Billing Overview

Overview

This document describes the billing system for the solution plans, products and services provided by Mithi. 

Solution Packs, Products & Services

The solution plans, products and services provided by Mithi are as described in the table below:

Products

The products provided by Mithi are as described in the table below:

Services

The Services provided by Mithi are as described in the table below. These services are optional services to improve the security and integration of the hosted solutions.

Solution Packs

Solution packs which cater to use cases, are made up of two or more products and services. For example, the Vaultastic Solution Plans bundle Vaultastic stores, LegacyFlo migration credit and Ideolve for the Live Store usage.

The product quantities made available via the packs are fined tuned for the use cases they support. Customers can also buy additional credits on extra storage, access or migration needs using one of the Add Packs 

Payment Agreements

You can subscribe to one or more of the Mithi services using a payment agreement. The payment agreements possible are as given in the table below

The following table maps the payment agreements available for the different products/services.

SKU/Item Codes

Usage units for Contract and PPU billing

The units for the Contract and Pay Per Use payment agreement are explained in the table below. If you have entered into a Contract payment agreement for a Mithi product and your usage is over the subscribed units, then your extra usage will be billed on a monthly basis. The unit for the extra usage is the same as the unit for Pay Per Use.

Understanding the Client Access and Storage units for Pay Per Use or Extra Usage billing

Userday/month

This usage unit is used for the calculation of the pay per use or extra user bill.

Example of usage over 5 days for ease of understanding

Pay Per Use calculation for the users

Usage calculation

= Day 1 users  + Day 2 users + Day 3 users  + Day 4 users  + Day 5 users 

= 10 + 10 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 65 Userday 

Cost calculation

If the subscription rate of users is at INR 2/day (*Not an actual price), then the total user subscription cost for the 5 days will be

= 65 * 2  = INR 130

Contract purchase of 10 users + extra usage 

Usage calculation

If you have purchased 10 user subscriptions and are using as per the above table, then for a Contract payment agreement, the extra usage will be 

= Day 1 extra users + Day 2 extra users + Day 3 extra users + Day 4 extra users + Day 5 extra users 

= (10-10) + (10-10) + (15-10) + (15-10) + (15-10) = 0 + 0 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 15 Userday

Cost calculation

If the rate of user subscription is at INR 2/day,  then the total extra user subscription cost for the 5 days will be

= 15 *2  = INR 30

GBday/month

Lets take an example of storage usage over 5 days for ease of understanding.

Pay Per Use calculation for the storage

Usage calculation

= Day 1 storage  + Day 2 storage  + Day 3 storage  + Day 4 storage  + Day 5 storage 

= 10 + 30 + 30 + 25 + 5 = 100 GBday 

Cost calculation

If the rate of storage is at INR 1/day, then the total storage cumulative cost for the 5 days will be 

= 100 * 1 = INR 100

Contract purchase of 5 GB + extra usage 

Usage calculation

If you have purchased 5 GB and are using as per the above table, then for a Contract payment agreement, the extra storage usage will be 

= Day 1 extra storage + Day 2 extra storage + Day 3 extra storage + Day 4 extra storage + Day 5 extra storage 

= (10-5) + (30-5) + (30-5) + (25-5) + (5-5) = 5 + 25 + 25 + 20 + 0 = 75 Gbday

Cost calculation

If the rate of storage is at INR 1/day, then the total extra storage cost for the 5 days will be

= 75 *1  = INR 75

SkyConnect Billing

Contract

For a Contract payment agreement for the SkyConnect product, you will get the invoices as explained in the table below:

Note:  Extra quantities can also be purchased by updating the quantities in the Contract. An updated invoice with the additional quantities for the remaining period of the contract will be raised.

Pay Per Use

Vaultastic Version 4 Billing

Contract

For a Contract payment agreement for the Vaultastic Version 4, you will get the invoices as explained in the table below:

Pay Per Use

ClrStream Billing

Contract

Pay Per Use

LegacyFlo Billing

Overview

• To use LegacyFlo, you have to submit one or more jobs.
• Each job has a type.
• All the jobs are classified into 6 different billing categories and the billing is done as per the category.
• The billing for a particular job is done in the month the request is completed. 
• The table below maps the job types to the billing categories.

Contract

Pay Per Use

Ideolve Billing

Contract

For a Contract payment agreement for the Ideolve product, you will get the invoices as explained in the table below:

Note:  Extra quantities can also be purchased by updating the quantities in the Contract. An updated invoice with the additional quantities for the remaining period of the contract will be raised.

