Help · Settings

Plans and billing

You pay for Carpe Messaging through Shopify, on the same bill as your other apps. There is one price and two ways to start it, and you can see what you have used this billing period under Settings → Billing.

Shopify bills in billing periods of 30 days, counted from the day your subscription started — not by calendar month. Everywhere this page and the app say "billing period", that is what they mean.

The two plans

Both plans are $29 per month with 25,000 emails included, and both bill the same usage at the same rates. The only difference is how they start.

• Carpe Messaging starts with a 30-day free trial.
• Full access has no trial. You are billed from the day you choose it, and nothing you send is held back.

"Full access" means there is no cap on how much you send. It never means there is no cost: emails past the included 25,000, text messages and address checks are billed as you use them.

Your trial

Your trial lasts 30 days and includes 500 emails, counted over your store's whole history. Your subscription starts by itself on day 31.

While it lasts:

• Your campaigns and automation emails go out until those 500 are used. After that they wait, and go out by themselves the moment your subscription starts. Nobody in them is dropped.
• Back in stock notices keep going even past 500, because a shopper asked for each one.
• Text messages wait until your subscription starts. You can register your text message number now, so it is ready. The one exception is the first text a shopper gets when they sign up for your texts, which tells them what they agreed to — that one goes out during the trial.
• Test emails you send to yourself never count.

The 500-email limit ends with the trial. Settings → Billing shows the date.

Start your subscription

You do not have to wait for day 31. Your store's owner presses Start your subscription on Settings → Billing and chooses Full access on Shopify's plan page. It ends your free trial today and lifts the 500-email limit.

The line under the button says the same. Every other place in the app where something is waiting for your subscription has the same button, and it opens Shopify's own plan page for Carpe Messaging.

You are billed from that day — the full $29, nothing prorated — and everything that was waiting starts going out on its own.

Only your store's owner can choose a plan. Everyone else on your team sees a note saying so instead of the button.

Choosing a plan when you install

When you install Carpe Messaging, the app takes your store's owner straight to Shopify's plan page to choose one of the two plans. Approve it there, and you come back to the app with your plan in place.

The plan page opens whenever your store's owner opens the app and the store has no plan yet. If you leave it without choosing, the app lets you carry on, and a note at the top of every screen says Nothing sends until your store has a plan. with a Choose a plan button.

Everyone else on your team is never sent to the plan page. They see the same note, saying that your store's owner can choose a plan in Settings → Billing.

If your store has no plan

Nothing sends until your store has a plan, back in stock notices included. Everything else in the app still works: you can build campaigns, automations, forms and segments, and import your people. Every place a send is waiting shows a Choose a plan button.

That is true if you installed Carpe Messaging and never chose a plan, or you canceled one. The one exception is the first text a shopper gets when they sign up for your texts, which tells them what they agreed to — that one still goes out, and it is never billed.

If your plan is set to end

If you uninstall Carpe Messaging, Shopify cancels your plan at the end of the billing period you have paid for, and reinstalling does not undo that. You can keep it by changing plans on Shopify's plan page before that day.

Until that day everything sends as usual, and a note at the top of every screen says Your plan ends on that day. On Settings → Billing the note is one line, Your plan ends and the day; Why beside it explains the rest.

You can keep your plan by switching plans. Any plan change on Shopify's plan page clears the end. Your store's owner presses Choose a plan on Settings → Billing, then:

• If your plan is Full access: select the trial plan (Carpe Messaging), then select Full access right away.
• If your plan is Carpe Messaging (after its trial): select Full access. It has the same price and the same charges.

Your new billing period starts immediately.

If you do nothing, your plan ends on that day. About three days before, your store's owner and managers get an email reminding them of the day and time it ends. When it ends, we email the link to choose a plan, and once more a day later if the store still has no plan.

From the day it ends until you choose a plan, nothing sends. Nothing is lost in between: scheduled campaigns and automations wait, nobody is dropped, and everything goes out on its own once you choose. When you schedule a campaign for the time your plan ends or later, the confirmation says it will wait, and the campaigns list marks it Waits for your plan.

What you pay for

You pay $29 per month for your plan and its first 25,000 emails each billing period, and then for what you use past that, on either plan, after a trial. The rates are the same for every store.

Your Shopify invoice names each charge: Emails sent, Texts, US and Canada, Texts, with images and Verified addresses. Each email is counted once, when it goes out, and your first 25,000 each billing period are in the plan.

Each band of emails, and of address checks, is billed at its own rate, so a busy billing period never makes the first ones cost more. A long text is sent in parts, and each part is billed; a text with images costs $0.0446 for each image, up to three in a reply — a reply with two images costs $0.0892 — and a text with your contact card is billed once. Neither is ever also billed as parts. A text to Canada ends with a line naming your store's contact page, which counts toward its parts. Texts to numbers outside the US and Canada are not sent.

What never counts:

• test emails and test texts you send to yourself
• the code a shopper is texted to confirm their number
• the replies to STOP and HELP

A reply you send someone in Conversations is a text, and counts like one.

