Understand Products

Use Products to bill for add-ons, usage charges, and one-time upgrades alongside a Plan, each with its own billing interval, pricing structure, proration rules, and self-service sign-up display options. Products help CFOs, product managers, and finance teams reduce billing complexity and improve monetization of optional features.

Think of Products as a way to make your Plans more flexible:

• Add extra features that customers can choose to include or remove.
• Offer usage-based billing for variable consumption.
• Provide optional upgrades without creating separate Plans.

Billing frequency for products

By default, Products follow the billing interval of the Plan they're attached to. You can also assign a separate billing interval, known as multi-frequency billing, to accommodate varied cadence for specific Products:

• If a Product has its own interval, it bills on that schedule independently of the Plan.
• If not, it inherits the Plan's billing schedule.

See Configure Multifrequency Billing for Products for how to set it up.

Types of products

Advanced Billing offers six Product types. Some use a quantity you set (Quantity Based, On/Off); others measure usage during the billing period (Metered, Prepaid Usage, Event Based):

• Quantity Based (Recurring): charge per unit at a flat, tiered, volume, or stair-step rate, billed each period for the current quantity, which doesn't reset. Supports proration when the quantity changes mid-period. Example: Your customer requests 3 IP addresses, at $1 each, billed every renewal.
• On/Off: charge a flat amount that can be toggled on or off at any time; doesn't reset at the end of the period. Example: Your customer enables 24/7 support for $99 a month.
• Quantity Based (One-time): charge per unit at the time of allocation, then reset to zero; billed once, without recurring charges. Example: Your customer purchases an onboarding package for a one-time fee.
• Metered: track usage through the billing period and charge for it afterward; resets to zero at the start of each period. Example: Your customer makes 1,000 API calls during the period and is billed per call.
• Prepaid Usage: charge upfront for a set number of units, with optional overage pricing and rollover, expiration, or renewal options. Example: Your customer purchases 1,000 SMS messages upfront, with the allocation expiring after 12 months if unused.
• Event Based: stream real-time events to Maxio and charge based on reported events; resets to zero at the start of each period. Only available if your site has event-based billing enabled. Example: Your customer sends 10,000 SMS messages across multiple countries and is billed by message count, destination country, and carrier.

See Choose a Product Type for more on each type, or Set Up and Manage Prepaid Products for how to configure a Prepaid Product.

Creating and managing products

You can create, edit, and archive Products directly in the Product Catalog. See Create and Manage Products for the steps, or Create Components for a quick-start walkthrough.

• Products are specific to a Product Family, meaning they are usable only with Plans grouped in the same Family.
• Archived Products can't be added to new subscriptions, though they remain active for existing subscriptions.
• Unarchiving a Product makes it available again for new subscriptions.

Pricing and price points

Like Plans, Products have Price Points that define their cost.

• You can define multiple Price Points per Product to support different scenarios or tiers.
• Each Price Point follows a Pricing Scheme to determine billing structure:
  • Per Unit
  • Tiered
  • Volume Based
  • Stairstep

See Set Product Price Points for how to create Price Points, and Use Product Pricing Schemes for how each Pricing Scheme works.

Product settings

Products include a variety of settings that control behavior, billing, and presentation:

• Taxes
• Allow customer updates in Billing Portal
• Enable fractional quantities
• Hide the service date range from Invoice Line Items
• Enable Custom Proration

See Understanding Product Settings for the full list, or Configure Product Settings for how to set your site's default proration scheme.