The highly customizable Axinom Mosaic solution contains exactly the number of services that you need and choose. Each service has its own billing metrics. Learn more about billing models here.

Billing

In Mosaic, you pay only for what you consume. Every Managed Service defines its Billing Metrics. For each metric, there is a defined price (which is usually a tiered price depending on the level of consumption, but sometimes it is just a simple per-unit price). The tier is selected automatically based on the monthly consumption. Some Services offer different Billing Models, which means different sets of metrics. For example, it is possible to pay for the DRM Service by the number of generated DRM Licenses or by the number of active users.

Prices

See the full Price List and the Price Calculator.

Consumption

The Platform monitors the consumption. Consumption is tracked and billed separately for each Environment.

You can see your current consumption numbers in the Portal under My Mosaic / Usage.

Warning
Some services do not yet expose their consumption. We will cover these services in the near time.

Payment

In the beginning of a month, you receive an invoice for the previous month’s consumption. The invoice contains separate positions for each Environment and Service with all consumption details. We send an invoice to you by email.

The default payment method is a bank transfer to our bank account in Germany.

If you would like to pay by a credit card, we can arrange that via PayPal against a small fee. Please contact us if you want to use PayPal.

For smooth payments, we need the following data from you when the agreement starts:

  • Billing Address (to be printed on invoices)

  • Billing Email (where to send the invoice)

  • VAT ID, if you have one

  • If you use Purchase Orders (PO) - the PO number you want us to print on your invoices.

If you have any questions regarding payments, please contact us and specify "Licensing and billing questions" as a request type.

Standard Billing Models

You can find the most frequently used billing models below. Note that some services can be used with different billing models.

DRM: Generated Licenses or Active Users

For Axinom DRM ( Managed Service) Axinom offers two billing models:

  • Generated Licenses

  • Active Users.

The default model is Generated Licenses, but you can change it any time by raising a support request. The change is effective from the first day of the next month.

How Monthly Billing Works

  1. For every successful delivery of a DRM License, a log entry is created. If a user ID was received with the respective DRM License Request, the user ID is part of that log entry. When using the Active Users billing model, submitting a user ID is mandatory. For billing, all log entries that were created during the month in question are considered.

  2. If the billing model is "Generated Licenses", the invoice is based on the number of log entries (= Generated Licenses).

  3. If the billing model is "Active Users", the invoice is based on the number of distinct "user IDs" in the log entries.

Implementing the Active Users Billing Model

For the "Generated Licenses" billing model you don’t need to do anything special.

The "Active Users" billing model requires a bit of a technical implementation on your side. Every Entitlement Message that you submit as a part of a License Request shall carry a unique "user_id" string. You can specify this user ID inside the session/user_id element.

Example of an Entitlement Message containing an element session/user_ID
{
	"type": "entitlement_message",
	"version": 2,
	"license": {},
	"content_keys_source": {
		"inline": [
			{
				"id": "7459975d-b2f8-48ed-a325-56e4f34d19c7"
			}
		]
	},
	"session": {
		"user_id": "713EE6B0-F38C-4EA8-AA0E-C785447AE666"
	}
}

Please consider the following when using the Active Users billing model:

  • The exact content of the user_id string doesn’t matter for the License Service, as long as the values are unique for each user. For example, you can use a GUID, such as 713EE6B0-F38C-4EA8-AA0E-C785447AE666

  • If you request the Active Users billing model but don’t implement passing a user_id, you will still be billed based on the Generated Licenses

  • You have to pass a different value for user ID for each user of your system. It is fine to use the same user ID on different devices if they are used by the same user. But it is not allowed to pass the same user ID value for different users

  • You have to use the current version (v2) of the Entitlement Message schema with the Active Users billing model. The legacy Entitlement Message v1 does not support this billing model.

Caution
For privacy reasons, we recommend the user_id field’s value to be anonymized, i.e., to use a value that on its own would not reveal any details about a user. This can, for example, be achieved by applying a hash function with a reasonably long hash salt to your internal user IDs and using the output of that hash function in hex encoding as the value for the user_id field.

