FAQs: Using m3ter - How Will I be Charged?
Term Definitions
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Measurement | A Measurement is a collection of one or more data attributes used to measure a quantity or item of data and submitted for a single End-Customer Account. Data attributes for Measurements can be of several different kinds: for numeric Measure, Income, or Cost data; for non-numeric or string What, Where, Who, Metadata, or Other data. A "Meter" in the m3ter Service is used to define Measurement types. Each Measurement can have multiple separate data attributes. |
| Measurement Allowance | The number of Measurements sent by the Customer per Month that are included in applicable Fees for the applicable m3ter Product Tier, or as otherwise agreed with our Customer, before additional charges as defined in the applicable Overage Fees are payable by our Customer. If a Customer sends multiple Measurements with the same UIDs, m3ter will reject the duplicates for the purposes of processing the data but these duplicates will be counted against the Customer’s Measurement Allowance. |
| Ingest API Request | An Ingest API Request is a message sent by the Customer to the m3ter Service containing one or more data Measurements for a single End-Customer Account, and using the measurement data attributes defined by a Meter. If a Customer sends multiple Ingest API Requests with the same UIDs, m3ter will reject the duplicates for the purposes of ingesting the data but these duplicates will be counted against the Customer’s Ingest API Allowance. |
Question 1: Why do you price on Measurements?
Measurements are our core value metric for our metering and rating service. It provides a clear indication of your level of use of the service. To help manage budgets and ensure you can get the most out of using m3ter, all of our product tiers contain generous usage allowances included in the minimum commitment fee.
Question 2: Why do you also count Ingest API Requests?
Using our API is the easiest and fastest way to get started with sending your usage data to m3ter, but it does consume cloud resources and incur costs in direct proportion to usage. We also provide a generous Ingest API usage allowance in all of our product tiers, but we encourage efficiency by allowing you to batch up to 1000 Measurements into 1 Ingest API Request. This helps ensure that you should rarely find yourself exceeding your inclusive allowance.
Question 3: What about other API Requests?
We do not currently count your usage of any other m3ter APIs as part of your allowances, but there are of course some request rate and payload limits we impose to ensure that our APIs remain available and performant for all of our customers. These are set out in the API technical specifications in our Documentation.
See Config API Limits and Ingest API Limits and Optimizing Measurement Submissions.
Question 4: Are there overage fees if I go over my inclusive allowances?
Yes, you may incur overage fees for sending more Measurements or Ingest API Requests than are included in your allowances in any relevant period. Not all allowances and fees are standard. Details of your allowances, along with the amounts of any such overage fees, would have been set out in your Order Form with m3ter. If you have any concerns about your usage or potential overages, you should contact m3ter Support or your Account Manager if you have one. They will assist you in making the most effective use of your allowances and also discuss commercial options if your needs have changed.
Question 5: What about the number of Aggregations, Derived fields, Products, Accounts, Pricing Plans, and Bills within my m3ter Service? Are those subject to allowances?
Currently no, you can have or use as many of these as you need subject only to any technical limits set out in the relevant specifications in our Documentation. If you find that you are reaching some functional limit to these please get in touch with m3ter Support, or your Account Manager if you have one, to discuss your requirements.
Question 6: How do you calculate Measurement charges?
Measurements are how we describe the collections of data you send us for each distinct usage event to be counted by a Meter. Here are some examples:
Example of ONE Measurement in ONE Ingest API Request
This example has ONE Measurement containing TWO Measures. The Measures are two individual pieces of data called 'available_percent' and 'used_percent', which are being passed to a single user-defined Meter called 'mem'
This counts as 1 Measurement for the purposes of calculating Measurements usage against your usage allowance. m3ter currently supports passing up to 15 separate data items within one Submit Measurements API call.
Sending this also counts as 1 Ingest API Request for the purposes of calculating your usage of the Ingest API.
Example of THREE Measurements in ONE API Request
Here is an example of of THREE Measurements, that contains FOUR Measures in total:
The first Measurement for the Meter ‘swap’ contains 1 Measure (‘used_percent’)
The second Measurement for the Meter ‘mem’ contains 2 Measures (‘available_percent’ and ‘used_percent’)
The third Measurement for Meter ‘disk’, contains 1 Measure (‘used_percent’)
This counts as 3 Measurements for the purposes of calculating Measurements usage against your usage allowance. BUT importantly, it still only counts as 1 API Ingest Request because the user has efficiently batched all 3 Measurements into one call. m3ter currently supports batching up to 1000 Measurements into a single API call, with a total payload limit of 512KB per request.
See Request Payload Limit in the Documentation.
Additional Support
Login to the Support portal for additional help and to send questions to our Support team.