Overcome to Windows Azure free trial cancellation by adding a new plan

I decided to try Windows Azure more than 3 months ago, most likely because of it's free 90-day offer. I can tell that I'm amazed on all the posibilies you have for free (Websites, Virtual machines, Mobile Services, etc.).

So then, I decided I wanted to continue with the service after my trial period ended by "acquiring" a Pay-As-You-Go plan (that as the name says, you pay only what you use only if you use it, so at the time of my purchase my total was $0.00).

Since I was swamped with many things at job, I didn't payed much attention on the warning e-mails saying that my account was about to expire. As it might be expected, my account was cancelled 2 weeks ago. Last week I was trying to upgrade my account, so I signed up on the Pay-As-You-Go plan but after several tries and wating days, I still wasn't able to use it to create new websites with it.

So this is the process that you need to follow in order to be able to use your new plan in your account:

1. Acquire a new plan (Pay-As-You-Go, 6 or 12 month, etc.)
2. Go to Preview Features page and select the feature that you want to enable for your new plan, in my case I wanted to be able to create websites again
3. Click on "Try it now"
4. Select the plan you want to associate (your new plan). In this case I'm showing an example with Media Services because I already joined to the Websites preview

After completing this, you will see a label on the screen saying that the feature is active

and you will be able to create websites (or any of the preview features that you selected) under your new plan

Sadly, my previous websites remain cancelled and it doesn't seem to be possible to associate them with my new plan, or at least I couldn't find a way to edit them on the manage portal.

So, if possible try to avoid your account cancellation, but if that already happened, this post might help you if your plan is not shown on some items on your account.