• Overview
• Monthly compared with annual
• What counts as usage
• Snapshot billing
• Staying within your licensed capacity
• Increasing capacity

Overview

Monthly billing charges for CSE based on what was consumed, billed in arrears at the end of each month. This page explains how consumption is measured, which is the part that generates the most questions from partners and customers.

For provisioning and changing a subscription, see Provision and Manage a Monthly Subscription.

Monthly compared with annual

• On an annual license, the customer pays up front for the capacity they expect to need. Money changes hands at purchase.
• On a monthly subscription, the customer pays as they go, for what was actually consumed during the month.

What counts as usage

Usage is the number of licenses in use reported in the CSE console’s licensing section, not a figure maintained in Unified Management.

The CSE console reports two numbers:

• Licenses in plan is the purchased capacity. On a monthly subscription there is no upper limit, so this figure displays as an arbitrarily large number and carries no meaning.
• Licenses in use is the number of users actually consuming a license. This is the figure that is billed.

For how a user comes to consume a license, see CSE Licenses.

Snapshot billing

Billing is based on a snapshot, not on continuous measurement.

Near the end of each month, usually around the 25th, SonicWall reads the licenses in use for every CSE organization on monthly billing. Whatever that figure is at that moment is what the organization is billed for that month.

An example: if the snapshot reads five users for a service, the organization is billed for five users for that month.

There is no proration in monthly billing. The snapshot figure is the billed figure. SonicWall does not calculate a high-water mark, a low-water mark, or a daily average.

The consequences cut both ways:

• A user added on the 24th, before the snapshot, is billed for the whole month.
• A user removed on the 24th, before the snapshot, is not billed at all for that month.
• A user provisioned before one month’s snapshot and removed before the next month’s snapshot is billed for one month.

Staying within your licensed capacity

On an annual license, your organization is expected to hold a license for every user in use. If the licenses in use figure rises above the licenses in plan figure, the CSE console displays a warning in the console, and the shortfall should be resolved by increasing capacity or reducing the users consuming licenses.

On a monthly subscription there is no purchased capacity to exceed, because billing follows the licenses in use figure directly.

Increasing capacity

A customer who needs more capacity on an annual license has two routes: purchase a SKU and apply the resulting activation key, which SonicWall sales can arrange, or use the Buy Now workflow in the console. See CSE Licensing and Activation Keys.

On a monthly subscription no action is required to add capacity. Additional users are simply reflected in the next snapshot.