Pay Per Use

Vaultastic Solution Packs

Contract

For a Contract payment agreement for the Vaultastic Solutions Packs, you will get the invoices as explained in the table below:

VPN Billing

Contract

ADFS Billing

Contract

ConnectXF Billing

Contract

Mithi One time services

Contract

Commencement of the billing period

For Pay Per Use (the default payment agreement) or Contract agreement, your billing commences once you confirm your intent to use our services.  You can confirm your intent via a Purchase order or via a simple email from the registered email id (the one used to sign up for the service) and can do so at any point in time. Typically, this is done once your free trial period is over.

Cancellation

You may cancel the services at any time, with or without cause. You may lose access and use of your account and data uploaded when you cancel the services. 

For any un-utilized portion of your advance payments, there will no refund issued.

For Contract payment agreement, if you cancel your services midway with reasonable justification of deficiency of service to the extent that your users are unable to use the service, Mithi may consider refunding the pro-rata portion of the remaining period of the already paid for services (e.g. if you have paid for a year and you decide to terminate the contract after 6 months, the refund due would be only for the amount for 6 months). In any case, the claim will be limited to a refund not exceeding the customer’s purchase price for the product or service.

Renewal of subscription

Renewals are automatic and at currently listed prices, unless you cancel the use of our products/services.

Reducing the usage

For Contract and PPU payment agreements, the impact of reducing users/storage is as explained in the tables below:

SkyConnect

Vaultastic V4

Additional Purchases

Other invoices

If you avail of any other services from Mithi such as services for deployment, configuration and migration, a separate invoice will be raised for the same.

Payments

All invoices are expected to be paid within 15 days from the date of the invoice. 

You can opt to pay online or send us a Cheque/DD or directly transfer the payment into our bank account. Please don’t forget to mention the invoice number, you are paying for, in the comments section or at the back of the Cheque. Please note that the payment is to be completed within 15 days from the date of invoice.

License management 

Delayed renewals and payments impact us and indirectly affect the service level. We know you are busy, and to help you remember to renew your Contract and pay on time, all the Mithi products and services are controlled by a license manager. The license manager, in turn, is controlled by the billing system.

PPU Prepaid and License

• You enter into a PPU Prepaid payment agreement by placing a purchase order (PO) with Mithi.
• The license applied to the products depends on the payment terms and the agrement renewal date.
• On receipt of a PO (new customer or renewal), the license applied to the products will reflect the next payment schedule or renewal date, whichever is earlier.
• Payments
  • For example, if the PO mentions a 100% advance within 15 days, then the license will be updated to expire after 15 days.
  • If you make the payment within 15 days of the date of the invoice and inform us via the Record Payment application in your Mithi account portal, the billing team will extend your license to the next payment schedule or renewal date, whichever comes first.
  • If your payment is not received within 15 days of the invoice date, then the license on your products will be set to expire immediately and will be extended only on receipt of payment. On recording a delayed payment, the system will automatically extend the license by five calendar days. The billing team will validate your payment and, if found valid, will set the license to a date of the next payment or renewal.
  • If you need more time to process your payments in exceptional situations, you can request an extension using the License Extension application in your Mithi account portal.
  • Similarly, if the payment terms are quarterly, on receipt of the first payment, the license will be set to expire on the payment schedule for the next quarter and so on.
• Renewal
  • If the payment terms are yearly and you have paid the advance along with the PO, the product license will be set to expire on the next renewal date.
  • If the renewal is not done before that date, then the license on the products will expire and will be extended only on renewal.
  • In exceptional situations, if you need more time to process your renewals, you can request an extension using the License Extension application in your Mithi account portal.
• Credits getting over

  • A new invoice for the extra usage and the estimate till the end of the agreement will be raised immediately and you are expected to pay within 15 days (NET15).

  • Suppose you make the payment within 15 days of the date of the invoice. Please inform us via the Record Payment application in your Mithi account portal. The billing team is regularly checking all payments made to us, and if your payment is found, your bill will be marked as paid in the Bill Desk. Since the license did not expire, there will be no change to the license.

  • If your payment is not received within 15 days of the invoice date, then the license on your products will be set to expire immediately and will be extended only on receipt of payment. On recording a delayed payment, the system will automatically extend the license by five calendar days. The billing team will validate your payment and, if found valid, will set the license to a date in the distant future.

  • If you need more time to process your payments in exceptional situations, you can request an extension using the  License Extension application in your Mithi account portal.

Pay-Per-Use (PPU) Postpaid and License

• By default, all customers who subscribe to Mithi products using the Pay-Per-Use Payment Agreement will have a perpetual license applied to all their subscribed products. This means that the license end date will be in the distant future, allowing uninterrupted usage.

• PPU invoices for the previous month’s usage are generated and sent by the 8th of every month, and you are expected to pay within 15 days (NET15).

• Suppose you make the payment within 15 days of the date of the invoice. Please inform us via the Record Payment application in your Mithi account portal. The billing team is regularly checking all payments made to us, and if your payment is found, your bill will be marked as paid in the Bill Desk. Since the license did not expire, there will be no change to the license.

