Plans, billing, and payments
What each plan includes, how you're billed, and how to change or cancel.
How billing works
Billing is per site. Every site you build carries its own plan, its own card, and its own invoices — so taking one site live doesn't change what another costs, and a site you're still working on costs nothing at all.
Each site is billed either monthly or yearly, whichever you pick. Monthly plans are charged on the first of each month. Yearly plans are charged once for the twelve months ahead and work out cheaper per month, then renew on the same date a year later. There are no setup fees, no contract, and no template fees: every design in the library is included on every plan, so changing how your site looks never changes your bill.
Where things live: in the side navigation, Billing lists every site you own with its plan and price. Click a site's gear to open its Plan page — that's where you switch plans, choose monthly or yearly, save a card, and read that site's invoices. Usage shows how much storage and email you've used against what your plan includes.
What each plan includes
There are three plans. Every site starts on the free Trial, where you can build the whole thing and preview it privately. The two paid plans take it live.
Trial — free, no card needed. The full editor, every template, your blog, appointments, locations, site search, and your customer list. You can build and preview everything; what you can't do is publish the site publicly or send email campaigns. It comes with 1 GB of storage and one AI logo set.
Starter — $25 a month, or $180 a year, which works out at $15 a month. Everything above, published: your site goes live on your own domain — bought separately, never included in a plan — with a mailbox, free SSL, and unlimited pages. Adds the newsletter and email campaigns, your shared inbox, SEO controls, 10 GB of storage, five AI logo sets a month, and two sandbox versions.
Store — $35 a month, or $300 a year, which works out at $25 a month. Everything in Starter plus a full online store: products and inventory, categories and search, cart and checkout, orders and fulfillment, shipping rates, in-store pickup, customer reviews, memberships and subscriptions, refunds, and sales tax calculated automatically with Stripe Tax. It comes with 25 GB of storage and five sandbox versions.
The full side-by-side comparison lives on the Pricing page. Prices are in US dollars, and you can move between plans whenever you like. A custom domain is not part of any plan: domains are sold separately and billed per year, on top of your subscription.
Choose or change your plan
Changing plans happens right away — you don't wait for a new billing cycle to get what you've paid for.
Switching cadence is the one exception. Moving from monthly to yearly takes effect now and charges the year up front. Moving from yearly back to monthly waits until your current term ends, because that year is already paid for — you keep everything until then, and the monthly rate picks up afterwards.
- In the side navigation, open Billing. You'll see every site you own with its current plan.
- Click the gear on the site you want to change to open its Plan page.
- Choose Monthly or Yearly, then pick the plan you want. The cards show the per-month figure either way, with the full yearly amount underneath, and the bar at the bottom shows your new total.
- Click Review change, check the summary, and confirm with your password.
- The new plan applies immediately. Moving up, you're charged the difference for the days left in the current term; moving down, that difference is recorded as a credit against your next invoice.
Any change that takes money today needs a card on file — including a switch from monthly to yearly, which charges the year up front even though the per-month rate goes down. Moving down a tier can take capabilities away: a site that leaves the Store plan keeps its products, but the storefront stops taking orders until you move back up.
Your payment method
Each site's card is saved on its Plan page. Adding one hands you over to Stripe's own secure page — your card details go straight to Stripe and never touch Tropic Arts.
- Open Billing, click the gear on the site, and find Payment method.
- Click Add a card. Stripe's hosted page opens; enter your details there.
- You're returned to the Plan page, where the card shows with its brand, last four digits, and expiry.
- Use Update card to replace it later, or Remove to take it off the file.
A card has to be on file before a site can move onto a paid plan. We'll email you if a saved card is about to expire, so a renewal doesn't fail over something avoidable.
Invoices and receipts
Every site's invoices are listed under Billing history on its Plan page, newest first, with the amount and whether it was paid.
A monthly plan raises an invoice on the first of each month. A yearly plan raises one when the term renews, so most months there's simply nothing to bill and no invoice appears — that's expected, not a gap.
