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Credit and charges

Everything on PivoCloud is paid for out of one balance, in Algerian dinars. This page covers what that balance is, how you add to it, what each thing costs, when the money actually leaves, and what happens if it runs out.

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Your credit, and what it is

One account, one balance. Apps and databases are both paid from it, so there is nothing else to set up and no card kept on file anywhere. Wallet in the sidebar is where that balance lives. The page header reads Wallet with the balance beside it, and the same page carries the Top Up button and the history of every top-up you have asked for. A new account starts at zero. There is a starting credit you claim once, and how do I start using PivoCloud covers claiming it and what it buys.

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Adding credit

Credit is added by BaridiMob transfer, and a person at PivoCloud approves it. No part of that approval is automatic. Three of the four steps are yours.
  1. Open Wallet and press Top Up. The dialog is titled Top Up Wallet. Choose one of the Quick amounts or type your own figure into Custom amount (DA). The smallest amount you can ask for is 100 DA and the largest is 10,000,000 DA.
  2. Press Request Top-Up. The dialog moves to a second step titled BaridiMob Payment Instructions, which shows you three things: the account to pay, the Amount to send, and a Payment Reference to quote on the transfer. Send that exact amount and quote that reference. PivoCloud does not publish the account to pay anywhere, on this page or on any other: the one to use is the one this step shows you, and it is issued with your request.
  3. Your request now sits in the table below, under Date, Amount, Status and Actions. Press Upload proof on its row and attach a screenshot of the transfer.
Then comes the step that is not yours. Someone at PivoCloud reviews the request by hand, so the credit does not appear the moment you upload the proof. Status is where you watch it. Pending means the request is waiting to be reviewed. Approved means the credit is already on your balance. Rejected means it was not accepted, and the reason appears under the row. An email reaches you when the request is decided, either way, so you do not have to sit on the page waiting. If a promotion is running, the approval email and your top-up history show the extra credit as a separate bonus line. Nothing announces one in advance, so treat it as a surprise rather than as something to count on. The amount credited can differ from the amount you asked for. This happens when the transfer that arrived is not the amount you requested. In that case the Amount in your history shows what was actually credited, and a line under the row reads, for example, Requested 2,000 DA, credited 1,900 DA. followed by a note from the PivoCloud team explaining why. The approval email names the amount credited too. Any bonus is computed on the amount credited.

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Balance adjustments

Sometimes the PivoCloud team changes your balance directly, for example to refund a charge or to correct a mistake. Every such change appears on the Wallet page, under the top-up history, in a section called Balance adjustments. Each row shows the Date, the Amount (a plus sign when credit was added) and a Note explaining the reason. The section only appears once there is at least one adjustment on your account.

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When you are charged

Two rules, and they are not the same rule. An app is charged when it first deploys, not when you create it. Creating an app takes nothing from your balance. The first deploy opens a paid period and takes that app’s monthly price. Every deploy after that takes nothing at all: you can redeploy as often as you like inside a period you have already paid for. An app whose monthly price is zero is never charged. A database is charged when you create it. There is no separate deploy step for a database, so the tier’s monthly price leaves your balance at the moment the database is created. A paid period is 30 days long in both cases. When it renews, the next period starts exactly where the last one ended, so there is no gap and no day is paid for twice. Your app’s Billing tab shows its Monthly price and a Next charge line carrying the amount and the date it falls on. That tab also carries the Auto-renewal switch, and this is the page that covers it. Turn it off and the app stops renewing: at the end of the period you have already paid for, it expires instead of opening another one. Turning it back on needs a period that is still running, so an app that has none has the switch disabled until you deploy it again. Two things this page deliberately does not repeat. What each button on a running app does to your bill, control by control, is on what does each button on my app page do. What happens to a charge when a deploy fails, including the part of your history that looks wrong and is not, is on why did my deploy fail.

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What an app plan costs

Three plans you can buy today. The price is per app, per month. The apps column is how many apps that plan lets you run at once. The custom domain column is whether you may put a name you own in front of an app on that plan, and how do I put my own domain on my app is the page for doing it.

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What a database tier costs

Three tiers. The price is per database, per month. The tiers differ in how far back you can go as well as in how much they hold. Starter brings a database back to one of its backups. Growth and Business can bring it back to a moment you choose rather than only to a backup, and how far back that reaches depends on the tier. What a restore actually produces, what it costs and how far each tier lets you go is on how do I get my data back.

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Two names that mean two things

Read every price above together with the kind of thing it prices, because two names collide and so does one price. Starter is an app plan at 3,600 DA and, separately, a database tier at 1,200 DA: the same word, two different products, two different prices. And 1,200 DA is the price of the Lite app plan and also the price of the Starter database tier: the same price, two different products. An app plan never includes a database, and a database tier never includes an app, so what you pay each month is one line for every thing you created, read off whichever of the two tables it belongs to.

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Your price does not change under you

The price of an app or a database is fixed the moment you create it, and it stays at that figure for as long as that app or that database exists. If our published prices go up, yours does not. One thing changes it, and that thing is you. Changing an app’s plan takes the new plan’s price as it stands on the day you change it, and that becomes the app’s fixed price from then on. Nothing else moves it. A database has no tier change at all, so a database keeps the price it was created at for its whole life.

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If your credit runs out

Nothing is taken away without warning. Four steps, in this order.
  1. A low-balance warning, 5 days ahead. When a charge is coming that your balance cannot cover, an email reaches you 5 days before it is due.
  2. Suspension, when the charge fails. The app or the database stops serving. Nothing is deleted and nothing is lost at this step.
  3. A notice 7 days before deletion, naming the date. One email per suspended app or database, carrying the exact date its data goes.
  4. Permanent deletion, 30 days after suspension. After that the data is gone and cannot be brought back.
Three things worth knowing about that ladder. The low-balance warning is one per account, not one per app or database. If you are short on two things at once you get one email rather than two, so read it as a warning about your balance and not as a warning about the one thing it happens to name. The date you are told is the date that is used. The notice names a day, and that is the day the deletion runs. Deletion can be extended for some accounts. Suspension never is. Where an extension applies it delays the deletion only, and when it ends the full wait starts again from that point, with a fresh notice before anything goes. The good news is the simplest part of this page. Top up, and your suspended apps and databases come back on their own, up to what the new balance covers. There is nothing else to press.