Purchase, subscription, and upgrade information

Purchase

Subscription terms

API Connect Enterprise as a Service is available and hosted in US-East, EU-Frankfurt, and UK-London. For more information about the location from where you can access your API Connect, see Supported regions.

You can use the free trial subscription for 30 days before upgrading to a paid Standard subscription or Premium subscription. For more information, review the following information for the subscriptions.

Trial subscription

The trial subscription provides a single service instance for 30 days, with up to 100 K API calls, at no cost. The trial subscription is subject to the following terms:

• If you already have an API Connect instance, you can access it here. To access and manage your subscriptions, visit the IBM SaaS Console.
• The 30-day free trial does not include the capabilities in the Premium subscription. To learn more about the Premium subscription, you can schedule a live demo.
• The Administrator can upgrade the trial instance to a paid subscription at any time during the 30-day trial period, by using the same IBMid and trial instance. When you upgrade, all of your trial assets will be upgraded as well.

Standard (paid) subscription

The Standard subscription provides 3 service instances, a choice of call-volume tiers, and a dedicated support team within IBM. The Standard subscription is subject to the following terms:

• The highest tier available on the AWS marketplace that is listed for purchase is 1.2 B API calls per year. You can purchase a higher volume of API calls by engaging with a seller.
• When your Base account reaches 105% of the purchased API call limit (the total across all of the instances in the subscription), users can no longer make API calls unless you upgrade to a tier with a higher volume of API calls.
• The API calls limit applies only to the current contract year and unused calls cannot be rolled over to a new contract or the next year.

Premium (paid) subscription

The Premium subscription extends the IBM® API Connect Enterprise as a Service architecture to provide additional data transformation features and deliver a highly available single-tenant API gateway that is managed by IBM .

• The Premium subscription includes all of the capabilities of the Standard subscription with some additional capabilities.
• You can customize your Premium subscription to cater to your requirements.

For more information about the Premium subscription, see FAQ: Premium subscription.

You can refer the following table to explore and compare the features of trial, standard, and premium subscriptions:

Upgrades

Upgrading your call-volume tier

IBM does not charge overage for API Connect Enterprise as a Service. When you reach the API calls limit specified in your contract, IBM stops additional API calls from completing. However, you can upgrade to a higher API calls tier at any time during your current contract. When you upgrade, the number of API calls already consumed will be subtracted from the new limit, you are charged a pro-rated amount for the upgrade, and your contract will retain its original expiration date.

For example, suppose you purchase a contract with 100k API calls on January 1. On June 1, you realize that you consumed all 100k API calls, so you upgrade your contract to 500k API calls. In this scenario:

• The 100k total API calls that were already consumed will be deducted from the new limit, leaving 400k API calls available.
• You are charged a pro-rated price for the upgraded subscription.
• Your contract will still expire on the original date of December 31.

Note: You cannot decrease the API calls limit for your current contract; however you can select a tier with a different limit when you renew your contract.

Upgrading your subscription type

You can upgrade from a Standard subscription to a Premium subscription at any time. The renewal process for API Connect Premium SaaS Offering in AWS Marketplace depends on the purchase method and whether auto-renewal is enabled. When you upgrade the subscription type, the initial order is pro-rated and credited toward your new contract, and your contract will retain its original expiration date.

• If you purchased API Connect from the AWS Marketplace, you can upgrade to the Premium subscription directly from the AWS account and subscription management tab, or by engaging with IBM Sales (Go to the IBM Products page, click the "blue speech bubble" in the bottom right, select "I have a sales question", follow the prompts about how you would like to request a contact), to purchase through a private offer and overwrite the initial subscription.
• If you purchased API Connect through a private offer, contact your seller to request the upgrade. Use the same private offer to overwrite your original offer with an AWS Agreement Based Offer that provides the additional services that are included with the Premium subscription.
• If you want to retain your Standard subscription and also purchase a Premium subscription, contact IBM Sales (Go to the IBM Products page, click the "blue speech bubble" in the bottom right, select "I have a sales question", follow the prompts about how you would like to request a contact) to create an AWS Agreement Based Offer that includes both subscription types.

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