Checking imported addresses

A paid address check is billed, so it starts with your subscription. During your trial the button that would start a check is replaced by Start your subscription — or Choose a plan with no plan — which opens Shopify's plan page. Nothing is charged until you start a check yourself.

A check that is already running is billed batch by batch. If your store's plan ends before it finishes, the check pauses: "Paused until your store has a plan. It picks up where it left off."

Where to see it

Settings → Billing shows your plan and what you have used. While your trial lasts, it counts its 500 emails. On a paid plan it shows This billing period, and See charges lists every usage charge so far.

This billing period carries the dates of the period, and three figures in one row — your $29.00 plan (already paid when the period started, with the first 25,000 emails included), the emails sent so far against those 25,000, with a bar showing any past them, and the usage charges so far. See charges, under the usage charges, shows a line for each kind of usage with its count, its rate and its amount, and says what is added to your next bill. If your plan is set to end, that comes first, at the top of the screen.

The amounts here are worked out by Carpe Messaging as you go. Usage charges are the only amounts still to come: usage charges are added to your next Shopify bill, and the invoice in your Shopify admin, under Settings → Billing with your other apps, is the final word on what you pay.

On a development store

If your store is a Shopify development store, Shopify bills nothing for Carpe Messaging: your plan and every usage charge are test charges, and no money moves.

Settings → Billing says so in one line at the top — Test charge — no money is billed on a development store — and marks the plan figure, the usage charges and every line under See charges as test charges. The amounts are still worked out, so you can see what a store on the same plan would pay.

During the free trial, or before you choose a plan, there is no charge yet, so the line reads No money is billed on a development store.

If the store moves to a paid Shopify plan, the label goes away on its own, and charges from then on are real.

Changing your plan

Once your subscription has started, your store's owner can move between the two plans: Change plan, under Paid in the plan figure, opens Shopify's own plan page. Both plans cost the same, so there is rarely a reason to.

Read If you move back to the trial plan, below, before choosing Carpe Messaging again. If your plan is set to end, the note at the top of the screen has its own Choose a plan button instead. Only your store's owner sees Change plan.

Your price follows what you send

How many profiles you have never changes your price. You pay for what you send. Keep every profile you have — the people who bought once, the people who stopped opening, the people you are not mailing right now — and none of them costs you anything until you send them something.

Estimate per month

Below your plan, Estimate per month works out what your plan would cost per month if you sent more. It opens on your own store's numbers, uses the same prices as the table above, and is an estimate, not a bill.

It covers more emails as you gain profiles or email more often, and text messages once you start sending them. It is laid out like the estimator on our pricing page — a slider and a box for each figure, the estimated total, and a table showing every line of the arithmetic. On a wide screen the figures are on the left and the total stays in view on the right while you scroll through them.

It is there during your free trial too, headed What it would cost after the trial, so you can see what your plan will cost before your subscription starts. It is also there before you choose a plan.

The figures are per month, in the same order and words as the estimator on our pricing page:

• Profiles you can email — profiles with consent and a confirmed address. It is a smaller number than the total profile count you may be used to, because it excludes everyone unconfirmed or unsubscribed. How many you have never changes your price; it is only the first number in the arithmetic. Then Emails per profile, on average, per month, campaigns and automations together. Most people won't get every email, so this can be below 1. The estimate multiplies the two and shows the arithmetic as Emails per month — for example, 4,210 × 3 = 12,630.
• Text messages to the US and Canada per month, and Average parts per text message. A text is sent in parts of about 160 characters, or about 70 if it carries an emoji, and each part is billed. The estimate multiplies the two and shows the result as Message parts per month.
• Texts with an image or contact card per month, billed once for each image or card, never also as parts — count a text with two images twice
• Imported addresses to check — once, not every month

It opens on your own store's numbers. Profiles you can email starts at the count on your home screen. On a paid plan, emails per profile starts at this billing period's emails divided among those profiles. It is an average, to one decimal place, so a store with many profiles that it emails rarely can start at 0.3, or at 0 — 0.5 means one email every other month. Texts start at this billing period's pace. Both use the pace once the period is a week old, and what you have sent so far before that. Parts per text starts at your own average this billing period (your parts divided by your texts, to one decimal place, like 1.4), or at 1 when you have not sent a text yet. During your trial, before you choose a plan, or when nothing has been sent yet, emails per profile starts at 4 — our working assumption — and texts at zero. If your emails per month come to fewer than the 25,000 your plan includes, the line says so: sending fewer costs the same $29. Imported address checks start at zero, because a check happens once, not every month. If your count of profiles could not be read, the screen says so and the box waits for your own figure.

Drag a slider or type a figure and the estimate follows. The i button beside a figure explains it. Reset to my store's numbers puts your store's figures back.

It is an estimate, not a bill. Your real bill is metered: we count what was sent, and you only pay for that. The bill itself is the invoice in your Shopify admin.

If you move back to the trial plan

If you choose the Carpe Messaging plan again after paying, any trial days you had left come back — and so does the 500-email limit. Because those 500 are counted over your store's whole history, an established store finds them already used, and its campaign and automation emails wait until the subscription starts again.