Plans, trials, upgrading and downgrading
Exactly what happens when your church starts a trial, switches tiers mid-cycle or cancels. Plain English, no surprises.
The plan tiers at a glance
Six tiers, designed around church size
Seed is genuinely free for life with up to 50 contacts. Sprout (£19/mo) covers small churches up to 150. Grow (£39/mo) handles 100 to 350 with WhatsApp and the first AI features. Thrive (£79/mo) supports 350 to 1,000 with AI rota building and multi-congregation tools. Kingdom (£129/mo) is for 1,000 to 3,000 with multi-site and white-label. Enterprise is a custom build for denominations and networks. Pricing is per church, not per member, and there's no cut on your giving.
What you get in a Seed-forever plan
Up to 50 contacts, member records, families, groups with leader dashboards, polls, events, Sunday notices, basic email, giving via your own Stripe account (Apple Pay and Google Pay included, 0% platform fee), visitor pipeline, DBS records with 30/14/7-day reminders, delegatable permissions, GDPR self-service for members, the mobile app, and email support. We mean genuinely free, not gated.
Starting a 14-day trial
No credit card needed
When you click "Try free for 14 days" on any paid plan, we don't ask for card details. Your church account is created with the chosen tier active in full: the right contact limit, the right feature set, the right AI credit allowance. You get a real run at the plan rather than a watered-down preview.
What "in full" means
If you start a 14-day Thrive trial, you immediately have the 1,500-contact limit, SMS and WhatsApp messaging unlocked, 500 AI credits ready to use, multi-congregation support enabled, AI rota building available, custom forms, advanced reporting. Everything Thrive includes works from minute one. Same for any other tier you trial.
Three days before your trial ends
We email every admin at your church with a clear note: which plan, how many days remaining, exact expiry date, and a direct link to add a payment method. You can either subscribe to the same plan you trialed, pick a different paid tier, or do nothing and drop back to the free Seed plan when the trial ends. Whatever you choose, the data you've added during the trial stays.
What happens at the moment of trial expiry
If you haven't subscribed, your church automatically moves to the free Seed plan the morning after the trial expires (London time). Plan, member limit (50), feature flags (SMS off, WhatsApp off, AI off, multi-site off) and AI credit allowance (20/month) all flip to Seed. Existing data is never deleted, ever. If you had 800 contacts during the Thrive trial, all 800 remain in the directory and stay visible. You just can't add new ones until you're back under the 50-cap or upgrade again. The audit log records the transition with the exact contact count at the moment of expiry.
Switching mid-trial to a different paid plan
Say you started a Thrive trial but day 13 in, you'd rather pay for Grow. Just pick Grow on Settings → Billing. We don't trigger a fresh 14-day Stripe trial on top of the one you've just used (no "double-trial" loophole), and your data is preserved. Your tenant flips to Grow on confirmation, with Grow's contact limit, features and AI credits taking effect immediately.
Upgrading mid-cycle
Takes effect immediately
Pick a higher tier on Settings → Billing or via Stripe's billing portal, confirm, and the change is live within seconds. Your contact limit jumps to the new tier, every feature in the new plan unlocks, and your AI credit allowance is refreshed to the new tier's monthly allocation. Nothing waits until the start of next month.
How the money works (proration)
Stripe handles the maths cleanly. Say you're on Grow (£39/mo) and 10 days through a 30-day cycle when you upgrade to Thrive (£79/mo). Stripe charges you a prorated invoice for the difference for the remaining 20 days, then bills the full Thrive £79 at your next renewal date. You never pay twice for the same period.
Annual plan upgrades
If you're on an annual plan and upgrade mid-year, Stripe credits you the unused portion of the original plan and charges you for the new plan's pro-rated remainder. The maths is automatic. You can see the breakdown on the new invoice in Stripe's customer portal at any time.
AI credits after an upgrade
Your credit balance is reset to the new tier's monthly allocation when the upgrade takes effect. So a mid-month Grow→Thrive upgrade gives you the full 500 Thrive credits to work with from that day, not whatever was left of your 200 Grow credits.
Downgrading mid-cycle
Also takes effect immediately
Same flow as an upgrade but in the other direction. Pick a lower tier in Stripe's billing portal, confirm, and the change is live within seconds. Stripe issues a prorated credit for the unused portion of the higher plan, applied automatically to your next invoice, and bills the new lower rate at your next full renewal.
Your data is never deleted
If you've been on Thrive with 800 contacts and you downgrade to Grow (which caps at 500), all 800 contacts remain in the directory. They're fully readable, searchable, exportable. You won't be able to add a 801st until you're under 500, but no one disappears. The same applies to giving records, events, groups, polls, sermons, rotas: nothing is deleted because you moved tiers.
Features that are now off
If you downgrade from Grow (which includes WhatsApp) to Sprout (which doesn't), historical WhatsApp messages remain readable in your communications log. You just can't send new WhatsApp messages until you upgrade again. The same applies to AI features, multi-site, custom domain: existing outputs stay; new uses pause.
When the contact count is over the new limit
We log a clear audit-log entry showing the contact count at the moment of downgrade and the new limit. From your audit page you can see exactly what happened and when. The "Add person" button on the people page is greyed out with a note explaining you're at the new tier's cap. You can archive inactive contacts or merge duplicates to free up room.
AI credits after a downgrade
Your credit balance is reset to the new (lower) tier's allocation. If you'd already used more than the new tier allows for the month, the next AI call is blocked until next month's renewal. Already-completed AI outputs (sermon summaries, drafts, etc.) are not affected.
Cancelling your subscription
Keep access through the end of the period you paid for
When you cancel via Stripe's billing portal, the cancellation is scheduled for the end of your current billing period (Stripe's default behaviour). So if you cancel on day 12 of a 30-day monthly cycle, you keep full plan access through to day 30, then drop to the free Seed plan automatically.
What happens at the end of the period
Your plan flips to Seed, planStatus marked as cancelled, your Stripe subscription is closed, and member limit / features / AI credits reset to Seed defaults. Just like trial expiry: no data is ever deleted. All your contacts, giving records, events and groups remain. You can pick a new plan any time to lift the caps again.
Failed payment retries before cancellation
If your card declines on a renewal, Stripe retries the charge several times over the following days. During this grace period your plan stays active and the dashboard shows the status as past-due. We don't drop you to Seed on the first failure. If Stripe eventually gives up after all retries, you're moved to Seed as if you'd manually cancelled.
Timing summary
What flips immediately
Plan tier, feature unlocks, member limit, AI credit allowance, dashboard banners. All take effect the moment the change is confirmed in Stripe and our webhook receives the event (typically within a few seconds).
What waits until the end of the period
Cancellation only. Stripe holds your access through the rest of the period you paid for, then closes the subscription. This is the Stripe default for cancellations and you can change it in Stripe's billing portal if you want immediate-effect cancellation instead.
What never changes
Your church's data. We don't delete contacts, giving records, sermons, groups, events or any other church data when you change tiers or cancel. Tier changes affect what you can do going forward; they never touch what's already there.
In one sentence
Trials and tier changes happen instantly, Stripe handles the money fairly (prorated both ways), cancellations let you finish the period you paid for, and your church data is never touched no matter which way you move.