Plans and billing

A workspace has a plan, and the plan decides how many sites, heartbeats and seats it can hold, how often it can check, how long history is kept and how many people can subscribe to its status pages. This page describes how that works: what counts as a site, the trial, what happens when monitoring pauses, how to subscribe, how failed payments and cancellations are handled, and how retention works. Prices and the numbers for each plan are on the pricing page.

What counts as a site

• A site is one URL. example.com and example.com/checkout are two sites, and so are www.example.com and example.com.
• Heartbeats have their own allowance and don't use up sites.
• A site counts whether it's switched on or off. Deleting it frees the place, and disabling it doesn't.
• Every plan includes all of the checks on every site. A plan changes capacity, check frequency, history length and team size. It never decides which checks a site may use.
• Viewers are free and unlimited. Owners, Admins and Members take seats, as described in Workspaces and team.

The free trial

Every account starts with a 14-day trial on its first workspace. It needs no card. During the trial the workspace can use every check, within the trial's limits. Custom status page domains are available on paid plans only.

• The trial belongs to the person who signed up, and it's used once. A workspace they create later starts without a trial and needs a plan before it monitors anything.
• The app shows a countdown in the last 7 days and a stronger notice in the last 2. Owners and Admins also get a first-week recap by email and a reminder before the trial ends.
• A workspace with a subscription gets no trial emails, and subscribing doesn't start a second trial.

Where to see and change the plan

Open Settings, then Billing & plan, then Manage billing. The Billing page shows the current plan with its usage for Sites, Heartbeats and Seats, the billing state, and either the plan picker or the Manage billing card.

• Admins and Owners can open the page and read the plan, the usage and the state.
• Only the Owner can choose a plan, open the billing portal or update a card. Everyone else sees the Owner's name and is asked to contact them, and no button appears that would be refused.

Subscribe with Checkout

On the Billing page, an Owner picks Monthly or Annual, then chooses a plan with Choose followed by the plan name. The app opens a secure Stripe Checkout page for that plan and brings the Owner back to the Billing page afterwards.

• Payment goes through Stripe. OctoPing doesn't see or store card details.
• The plan is granted when Stripe confirms the payment. The page may say it's confirming for a moment. An Owner who closes the tab after paying still gets the plan.
• A workspace that already has a current subscription can't start another Checkout. That would bill twice. Change plan from the billing portal instead.
• Once Stripe confirms the payment, monitoring restarts if it was paused, and subscribing raises history retention to the new plan's allowance, as described below.

Stripe sends the receipts, invoices and card reminders. OctoPing sends the emails that Stripe can't, which are the date monitoring will pause after a failed payment and the notice that it has stopped.

The billing portal

On the Billing page, the Manage billing card has an Open billing portal button that opens Stripe's billing portal. While a payment has failed, the Update your card card replaces it, with an Update card button. An Owner uses the portal to update the card, change plan, download invoices and cancel. A workspace that has never subscribed has no portal yet, so choose a plan first.

Refusals when adding a site

These checks apply when you add a site or a heartbeat. Signing in and reading what you already have keep working. Each refusal appears as a notice with a title, the first column below, and a short line that says what to do next.

The interval menu greys out an option the plan doesn't sell or has no places left for, and a site already on a fast interval keeps its option when you edit it.

When monitoring pauses

A workspace pauses when its trial has ended with no plan, when a failed payment's grace window has run out, or when a subscription has ended. Pausing stops the checks. It never changes what the people in the workspace set up.

What stops

• No site or heartbeat is checked, so no alerts are sent. Sites show as Paused.
• Status pages keep their configuration. Subscribers and contacts keep their place, but no incident or alert email goes to them while the workspace is paused, and the page can't take new subscribers.
• A custom domain on a workspace that was paying keeps answering for the same period history is kept. A workspace whose trial ended never had a custom domain.

What is kept

• Every site, heartbeat, group, status page, incident, notification and maintenance window stays as it was. Nothing is deleted because a workspace paused.
• Monitoring history is kept for 30 days from the moment of the pause. After that it's trimmed to the workspace's retention period again. For a workspace on 30 days, that removes what it recorded before the pause.
• Starting again puts every monitor back exactly as it was. A site you had turned off stays off, because a pause never changes whether a site is switched on.

Four emails cover a trial's end. Owners and Admins get the recap and the reminder. Every member gets the notice that monitoring has stopped, because everyone's alerts go quiet. Owners and Admins get a last notice before the 30 days end.

Failed payments

A payment that fails doesn't stop monitoring right away. Stripe retries the card, and OctoPing keeps checking for a grace window of 7 days from the first failure.

• The billing page shows Payment failed with an Update your card section, and the app shows a notice with the date monitoring will pause.
• Owners and Admins get one email per failed payment run that gives the date. Stripe also emails the customer about the failed payment itself.
• The 7 days run from the first failure and later failed retries don't extend them. Paying clears the window at once.
• When the window ends without a payment, the workspace pauses as Payment failed and every member is told.

Cancel a subscription

An Owner cancels from the billing portal. Cancelling keeps monitoring running until the end of the period that was paid for. At the end of that period the subscription is over, the workspace pauses as Subscription ended and the history window above begins. To start again, an Owner chooses a plan on the Billing page. Past invoices stay available in the portal.

After a downgrade or a full allowance

An Owner can move to a smaller plan in the billing portal. A workspace can then hold more sites, heartbeats or seats than the new plan includes.

• OctoPing doesn't delete or pause anything because of it. Everything keeps running.
• Adding more is refused until usage is back under the new limit, and deleting is always allowed so a workspace can get back under it.
• A pending invitation for a seat role counts against the seats until it's accepted, revoked or expires after 30 days.
• Existing history is kept, as the next section describes. Subscribers and contacts keep receiving mail, and only new ones are refused.

History retention

Retention sets how far back check results and notification logs are kept. A workspace chooses 30 days, 90 days, 6 months and 1 year under Settings, in Data Retention. Each plan sells up to a longest window, listed on the pricing page.

• Retention covers history only. Sites, heartbeats, status pages, incidents, notification settings and maintenance windows are kept as long as the workspace exists.
• A workspace can't pick a window longer than its plan sells. The request is refused with a message that says so.
• Subscribing raises retention to the new plan's allowance by itself, so a paying workspace builds up the history it's paying for. It only ever raises it. A shorter window you chose on purpose stays when you save other settings.
• A smaller plan never removes history a workspace already has. Cleanup uses the window the workspace has stored and not the plan's, so a downgrade deletes nothing.

Related pages

• Workspaces and team covers roles, seats and who can see billing.
• Subscribers and feeds covers the subscriber allowance.
• Custom domains covers the paid plan requirement.
• Troubleshooting covers alerts that don't arrive.