Your plan and billing

Everything about what you pay us lives in Settings, Billing. Plan changes happen there. So do card updates, invoices and cancellation. Picking a plan sends you to Stripe's own checkout page, then straight back to your billing page when it's done. Stripe keeps your card details. Only the account owner can change the plan or the card, or cancel. Admins and members see the same page without those buttons.

When a locked feature sends you here, the link above your plan returns to the same feature view. The page remembers. Payout filters stay put. Tax-form filters do too. The payout page number and US payout year are kept as well.

Before and after checkout

When you pick your first plan, a short check comes up before you leave. It shows four things:

• the plan and whether it's billed monthly or yearly
• the price
• when the change happens (on a trial you keep your free days)
• where you're going, which is Stripe's checkout page

Press Continue to Stripe to go, or Not now to stay. Stripe shows the final total, tax included, before you pay.

When you come back, the billing page tells you where things stand:

• You're on Grow (or whichever plan you picked): Stripe confirmed it and the plan has switched.
• Stripe confirmed your checkout: the payment went through and the plan is still switching. It usually takes under a minute. Press Refresh.
• We couldn't confirm a checkout yet: you came back without a confirmation. If you did pay, the plan updates within a few minutes. If you left Stripe's page early, nothing changed.

Changing between paid plans skips Stripe's page. It uses the card you already have on file.

This page is about your subscription to AffiliateRail. What your affiliates get paid is covered in Payouts.

The trial

Fourteen days, no card. If you were invited as a founding member, your trial is 60 days. You also keep the founding price for as long as you stay.

Everything you set up during the trial stays when it ends. That includes your program, your partners, their links and every commission they've earned.

What stops is adding more. Approving new partners and creating new commission rules wait until you pick a plan. Tracking never stops.

Monthly or yearly

Every plan is sold both ways. The choice sits at the top of the plan table.

Monthly is picked for you, including when you choose your first plan. So nobody has to buy a month to get started and switch later.

A year costs ten months' money, so two months are free. For example, Grow at the founding price is $59 a month or $590 a year. The card shows the money, not a percentage.

Your revenue band doesn't change with the interval. Your revenue band is how much your affiliates can earn you each month on your plan. A yearly Grow subscription has the same $20,000 a month band as a monthly one. The band measures what your affiliates earn you, whatever interval you pay us on.

Changing plan

Pick the plan you want and confirm. Before anything is charged, we show what's due today and what repeats.

• Moving up, or moving between plans on the same interval, takes effect straight away. Stripe prorates. That means you're charged the difference for the rest of the period, instead of a full new price.
• Moving from monthly to yearly takes effect straight away too. The unused part of the month is credited against the year.
• Moving from yearly to monthly takes effect on your renewal date. The year you've already paid for runs to the end, then the monthly price starts. Your plan page shows the date. Nothing is refunded, because nothing is cut short.

Picking a plan during the trial

You keep every free day. Here's what happens when you pick a plan during the trial:

1. We save your card.
2. We take the first payment on the day your trial ends, and never before.
3. Your billing page shows that date and the amount the whole time.
4. Seven days before that first payment, we email you the date and the amount.

Cancel before then and you pay nothing. Switching plan, or switching between monthly and yearly, is free during the trial. Do it as often as you like.

If your trial has less than two days left when you pick a plan, the first payment moves to two days from then. That's the shortest wait Stripe allows, so you get a day or so extra.

Nothing pushes you to buy early. The trial runs on its own if you leave it alone. No card is needed until you choose one. After your first payment, you have 30 days to ask for all of it back.

VAT and tax

Stripe works out the tax at checkout from where you are. That's why we ask for a billing address: without a country, there's no rate to apply.

• An EU business with a valid VAT number pays us no VAT. You account for it in your own VAT return instead. This is called the reverse charge.
• Anyone in the EU without a valid VAT number pays VAT at their local rate. That includes businesses. Under EU rules, a buyer whose number can't be checked is treated as a consumer. So we can't apply the reverse charge on a number that doesn't check out.
• UK customers are charged no VAT.
• The US and the rest of the world pay no VAT, because this is an export of digital services.

Add or change your VAT number at checkout, or later through Manage in Stripe. We check the number while you're on the page, against VIES, the EU's own register of VAT numbers. That check decides which of the two EU treatments above you get.

Your invoices show the treatment that was applied. You can download them from the billing page.

Your card

The billing page shows the brand and last four digits of the card your next invoice will be charged to. Update card replaces it. The new card becomes the default for both your customer record and your subscription, so the next renewal uses it.

If a payment fails, the billing page says so. It shows the amount, the date, and one button that opens the card form. Your plan stays on, and your program keeps running while the card is retried over the following days. Updating the card is the quickest way to end it.

If the card keeps failing and Stripe stops trying, your plan ends. The app then says your plan has ended, not your trial. It works the same as an ended trial:

• nothing is deleted
• tracking carries on
• picking a plan turns everything back on

Invoices

Every invoice is listed with its date, amount and status, and links to its PDF. They're yours to download at any time.

The badge can pay you

The "Powered by AffiliateRail" line on your partner portal can carry your own referral link. A founder who signs up through it earns you 40% of what they pay us, every month, for as long as they stay. Paid to your own PayPal or Wise, the same way your partners get paid.

It does not do that on its own. Open Settings, Branding and press Join and start earning. That signs you up as one of our affiliates and accepts the partner terms.

Three things worth knowing:

• Joining starts the clock. You earn on signups from the day you join. Anyone who reached us through your badge before that does not count, and joining later does not go back for them.
• Nothing changes on your portal. The same line, in the same place. It starts carrying your link instead of a plain one.
• Switching the badge off stops it earning, for the obvious reason. Removing it is a Scale feature; below Scale the line stays and can keep working for you.

You can see what you have earned in your own partner portal, which we email you a link to when you join.

Cancelling

Press Cancel my plan on the billing page. Here's what happens:

• Your plan runs to the end of the period you've paid for, and stops there.
• Your program keeps tracking clicks and sales the whole time.
• Your partners keep their links, and those links keep working.
• Commissions carry on building, and what you owe your partners stays owed.
• Nothing is deleted. Pick a plan again whenever you like, and everything is where you left it.

Once it stops, the app says your plan has ended.

We ask why you're leaving:

• If you say you moved to another tool, we ask which one.
• If you say something you needed was missing, we ask what it was.

Every answer is optional, and none of them holds up the cancellation. What you type goes to us and nowhere else. We don't use it to change your price or slow you down.

Cancelling during a trial

Let's say you added a card during your trial and you're still deciding. When you cancel, we offer you 7 more free days first. We make that offer once per account, ever.

• Accept 7 more days moves the end of your trial, and your first payment, a week later. Nothing is cancelled.
• No thanks, cancel my plan cancels exactly as above.

If you already took the extra week, or you're on a paid plan, cancelling goes straight through.

Changed your mind before the period ends? Keep my plan puts it back exactly as it was.

Manage in Stripe

Manage in Stripe is a small link to Stripe's own billing page. Use it for the few things that live there: an old invoice, a tax ID you need to correct, or a payment dispute. Everything else on this page works without it.