When to Use which Billing Model?

It depends on what is easier for you to estimate: the number of users of the system or the number of licenses they will request while using the system. In many cases, the number of licenses is roughly the same as the number of video playbacks. If you have registered users who generate a lot of playbacks, you can likely benefit from using the Active Users model.

You can also simply start with the Generated Licenses model and switch to the Active Users model later when the need for it arises.

The final choice is yours!

Encoding: Output Minutes

Encoding Service usage in the Cloud is paid by the number of the output video minutes. The price depends on the codec and the quality level (SD/HD/UHD1/UHD2).

For every encoding job, a log entry is created. This log entry contains all the details necessary for billing. For each generated video stream, the log entry contains:

  • display resolution

  • bitrate

  • codec, e.g., H.264, H.265

  • output format, e.g. SD, HD, UHD1, UHD2

Based on their display resolution, the streams are grouped into quality groups. The following quality groups are applied:

  • SD - below 720p

  • HD - from 720p to 1080p, thus covering "HD" and "Full HD"

  • UHD1 - up to 2160p (inclusive), "4K"

  • UHD2 - up to 4320p (inclusive), "8K"

For the monthly bill, the total output minutes are grouped by quality groups and codecs.

Note
How many output formats are produced (DASH, HLS, CMAF) doesn’t affect the bill.

The minute price increases with the stream quality.

Regarding codecs, H.264 (AVC) has the lowest price. The other, more efficient codecs, such as H.265 (HVEC) are more expensive as they require more computational resources during encoding.

Only successfully completed encoding jobs get billed. We won’t bill if a job produces only partial output (e.g., only 5 out of 6 requested bitrates get generated successfully).

Entity

Many services are billed based on the number of entities that they maintain. The number of entities is measured daily, and the monthly average is billed.

Services using this model include: Localization, Monetization, Image, Admin.

Installation

If services are deployed on a vessel, such as on an aircraft/train/bus or in another location, billing can work by the number of installations. Prices depend on the type of vessel and the respective tier.

Services using this model: Sync, On-Board Cloud, DRM, Live TV.

For this billing model, you have to provide monthly reports about the number of active deployments.

API Request

Frontend-facing services processing requests are billed based on the number of processed API Requests.

Services using this model: Billing (transactions), Image (image transformations).

Hosting

Cloud resources, such as Storage, regular outgoing Traffic, and CDN Traffic, can be consumed if hosting is used. They are billed based on their consumption in GB.

Service1name: DRMBillingModel1name: LicenseBillingModel2name: UserMetric1name: GeneratedLicenseunit: licenseprice: <100K - 199 EURMetric2name: ActiveUsersunit: userprice: <2000 - 199 EURService2name: EncodingBillingModel3name: OutputMinuteMetric3name: OutputMinute AVC/SDunit: minprice: 0.0125 EURFigure 1. Example for Service/Billing Model/Metric/Price relationships
Figure 1. Example for Service/Billing Model/Metric/Price relationships

Development Environment

A typical application life cycle usually requires more than one Environment. For example, you may need Development, Testing, Staging, and Production environments. The regular consumption-based fees are applicable only when you are in production.

You can mark any Environment as a "Development Environment". Then, you only pay a small flat fee for this environment. There are consumption limits for Development Environments, but they should not disturb development/testing.

Caution
Should you exceed the limits for a Development Environment in a specific month, we will promote the environment to a production environment and bill accordingly.

Free Trial

Axinom provides you the possibility to evaluate all the services before you start paying for them. We enable a free trial for new customers. During the trial period, you can have two Development Environments for free. (Should you need more than two environments to properly test the services, please contact us.) If you upgrade to a production agreement, the two free development environments remain free.

Customizable Services

Axinom provides a number of Customizable Services. These services are available in source code for free under an open-source license.

You can use the Hosting Service to run the Customizable Services, including your customizations, in development or production setup.