our resources are flexible, they are not “elastic.” Even if you turn on auto-scaling, you are in control of how much the project scales, how it scales, for how long it scales, etc.

Our pricing model is designed so that you stay in control of the vast majority of your spend, because your committed amount and the resources you provision are determined by your own configuration choices.

There are a few components, such as bandwidth and request volume, that are influenced by real-world traffic patterns rather than direct configuration. For most projects, these elements typically account for less than 5% of total spend, so they rarely have a material impact on monthly billing.

To help keep things predictable:

• Commitment discounts that apply to your baseline, absorbing most normal fluctuations.
• Real-time visibility into your traffic-related spend.
• Traffic alerts for bandwidth and request thresholds, as well as overall organization-level spend alerts, allow you to receive email notifications when origin bandwidth or origin request levels approach defined limits.
• Built-in CDN capabilities enable well-architected applications to serve a significant portion of traffic at the edge, which helps keep origin-side traffic and request volumes under control.
• Optional DDoS surge protection, which allows you to flag suspicious CDN traffic events with our support team; if the event qualifies, any bandwidth or request-related costs associated with it will be voided.

In very rare situations, such as a sudden traffic surge or malicious activity, these variable components may temporarily increase. While such events are uncommon, we actively monitor platform health and continuously improve safeguards and mitigations. If you ever notice unexpected behavior, our support team can help you understand what’s happening and explore options to stabilize the situation.

Overall, while no cloud platform can eliminate all external traffic risks, our experience and data show that these variable elements account for only a small, manageable portion of customers’ total costs. Commitments help give you predictable control over the parts that matter most, and the platform provides transparency so you can stay ahead of anything unusual.

The commitment discount applies to the spend level you choose, while all resources and features are priced according to the current list price. When your provisions exceed your committed amount, the excess is billed as an overage.

If that happens frequently, adjusting your commitment can make your monthly billing even more predictable.