• If your payment is not received within 15 days of the invoice date, then the license on your products will be set to expire immediately and will be extended only on receipt of payment. On recording a delayed payment, the system will automatically extend the license by five calendar days. The billing team will validate your payment and, if found valid, will set the license to a date in the distant future.

• If you need more time to process your payments in exceptional situations, you can request an extension using the License Extension application in your Mithi account portal.

Contract and License

• You enter into a Contract payment agreement by placing a purchase order (PO) with Mithi.
• The license applied to the products depends on the payment terms and the Contract Renewal date.
• On receipt of a PO (new customer or renewal), the license applied to the products will reflect the next payment schedule or renewal date, whichever is earlier.
• Payments
  • For example, if the PO mentions a 100% advance within 15 days, then the license will be updated to expire after 15 days.
  • If you make the payment within 15 days of the date of the invoice and inform us via the Record Payment application in your Mithi account portal, the billing team will extend your license to the next payment schedule or renewal date, whichever comes first.
  • If your payment is not received within 15 days of the invoice date, then the license on your products will be set to expire immediately and will be extended only on receipt of payment. On recording a delayed payment, the system will automatically extend the license by five calendar days. The billing team will validate your payment and, if found valid, will set the license to a date in the distant future.
  • If you need more time to process your payments in exceptional situations, you can request an extension using the License Extension application in your Mithi account portal.
  • Similarly, if the payment terms are quarterly, on receipt of the first payment, the license will be set to expire on the payment schedule for the next quarter and so on.
• Renewal
  • If the payment terms are yearly and you have paid the advance along with the PO, the product license will be set to expire on the next renewal date.
  • If the renewal is not done before that date, then the license on the products will expire and will be extended only on renewal.
  • In exceptional situations, if you need more time to process your renewals, you can request an extension using the License Extension application in your Mithi account portal.
• Extra Usage

  • Extra Usage invoices for the previous month’s usage are generated and sent by the 8th of every month, and you are expected to pay within 15 days (NET15).

  • Suppose you make the payment within 15 days of the date of the invoice. Please inform us via the Record Payment application in your Mithi account portal. The billing team is regularly checking all payments made to us, and if your payment is found, your bill will be marked as paid in the Bill Desk. Since the license did not expire, there will be no change to the license.

  • If your payment is not received within 15 days of the invoice date, then the license on your products will be set to expire immediately and will be extended only on receipt of payment. On recording a delayed payment, the system will automatically extend the license by five calendar days. The billing team will validate your payment and, if found valid, will set the license to a date in the distant future.

  • If you need more time to process your payments in exceptional situations, you can request an extension using the  License Extension application in your Mithi account portal.

Product Trial and License

• During the trial period, the license manager gives unrestricted access to the service for a period of one month.
• If you need more time to evaluate the service, you can request an extension using the License Extension application in your Mithi account portal.

What happens when the license on a product expires?

• There is no impact on the product services for the first seven days after expiry. This is the grace period within which you can clear any pending dues or complete the renewal process.
• After seven days of license expiry, access to the Admin Panel and the functions of other admin-related applications are suspended.
• After 14 days of license expiry, the end-user access to the accounts is suspended.
• After 30 days of license expiry, the domains will be marked for deletion, and all the data will be deleted in the next clean-up cycle. This is an irreversible operation. To prevent this, please ensure that your account is reinstated before the end of the 30-day suspension period.

License extension

• If you need an extension on your license, you can log in to your Mithi account and request an extension using the License Extension application.
• You can request a maximum of 2 license extensions per product per quarter.

Recording Payments

• You can inform us about the payments made using the Record Payments application in your Mithi account. 

• On submission of the details, product licenses that are expiring within the next five days will be automatically extended by five calendar days.

• The billing team will then check your details against our bank statements and mark invoices as paid and extend licenses as necessary.

FAQs 

General

Where can I get the data to co-relate to the invoices I have received?

PPU: You can refer to the product dashboards/reports. In addition, the monthly usage will be attached in the email along with the invoice

Contract: The contract invoices are generated as per the estimated quantities. Only if the usage goes above the subscribed quantities, then additional usage invoices will be raised. The extra usage reports for the previous month will be sent by mail at the start of every month. The dashboards/reports will show the overall usage.

Why do the rates for SkyConnect/Vaultastic/Ideolve/ClrStream in the invoices look different from the proposal?

A proposal will have monthly or yearly rates depending on the payment agreement you have chosen.
If your payment agreement is PPU, the invoices will mention usage in GBdays or userdays consumed in that month and hence the rate applied is a daily rate. The daily rate is calculated by dividing the yearly or monthly rates by 365 or the number of days in the month respectively.