Usage is the exception, and it settles monthly whichever cadence you're on: anything beyond your allowance, extra storage or extra email, arrives as its own line covering the month that just closed. A plan change part-way through a term shows as its own prorated line, and a downgrade shows as a credit that comes off the next bill.
We email a receipt each time a payment goes through, and a notice each time one doesn't. Billing history is the record for one site; the Billing page in the side navigation is the way into all of them.
Storage, email, and allowances
A few things are metered, and all of them show live in Usage so you can see where you stand before an invoice does.
Storage covers the images, files, and other media uploaded to a site — 1 GB on Trial, 10 GB on Starter, 25 GB on Store. Past your allowance, storage bills at 25¢ per GB per month rather than blocking uploads. A Trial site is capped at its 1 GB instead, since it's never invoiced.
Email covers your newsletter and campaigns: 5,000 sends a month are included, and anything beyond that bills at a tenth of a cent per email.
AI logo sets — one run of three concepts you refine into a finished set — are counted too: one for the lifetime of a Trial site, and five a month on a paid plan.
Open Usage in the side navigation to see both meters, plus every file you've uploaded with its size and whether it's still in use — the quickest way to clear out what you no longer need. A site's sandbox versions have no plan of their own; their storage counts toward the parent site's allowance.
If a payment doesn't go through
Cards fail for ordinary reasons — an expiry, a replaced number, a bank flag. Nothing dramatic happens straight away.
When a charge is declined the site is marked past due and stays online. We retry automatically three times over the following week and email you at each step. Updating your card, or clicking Retry payment now on the Plan page, settles it immediately.
Only if every retry fails is the site suspended and its public pages taken offline until the balance is paid. Your content isn't touched — settle the payment and the site comes straight back.
Suspension only affects the site with the unpaid balance. Your other sites, your dashboard, and everything you've built stay exactly as they were.
Cancelling a plan or deleting a site
You can cancel at any time, and it only ever affects the one site you cancel.
Cancelling is scheduled rather than instant: the plan stays active until the end of the period you've already paid for — the end of the month on a monthly plan, the end of your term on a yearly one — then the site reverts to the free Trial and its public pages go offline. You're never cut short on time you've bought. Everything you built is kept — pages, posts, products, customers — so choosing a plan again brings it all straight back. Changed your mind before the date arrives? Keep my plan on the Plan page calls it off.
A site still on the free Trial has no plan to cancel, so its Plan page offers Delete site instead. That takes the site offline now and removes it for good after a seven-day grace period, during which Restore site undoes it.
Cancelling stops future charges rather than refunding what's already been paid — you keep everything the plan includes until that period ends, a year included. Fees already paid aren't refundable except where the law requires it.
Fees on what your customers pay you
Your plan is what you pay Tropic Arts. It's separate from the money your customers pay you, which lands in your own Stripe account and goes out to your bank on Stripe's payout schedule — it never sits with us.
Tropic Arts takes no platform fee and no percentage of your sales. Your online store sales and subscription invoices are yours in full. Stripe's own processing rate — 2.9% + 30¢ per charge at standard US rates — is billed to your Stripe account by Stripe, separately from us.
Sales tax calculated and collected with Stripe Tax carries no added fee from Tropic Arts — but Stripe Tax is Stripe's own paid feature, charged to your Stripe account at its standard rate (0.5% per taxed transaction in the US). A refund you issue returns the customer's tax along with it.
Orders, refunds, and payouts live under Orders and in your Stripe dashboard; Billing is only ever what you pay us. See the Store & payments guide for connecting Stripe and taking your first order.
Tips
A few things worth knowing before your first bill:
- Save a card before the day you plan to go live — an upgrade can't go through without one, and it's the step that catches people at launch.
- Check Usage before uploading a big batch of photos; clearing files you no longer use is quicker than paying for the space.
- Keep the card's expiry current. We'll warn you before it lapses, but updating it takes less time than recovering from a failed renewal.
- If you just want to stop selling, downgrade rather than cancel — Starter keeps your site live and your products safe for when you come back.
