Plans, minutes and trial

Every plan includes the complete phone assistant. The plans differ in included minutes, phone numbers, users and service. When you are done, you know what your plan includes, how minutes are counted, how to book a plan and what happens when the trial ends.

The plans

In the dashboard, Business and Scale appear under their German names, Zentrale and Verbund. The phone numbers in a plan are scoco numbers that you forward your own number to. You keep your own number. The full comparison, service included, is on the pricing page.

Simultaneous calls: this many calls your account is guaranteed to take at the same time, across all assistants and numbers together. While lines are free, it takes up to the second figure. Anyone calling beyond that hears "All lines are busy at the moment. Please try again in a few minutes." The call is then in the inbox as a missed call with its number, and it is not charged. A test call is never turned away. If you need more, book an additional guaranteed line under Billing: each one raises both figures.

Users: a fixed number of users is enforced. Once every seat is taken, you cannot invite anyone else. Invited people count, deactivated ones do not. See Invite your team. "Unlimited" covers your own staff within normal business use.

Other prices and terms

How minutes are counted

• What counts is the time a call is answered until it ends, to the second: the seconds of all calls in a month are added up, and nothing is rounded up, neither per call nor at the end of the month. Three calls of twenty seconds each are one minute. Only the invoice amount is rounded, commercially. The usage you see is rounded; the exact seconds per call are in the "billed_seconds" column of the CSV under Reports.
• Included minutes apply per calendar month. Minutes you do not use in a month expire.
• Test calls do not count, nor do calls from numbers a rule blocks, calls to an assistant that is offline, or calls that come in while your line is suspended.

You see your usage under Settings›Billing in the Your plan card and under Reports.

Once a month's included minutes are used up, your assistant keeps answering calls. Each further minute costs the extra-minute price; no minute packages are added automatically. The Your plan card shows how many minutes you are over.

We charge the extra minutes to the second, after the month has ended, on an invoice of its own early the next month, collected like your plan. The invoice names the seconds, the minutes and the price per minute. The month we start charging is shown under Invoices and payment.

• If you changed the plan or the payment interval during the month, the whole month gets the largest allowance and the lowest price per minute you had in that month.
• We charge no extra minutes for a month in which your trial ran, nor for a month in which a voucher made your plan entirely free, as in the beta.
• If collecting an extra-minutes invoice fails, we get in touch: your plan's payment reminders do not apply to it, and your line stays reachable.
• If we bill your account personally, the extra minutes go on your invoice from us.

The trial

Every new account starts with a free trial. You do not need payment details for it.

• The trial ends automatically once its weeks are over or its minutes are used up, whichever comes first. The end of the weeks is checked once a day, the minutes after each call: a call in progress is not cut off.
• No paid contract comes about on its own. As long as you do not book a plan, nothing is charged.
• About a week, and again about a day, before the weeks are over, the Owner gets an e-mail; so too after the call that uses four fifths of the trial minutes, and once more when the trial ends. You see where you stand under Your plan.
• Until you have booked a plan, your account has one phone number and cannot add another. A user limit only applies once you book a plan.

When the trial is over, your line is suspended: callers hear a short announcement in your assistant's language and in English that the line cannot be reached, and the call ends. The Overview in the dashboard says so at the top of the page. You can still sign in and see your data. You can change settings again once you have booked a plan; until then they are kept. Your data stays subject to the retention periods. As soon as you book a plan, your line can be reached again. If you book none, we delete the account after a set period and announce it by e-mail beforehand, see After the end.

Book a plan

1. Open Settings›Billing.
2. In the Choose a plan card, choose whether to pay monthly or, with Pay yearly, once a year.
3. Click the book button of the plan you want.
4. You are taken to our payment provider Stripe. Enter your payment details there.

If you book during the trial, the trial runs on, and you are charged from its end. It still ends with its weeks or with its minutes, whichever comes first; the payment page says so next to the button you book with. Using up the trial minutes does not suspend your line: your plan starts at once, is charged from that day, and we send you an email about it. If you have cancelled to the end of the trial, it ends with its minutes as it would without a booking, and nothing is charged. With less than two days left, or with the trial minutes already used up, billing starts when you book.

Yearly payment is one payment for twelve months in advance. It is not on offer while the trial is running. If you booked monthly during the trial, switch to yearly payment afterwards under Change your plan.

After twelve months, yearly payment renews for another twelve months at your plan's yearly price. A voucher applies only while it runs. The renewal date is shown under Your plan. Thirty days before, every Owner with a confirmed e-mail address and the billing e-mail address get a reminder with the date and the amount Stripe will then collect. If you want to pay monthly after that, switch before then under Change your plan. If you do not want to renew, cancel before then, as described under Invoices and payment.

Change your plan

Once you have booked a plan, Settings›Billing shows the Change plan card. Every other plan has a button there to switch to it. The dialog says what happens, and Confirm change does it. You change the payment interval with the Pay yearly switch in the same card: in the other interval only your current plan is listed.

• To a bigger plan: at once. For the rest of the current period Stripe charges the difference pro rata on an invoice of its own.
• From monthly to yearly payment: at once. Your twelve months start today, the yearly payment is due now, and the unused rest of the current month is credited. Add-ons move along. Not while a voucher runs.
• To a smaller plan, or from yearly to monthly payment: at the end of the current period. Until then Your plan shows the scheduled change, and until shortly before you take it back with Undo. No further change is possible until then.
• During the trial: at once, to another plan with the same payment interval; as before, billing starts only after the trial.

You change the plan and the payment interval one after the other. A smaller plan is refused while more users are active than it includes, or while phone numbers would start costing extra: the dialog says what is too much. If on the day of the change the smaller plan no longer fits, a payment is due or the plan was changed some other way meanwhile, the change is dropped and every Owner and the billing e-mail get an e-mail. A cancellation drops a scheduled change. While a payment is due or the subscription is cancelled, no change is possible. If we bill your account personally, write to us.

How to cancel is under Invoices and payment.

Common problems

Pay yearly is missing. Your trial is still running. In its place a line says that yearly payment can only be booked after it.

Instead of the plans there is a sentence saying we bill your account personally. Then your account is not billed through Stripe. To change plans, write to us.

I do not see Settings›Billing. Only the Owner sees that page.