Plans & Billing
Choose a plan, change it as you grow, track usage against your limits, and recover from a failed payment.
Overview
Everything about your organization's subscription lives under Settings → Billing, split across three tabs: Plan, Invoices, and Usage & Limits. Payments are processed by Stripe — Cardinal never stores your card details, and the actions that touch a payment method hand off to Stripe's hosted pages.
Who Can See Billing
The Billing section appears for members with the Owner, Admin, or Billing role in their home organization. Everyone else works in Cardinal without seeing plan or payment details at all.
The Plans
Foundations and Professional are self-serve: pick one and subscribe from inside Cardinal. Enterprise is quoted rather than purchased online — the Plan tab shows a callout for getting in touch instead of a price.
Choosing Your First Plan
New organizations pick a plan as the last step of setup. You'll land on the plan picker after creating your account, and the app stays behind that step until a subscription is active — so the first thing you see in Cardinal is your own working org, not an empty trial.
How Checkout Works
- Choose monthly or annual billing with the toggle — the prices on the cards update to match.
- Each card shows what the plan is for and its caps for properties and active leases, so you can size the plan to your portfolio.
- Picking a plan sends you to Stripe Checkout to enter payment details. Stripe handles the payment page; you return to Cardinal when it's done.
- On your way back you'll see a confirmation screen. If Stripe is still confirming the payment it reads Activating your subscription… for a moment, then hands you to your dashboard automatically.
If Checkout Doesn't Finish
Backing out of Stripe or abandoning the payment leaves you on the plan step with nothing charged — pick a plan again whenever you're ready. If a payment is declined, Stripe reports it on its own page before you return, so you can try a different card without losing your place.
Managing Your Plan
Your Current Subscription
The card at the top of the Plan tab is the state of your subscription at a glance: the plan you're on, a status badge (Active, Trialing, Past due, Canceled, and so on), and the date it next renews.
- Manage in Stripe opens Stripe's customer portal, where you update your card, billing address, and tax details
- Cancel ends the subscription at the end of the current billing period — you keep access until then, you aren't charged again, and you can resubscribe at any time
- Once a cancellation is scheduled the card shows the date access ends instead of a renewal date, and the Cancel button is replaced — resume from the Stripe portal
Switching Plans
Each card's button tells you exactly what clicking it does. Your current plan is outlined and marked Current, and its button is disabled.
Upgrading
An upgrade takes effect immediately. You're billed today, with credit for the time you already paid for on the old plan, and your billing period restarts from today — so the next renewal is a full month or year from the upgrade, not from your original signup date. Because it charges right away, Cardinal asks you to confirm first.
Switching Between Monthly and Annual
Use the billing-interval toggle above the cards, then choose Switch to annual (or monthly) on your plan. Like an upgrade, it bills today with credit for unused time and asks for confirmation.
Downgrading
A downgrade is only available once your usage fits inside the smaller plan's caps. Until it does, the button stays disabled and reads Available when usage is within [plan] limits — check the Usage & Limits tab to see which number is over, then archive or remove what you no longer need.
Enterprise
Enterprise is priced by quote, so it isn't purchasable from the catalog — the Plan tab shows a callout for contacting us instead. If your organization is already on Enterprise, the Plan tab shows your subscription card with Manage in Stripe and Cancel, and no self-serve catalog: plan changes go through your Cardinal contact.
Usage, Limits & Invoices
Usage & Limits
The Usage & Limits tab shows what your plan allows and how much of it you're using — one row per metric, with a bar for how full it is.
- Properties and Active leases are tracked as current / cap
- The bar turns red at 80% so you get warning before you're blocked, not at the moment you are
- Metrics your plan doesn't cap show as Unlimited with no bar
This is also the page to check before a downgrade: it shows exactly which number has to come down first.
Invoices
The Invoices tab lists your billing history — date, amount, and a status chip for each invoice:
- Paid — settled, nothing owed
- Open — issued and awaiting payment
- Draft — not yet finalized
- Void — cancelled; no payment is due
- Uncollectible — written off
View opens the invoice hosted by Stripe, where you can download a PDF or pay an outstanding balance.
Plan Limits & Upgrade Prompts
When an action isn't available on your plan, Cardinal explains why at the moment you try it rather than hiding the feature. The prompt names your current plan and offers the upgrade that unlocks the action — you can dismiss it and carry on with everything else.
Property Limit
Adding a property beyond your plan's cap prompts an upgrade. Existing properties are untouched — the cap only limits adding more.
Active Lease Limit
Plans cap how many leases can be active at once. Activating one past the cap prompts an upgrade; ended leases don't count against it.
Cardinal AI
AI-assisted answers, summaries, and drafting are included on some plans and not others. Where it isn't included, the prompt explains what upgrading turns on.
To see where you stand before you hit a wall, open Settings → Billing → Usage & Limits — it shows each metric against its cap and flags anything past 80%.
When a Payment Fails
A card expires or a charge is declined and Stripe retries it for a while. If the retries don't succeed, Cardinal pauses access and shows a recovery screen instead of the app. Your data is safe throughout — nothing is deleted, and access returns as soon as the payment goes through.
Your Payment Failed
Shown when a charge couldn't be collected. Update payment opens Stripe to add a working card; paying the outstanding invoice restores access right away and keeps your original billing dates.
Your Subscription Has Ended
Shown once a subscription has fully lapsed or been cancelled. Renewing starts a fresh subscription — you pick a plan again, and the new billing period runs from the day you renew.
If You Can't Fix It Yourself
Only members who can manage billing see the recovery button. Everyone else gets the same explanation with a note to ask an owner or billing manager to restore access — so a teammate without billing permissions knows what happened and who to ask, rather than staring at a locked app.