- Running more than one site? Each has its own plan and cadence, so pausing one leaves the others exactly as they are.
- Settled on a site you're keeping? Moving it to yearly saves about a third — but it charges twelve months up front and isn't refunded if you leave early, so it suits a site you're sure about rather than one you're still testing.
Frequently asked questions
Starter is $25 a month and Store is $35 a month. Pay for a year up front and those come down to $180 and $300 — $15 and $25 a month. The Trial is free. There are no setup fees and no contract, and every template is included on every plan, so the design you pick never changes the price.
Monthly keeps things flexible: you're charged on the first of each month and can stop whenever you like. Yearly is charged once for the twelve months ahead and works out cheaper per month — $15 instead of $25 on Starter, $25 instead of $35 on Store. You pick the cadence on the site's Plan page, and you can start monthly and move to yearly later.
Either direction, on the Plan page. Monthly to yearly takes effect straight away and charges the year up front. Yearly back to monthly waits until your current term ends — the year is already paid for, so you keep everything until then and the monthly rate picks up afterwards.
Yes, and no. Every site starts on the free Trial — no card, no time limit. Build the whole site, try every template, and preview it privately for as long as you like. You only need a card when you're ready to go live.
Publishing needs a paid plan. A Trial site can be built and previewed but not made public, and it can't send email campaigns. Open Billing, click the gear on the site, choose Starter or Store, and the Draft/Live toggle unlocks.
Per site. Each site carries its own plan, its own cadence, and its own invoices, so three sites on monthly Starter is three $25 charges. Sandbox versions of a site are covered by their parent's plan and are never billed separately.
The change applies immediately. Moving up, you're charged the difference for the days left in your current term straight away; moving down, that difference is recorded as a credit against your next invoice. On a yearly plan the difference is worked out across the whole term, not just the month you're in.
On each site's Plan page, under Billing history — every invoice for that site, newest first, with its amount and status. We also email a receipt each time a payment goes through.
Your site stays online and we retry automatically over the following week, emailing you each time. You can also update the card or use Retry payment now on the Plan page. Only if every retry fails does the site go offline, and settling the balance brings it straight back — your content is never touched.
Open the site's Plan page and use Cancel plan. It stays active until the end of the period you've paid for — the end of the month if you're monthly, the end of your term if you're yearly — then reverts to the free Trial and the public site goes offline. Nothing is deleted: your pages, posts, products, and customers are all still there if you come back. Only that site is affected.
Cancelling stops future charges rather than refunding what's already been paid, so you keep everything your plan includes until the period ends — that's the rest of the month on a monthly plan, or the rest of the term if you paid for a year. If a charge looks wrong, get in touch and we'll go through it with you.
Nothing stops working. Extra storage bills at 25¢ per GB per month and extra email at a tenth of a cent per send, each as its own line on the next invoice. Usage shows where you stand at any time. A Trial site is capped at its 1 GB rather than billed.
No. We take no percentage of your online store sales or subscription invoices — your plan is the whole of what you pay us. Stripe's own processing (2.9% + 30¢ per charge) is billed to your Stripe account by Stripe. The money itself is yours — it lands in your Stripe account and goes out to your bank, never through us. Sales tax handled by Stripe Tax carries no extra charge from us, though Stripe bills you for Stripe Tax itself (0.5% per taxed transaction in the US).
Card details go straight to Stripe on their own hosted page and are never stored by Tropic Arts. All we keep is the brand, last four digits, and expiry, so you can tell which card is on file.
Site owners. Billing shows the sites you own, and a site's plan and invoices are visible to that site's owner. Team members with other roles can work on the site without seeing what it costs.
Yes. A custom marketing site is $1,200 and a custom online store is $2,000 — both one-time, a five-page site designed and built for you on the plan and template you pick, handed over in about one to two weeks and not including content migration. A site designed from scratch, with no template underneath, starts at $5,500 and is quoted per project. All are billed once, separately from your plan. Short of that, every template in the library is already included on every plan, so there's nothing else to buy.