If your payment agreement is Contract, then the invoice will have the yearly or half-yearly rate depending on the payment terms. Any extra usage is in terms of GBdays or userdays and hence the invoice amount calculation will be done by multiplying by the daily rate. The daily rate is calculated by dividing the yearly rates by 365.

Excess Storage

What is excess storage usage in SkyConnect/Vaultastic V4/Ideolve?

If your payment agreement with Mithi is a contract and you have purchased X GB of storage, but your storage usage is Y. If Y is greater than X, then excess storage usage is Y - X.

The extra usage calculations is done on a daily basis.

I've been your customer for a while, why am I getting this bill now?

We've been working on upgrading our systems to get visibility on the resource usage by our customers on the cloud. Until we developed this system, and we were in a position to offer you total visibility into how your users are using the storage and enable you with tools to control the usage (quota) we didn't want to come back to you with a bill. Now (1st September 2019), this system is ready and we've been approaching our customers in batches to enable us to answer all their queries and get them regularized.

What is GB-day?

Every day, you consume a certain amount of GB of storage. This consumption changes as you transact mail, delete mail or mailboxes, etc. The GB-day quantity in the excess storage bill is the total of excess storage used each day of the month.

I have purchased storage per user as part of my subscription. Is each of my users consuming excess storage?

Together, as an organization, you are exceeding your total purchased storage volume. Our systems have computed your total purchased volume by aggregating your per-user storage across all your users. To learn more about each user's consumption, we suggest you subscribe to the user quota report as described here.

Can I get a detailed report about the storage consumption by my users?

If not already done, you can subscribe to the user quota report as described here.

Can I delete any excess email in my account to regularize my usage to my purchased quantities?

Sure you can. Refer to this document for strategies on how to clean up excess storage.

But since data is normally very valuable, we advise against cleanup since your estimated monthly bill for the excess storage is very low. 

In either case, your excess storage usage from 1st Sept 2019 will be tracked daily and as you delete email, your monthly bill will reflect the reduced usage. 

Do I have the option to purchase another block of storage and add that to my cumulative storage in one go, rather than this monthly bill?

Sure, please raise a ticket with the block of storage required. Our team will allocate that storage to you and send you a pro-rated bill by the end of your current contract period. 

What if I use less storage than what I have bought?

You will still have to pay for the storage mentioned in the Contract payment agreement.

I am using excess storage and paying monthly. How does my monthly bill for excess storage change, if I buy a block of storage in the middle of the month?

Let's explain this with an example

• Your original purchase on 1st January was for 200 users and 1 TB of storage
• On 15th March, your usage crossed 1TB and increased by 1 GB a day
• On 31st March, your usage was 1015 GB (last 16 days of March at 1GB extra a day)

• So in March, your total storage consumption was 31,120 GB_days (sum of the daily consumption of storage)
• A bill for the excess usage of storage for March will be generated to charge for the extra 120 GB_days charged at per GB per day
• On 31st March, when your excess storage was 15 GB (total of 1015 GB), you decided to buy a block of 500 GB to take your total storage to 1500 GB.
• So from 1st April, there is no excess storage usage on your account 
• April onwards, you don't receive any bill for excess storage until you cross 1500 GB.

Bills for Excess users in SkyConnect/Vaultastic/Ideolve

During my contract, if I need to add more user licenses, how is this handled?

At the start of a contract, you pre-decide quantities of resources such as Users, Storage, and place an order. However, during the contract, if you feel the need to add more users than you have purchased, you can do this in any of the following ways:

1. You add your users whenever you want; the system does not restrict you to your purchased quantities. The excess users are billed pro-rata at the end of the month and then month-on-month.
2. You place an order for the additional users with us, and we update your license and bill you pro-rata to the end of your contract.

See an example below to learn how this works.

Can you explain with an example of how the bill of extra users works?

• Your original purchase on 1st January was for 200 users and 1 TB of storage
• On 15th March, you onboarded 20 new employees and wanted to give them all email ids. You added 20 new users on SkyConnect.
• On 31st March, your usage was 220 users

• So in March, your total number of users was 6500 User_days (sum of the daily consumption of storage)
• A bill for the excess usage of storage for March will be generated to charge for the extra 300 User_days.
• On 31st March, when your excess storage was 20 users (a total of 220 users), you decided to buy a block of 50 users to take your total purchased user count to 250 users.
• So from 1st April, there is no excess usage for users on your account 
• April onwards, you don't receive any bill for excess users until you cross 250 users.

What is this unit of measurement - User_day?

User_day says, "how many users were provisioned in the system that day." Since this can change day to day (e.g., you may add a few users on a specific date and after some months, add some more or delete some users), thus this measurement unit tracks your consumption of user licenses daily. As explained in the example above, your excess user bill monthly includes the total of the excess number of users consumed in that month.