Cloud provider discount & payment / Alibaba Cloud
Elastic Compute Service (ECS)
ECS instance families, regions, billing and provisioning
Elastic Compute Service (ECS) is the basic building block of Alibaba Cloud: pick an instance family, an availability zone and an image, and you have a server you can log into within seconds, billed by the hour. For cross-border businesses, ECS is the substrate under websites, APIs, game servers and container clusters. This page answers the questions international buyers ask most: which instance family to take, how billing mode shapes the long-run bill, whether to sit in Hong Kong or Singapore, how the international site differs from the China site, and how to get the account provisioned with us handling payment.
Specs & pricing
| Instance | vCPU | Memory | Bandwidth | Monthly data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General purpose g7.large | 2 | 8 GiB | 1–5 Mbps | ~1 TB |
| General purpose g7.xlarge | 4 | 16 GiB | 1–10 Mbps | ~2 TB |
| Compute optimized c7.large | 2 | 4 GiB | 1–5 Mbps | ~1 TB |
| Memory optimized r7.large | 2 | 16 GiB | 1–5 Mbps | ~1 TB |
| Burstable t5.large | 2 | 2 GiB | 1–5 Mbps | ~1 TB |
What ECS is, and where it fits
ECS is a virtual server, but it differs from buying a PC in a few useful ways: you can resize it at any time, expand data disks without rebuilding, reset the system image in place, and attach it to SLB, CDN and CEN inside the same account without private networking between clouds. On billing it offers on-demand, monthly/annual subscription and reserved instance rights, and switching between them changes the long-run shape of your bill. The international site’s regions are weighted toward overseas data centres, with availability zones laid out around overseas user distribution.
How ECS is billed, and what people forget
- On-demand: billed hourly, provisioned in seconds. Good for development and spiky workloads, but with no term commitment it also carries no commitment discount.
- Monthly / annual subscription: one purchase covering 1–12 months, typically in the 40–60% range of the on-demand public list price. This is the default for production.
- Reserved instance rights: commit for 1–3 years for a lower unit price, scoped by region and instance family. Cheapest for steady long-running load.
- Bandwidth billing: either fixed bandwidth priced per Mbps, or pay-by-traffic billed on gigabytes actually used. The latter suits sites heavy on images and video.
- Disks bill separately: system and data disks are priced independently, and cloud disk types (efficient cloud disk, SSD, ESSD) differ markedly in unit price. Do not default to the most expensive one.
- The monthly-data column above is a reference magnitude for pay-by-traffic at a common bandwidth tier, not an included allowance. Current unit prices and discounts follow the official live quote.
Choosing a region by users, not by sticker price
| Region ID | Location | Best for | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ap-east-1 | Hong Kong, China | Greater China and Taiwan users | The usual starting point for cross-border work; solid paths into South China |
| ap-southeast-1 | Singapore | Southeast Asia, Australia, NZ | APAC hub with more availability zones |
| ap-northeast-1 | Tokyo, Japan | Japan and East Asia | Stable paths into Northeast Asia |
| us-west-1 | Silicon Valley, US | North America west coast | The common region for North American traffic |
| eu-central-1 | Frankfurt, Germany | Europe | Frequent landing point for EU data residency |
International site vs China site: what actually differs
This is where overseas buyers trip most often: assuming a China-site account, coupon or resource can be carried over to the international site. The two are entirely separate account systems and price systems — accounts, billing and promotional credits do not cross over. A cross-border workload should be opened on the international site directly, rather than building on a China-site instance and trying to connect out.
| Aspect | International site | China site |
|---|---|---|
| Account and verification | Opened through the international flow, with payment verification handled with our help | Requires mainland China real-name verification; not shared with the international site |
| Payment | Supports international card schemes and bank transfer, with payment intermediary service available | Primarily RMB and domestic payment channels |
| Available regions | Weighted to overseas regions such as ap-east-1, ap-southeast-1, us-west-1 | Weighted to mainland China and Hong Kong / Macau regions |
| Price system | International public price list, stackable with partner discounts | China-site price list; the two are not offsettable against each other |
| Console and docs | Chinese interface and Chinese documentation, friendly to domestic teams | Chinese-native, but overseas resources need a separate channel |
Instance families compared
| Family | vCPU : memory | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| General purpose g7 | 1:2 to 1:8 | Most web services, APIs, internal systems | The safe default when you are unsure |
| Compute optimized c7 | 1:1 to 1:4 | Concurrency-heavy compute, builds, CI | Memory is tight; do not run a database on it |
| Memory optimized r7 | 1:4 to 1:16 | Databases, caches, Elasticsearch | CPU-bound work becomes the bottleneck quickly |
| Burstable t5 | 1:1 | Personal sites, low-load test environments | Has a baseline CPU limit; excess is billed proportionally |
The single rule that saves the most
Region first, bandwidth second, specs last. Done in any other order, the two most common wastes are picking a distant region to save 20% and losing conversion, and sizing bandwidth to peak concurrency so it idles all month. Latency and idle bandwidth are hidden costs you should price in revenue terms.
How to get provisioned and paid through us
- Send the requirement: business purpose, target region, expected configuration and rough timeline — by ticket or on-site contact, whichever suits you
- We help complete account provisioning and payment verification on the international site — no personal credit card binding, no personal identity documents
- Once the account is live you work in the official console: pick region, instance family, image and disks, while we send you the discount breakdown
- After you confirm the order we settle payment on your behalf; the order and the bill stay visible in the official console at any time
- Resizing, adding bandwidth and buying reserved instance rights later follow the same flow, with no need to re-collect payment materials
Mistakes newcomers make most
- Sharing one main account key: create RAM sub-accounts and grant least privilege instead, so one departure does not take every resource with it
- Opening port 22 to
0.0.0.0/0in the security group: that exposes the management entry point to the whole internet — always restrict the source IP range - No automatic snapshots: without images to reset from, a corrupted disk means rebuilding the machine
- Buying production-grade commitments for dev boxes: idle test machines are cheaper powered off or on on-demand
- Running production permanently on on-demand: unit prices are several times higher than subscription; switch once traffic stabilises
- Leaving billing alerts off: configure the budget and alerts in the cost centre on day one
Typical workloads
Open a Alibaba Cloud account with us
We handle official provisioning and payment verification — no personal card, no identity documents. Order directly in the vendor console once live.
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