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Billing

Start a subscription, update payment, switch plans, downgrade to Free or cancel — all through Stripe Checkout and the Stripe customer portal.

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StatusOwl bills through Stripe. Starting a subscription goes through Stripe Checkout; everything afterwards — payment methods, invoices, plan changes, cancellation — happens in the Stripe customer portal, which you open from the dashboard.

Subscriptions are scoped to the organization, not to your user account. If you belong to several organizations, each has its own plan and its own subscription.

Who can manage billing

RoleBilling access
OwnerFull
AdminFull
BillingFull — subscription, payment method and invoices only
MemberNone
ViewerNone

The role check runs on the server before a checkout session is created, not just in the UI. See Roles & permissions.

Starting a subscription

  1. Open Account → Billing.
  2. Pick a plan and click Subscribe.
  3. You are sent to Stripe Checkout. Enter a card or any other method Stripe supports in your region.
  4. On success you return to the billing page. The plan is live immediately — new limits apply before the receipt lands.

Backing out of Checkout changes nothing on your account.

There is no trial to start

Paid plans start billing at checkout. There is no trial period on any plan and no trial mechanism in the product. If you want to evaluate StatusOwl without paying, stay on Free — it is a real plan with a real status page and a custom domain, not a countdown.

Monthly or yearly

Both are available. Yearly is charged once for the year at a lower effective monthly rate; the current figures are on the pricing page. You can switch between the two in the customer portal, and Stripe prorates the change.

Payment methods and invoices

Account → Billing → Manage subscription opens the Stripe customer portal in a new tab. From there:

  • Add or replace a payment method. New invoices go to the new method on the next cycle, or immediately if one is outstanding.
  • View and download every invoice as a PDF.
  • Set a billing-only email address to receive invoices.

Invoices show the plan, the billing period, proration for any mid-period change, and any one-off charges.

Switching plans

  1. Account → Billing → Change plan.
  2. Pick the new plan and confirm.
  3. Stripe prorates to the day — you pay the difference on an upgrade, or the difference is credited against your next invoice on a downgrade.

Capabilities change immediately:

  • New monitor, page, node and member limits apply right away.
  • Anything over the new limit keeps running; you cannot create more until you are back under the cap.
  • Check intervals snap to the new plan's floor.

Downgrading to Free

Account → Billing → Downgrade to Free, then confirm. This is an explicit action, not something that happens by neglect.

Stripe cancels the paid subscription immediately and the organization moves to Free the same moment. Then:

  • Nothing is deleted. Monitors, status pages, incidents, maintenance windows and integrations all stay.
  • Check intervals move to the 3-minute Free floor.
  • Status pages above the Free limit of 1 keep serving. You cannot create new ones until you are back within the cap.
  • Custom domains keep working. Custom domains are available on Free.
  • The read API keeps working. It is available on Free.
  • Retention drops to 30 days. Check data older than that ages out.
  • Dedicated and container nodes are not included on Free and stop counting against an allotment you no longer have.

Failed payments

If a card declines, Stripe retries on its standard schedule and emails you each time. When the retries are exhausted Stripe cancels the subscription, its webhook fires, and StatusOwl moves the organization to Free — with all the same consequences as a voluntary downgrade. Re-subscribe any time from Account → Billing.

Every webhook from Stripe is signature-verified before it is acted on.

Cancelling entirely

To leave rather than continue on Free: downgrade to Free first, then delete the organization from Organization → Settings → Delete organization.

Deletion is permanent. It removes every monitor, status page, incident, integration, audit log entry and all historical check data for that organization. Schedule it deliberately.

Refunds

Stripe handles refunds under its own policy. Unused subscription time is credited against future invoices rather than refunded by default. For a genuine refund — an accidental subscription, never used — contact hello@statusowl.net with the invoice ID.

See also