CubePath Billing and Account Verification Guide

Understanding how billing works is essential before deploying your first server on CubePath. This guide covers everything from account verification and credit-based payments to how VPS, Floating IP, and Dedicated Server charges are calculated. CubePath uses a prepayment model designed to give you full control over your spending while keeping your services running without interruption.

Table of Contents

• Account Verification and Activation
• How the Prepayment Model Works
• Credit Balance and Automatic Top-Ups
• VPS Billing
• Floating IP Billing
• Dedicated Server Billing
• Managing Your Account and Limits
• Frequently Asked Questions

Account Verification and Activation

Before you can deploy any service on CubePath, your account must be verified. This process is straightforward and only takes a few minutes.

Adding a Credit Card

To activate your Cloud VPS account, you must add a valid credit card. The card serves two purposes:

• Identity verification: It confirms that you are a real user, helping prevent fraud and abuse on the platform.
• Initial credit deposit: Upon adding your card, the system will automatically charge $10.00 USD, which is immediately added as credit balance to your account.

This initial charge is not a fee — it becomes usable credit that you can spend on any CubePath service.

Completing Verification

Once your card is added and the initial $10 charge is processed:

1. Your account status changes to verified.
2. You gain access to the Cloud VPS deployment panel.
3. Your credit balance reflects the $10 deposit, ready to be used.

You can verify your account status and view your current balance at any time by visiting:

https://my.cubepath.com/balance

How the Prepayment Model Works

Unlike many cloud providers that use a post-payment model (where you receive an invoice at the end of the billing cycle), CubePath operates on a prepayment system. This means:

• You must have sufficient credit in your account before deploying or maintaining services.
• Charges are deducted from your existing credit balance in real time.
• You always know exactly how much you have available — no surprise invoices at the end of the month.

This model offers several advantages:

Credit Balance and Automatic Top-Ups

Your credit balance is the core of how CubePath billing works. Here is how it behaves:

Hourly Deductions

Once you have active services (VPS instances, Floating IPs, etc.), the system automatically deducts charges every hour based on your running resources. You can see the hourly cost of each service before deploying it.

Automatic Top-Up When Credit Reaches $0

When your credit balance reaches $0.00, the system will automatically charge your credit card for another $10.00 to ensure your services continue running without interruption.

Dynamic Prepayment Threshold

If the system detects that your monthly usage is higher than the default $10 increment, the prepayment amount will automatically increase. This reduces the number of micro-transactions on your credit card and ensures smoother service continuity.

For example:

• If your monthly usage averages $30/month, the system may adjust the auto top-up to $30 instead of $10.
• This threshold adapts over time based on your actual consumption.

You can check your current prepayment threshold at:

https://my.cubepath.com/balance

VPS Billing

Cloud VPS instances on CubePath are billed hourly, giving you maximum flexibility.

How VPS Charges Work

• Charges are calculated per hour based on the plan you selected.
• As long as a VPS instance exists (running or stopped), it generates hourly charges.
• You can see the hourly and estimated monthly cost of each plan before deploying.

Destroying a VPS

You can destroy a VPS instance at any time through the control panel:

• Once destroyed, the instance stops generating charges immediately.
• There is no minimum commitment — you can run a VPS for a few hours and destroy it.
• This allows you to optimize costs dynamically, spinning up instances only when needed.

Example

If you deploy a VPS at a rate of $0.015/hour:

• Running for 24 hours costs $0.36
• Running for 30 days costs approximately $10.80
• Destroying it after 2 hours costs only $0.03

IP Address Pricing

Every VPS comes with a primary IP address, which costs $1.50 per month. This is included as part of your VPS deployment.

If you need additional IP addresses, you can add Floating IPs to your organization at $3.00 per month each. Floating IPs are flexible — you can assign them to any server in your account and move them between servers as needed.

Floating IP Billing

Floating IPs allow you to assign a static public IP address to your VPS instances. They have a specific billing model designed to prevent abuse.

How Floating IP Charges Work

• Floating IPs are billed hourly, but 24 hours are charged in advance upon creation.
• This means that even if you create and delete a Floating IP within minutes, you will be charged for the full 24-hour period.
• You can assign a Floating IP to any server and reassign it to a different server at any time without additional cost.

Why 24-Hour Advance Billing?

This policy exists to prevent abuse scenarios where users could rapidly create and destroy IPs. IP addresses are a limited resource, and this approach ensures fair usage across all customers.

Example

After the initial 24-hour prepayment, subsequent charges continue on an hourly basis as normal.

Dedicated Server Billing

Dedicated (baremetal) servers follow a different billing model from cloud VPS instances.

How Dedicated Server Charges Work

• Dedicated servers are billed monthly and in advance.
• The full monthly payment must be completed before the server is activated and provisioned.
• There is no hourly billing for dedicated servers — the commitment is always monthly.

Key Differences from VPS

Managing Your Account and Limits

VPS Instance Limits

To prevent abuse, new accounts start with a limit of 3 VPS instances. If you need more:

1. Open a support ticket at https://my.cubepath.com/support.
2. Briefly describe your use case and how many instances you need.
3. The team will review your request and increase your limit accordingly.

Monitoring Your Spending

You can monitor all billing-related information from your account dashboard:

• Current credit balance: See how much credit you have available.
• Prepayment threshold: Check and understand your automatic top-up amount.
• Active services: View all running services and their individual hourly costs.
• Billing history: Review past charges and top-ups.

Visit https://my.cubepath.com/balance to access all billing details.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if my credit card is declined during an automatic top-up?

If the automatic charge fails, your services will continue running for a short grace period. You will receive an email notification asking you to update your payment method. If the payment issue is not resolved, services may be suspended.

Can I add credit manually instead of waiting for automatic top-ups?

Yes. You can add credit to your account at any time from the account dashboard. The automatic top-up only triggers when your balance reaches $0.

Is the initial $10 charge refundable?

The $10 is added as credit to your account and can be used for any CubePath service. It is not a separate fee — it is your first credit deposit.

Do stopped VPS instances still generate charges?

Yes. As long as a VPS instance exists (even if powered off), it reserves resources and generates hourly charges. To stop charges, you must destroy the instance.

Can I change my prepayment threshold manually?

The prepayment threshold adjusts automatically based on your usage patterns. If you need a specific adjustment, contact support.

How do I cancel my account?

You can destroy all active services and remove your payment method from the account settings. If you need full account deletion, open a support ticket.

Conclusion

CubePath's prepayment billing model is designed to give you transparency and control over your cloud spending. By understanding how credit, automatic top-ups, and service-specific billing work, you can optimize your infrastructure costs and avoid any surprises. Remember to monitor your credit balance regularly and reach out to support if you need higher instance limits or have billing questions.