Billing & Plans

OpenBoxes Lift offers three plans designed for different scales of operation. You can manage your subscription, payment methods, and invoices from the Billing section of the portal.

Plan Comparison#

Feature	Shared	Dedicated	Enterprise
Monthly price	$150/mo	$600/mo	$1,800/mo ($1,440/mo billed annually)
Users	Up to 10 (+5 per add-on pack, up to 20)	Up to 50 (+25 per add-on pack, up to 100)	100 included, +$100/mo per 25
Storage	10 GB (+25 GB or +100 GB with an add-on, one band)	100 GB (+100 GB per add-on band, up to 3)	250 GB included, +$150/mo per 100 GB
API calls/hour	1,000 (2,000 or 5,000 with an API add-on)	25,000 (50,000 with an API add-on)	50,000 (100,000 or 200,000 as contract line items)
Database	Shared (isolated schema)	Dedicated instance	Dedicated instance on its own server, SSD-backed (HA add-on available)
Compute	Shared application capacity	Guaranteed memory and priority scheduling on dedicated capacity	Its own server (4 vCPU / 16 GB) with guaranteed CPU and memory
Uptime target	99%	99.5%	99.9% target, measured per instance (remedies per agreement)
Support	Support chat + community (8-business-hour first-response target in the chat with the Priority Support add-on)	Support chat + community; priority handling in the chat with an 8-business-hour first-response target, included	Priority support (8-business-hour response target) + onboarding; named engineers as add-ons
Sign-in	Automatic sign-in + third-party sign-in	Automatic sign-in + third-party sign-in; company sign-in (SSO) as an add-on	Automatic sign-in + third-party sign-in; company sign-in (SSO) included
Backups	Daily (30-day retention, or 90 days / 1 year with a retention add-on) + on-demand	Daily (30-day retention) + on-demand	Every 6 hours, 90-day retention, second-region copies
AI assistant	Off until you turn it on; then 100 questions a month (+500 per pack, up to 4 packs)	Off until you turn it on; then 500 questions a month (+500 per pack, up to 4 packs)	2,000 questions a month, turned on by your agreement
Custom subdomain	Yes	Yes	Yes
IP allowlisting	Not available	Not available	Managed on request
Audit logs	Not available	Not available	Not available

Response targets apply to the support chat in the portal, where conversations are queued and measured; email to support@openboxes.cloud is read by a person but is not prioritised and carries no target on any plan. Standard Shared support is best-effort, with no published response-time target. Dedicated includes an 8-business-hour first-response target in the plan, with nothing to buy; on Shared the same target comes with the Priority Support add-on ($99/mo or $950/yr). In both cases your chat conversations are answered ahead of the standard queue, business hours are 9am to 6pm US Eastern, Monday to Friday, and the clock starts when the conversation is handed to a person (asking for a person, or the assistant escalating for you, is what starts it). That is a target, not a guarantee, and no service credits are attached to it. Enterprise agreements carry the same 8-business-hour first-response target (US business hours), and a named engineer with a faster target is available as an add-on. Audit logs and custom domains are not available on any plan today; company sign-in (SSO) is included on Enterprise and is a paid add-on on Dedicated (see Company Sign-In (SSO)); IP allowlisting is part of an Enterprise agreement (managed on request) and is not available on Shared or Dedicated.

Free Trial and Founding-Member Pricing#

Every Shared and Dedicated signup starts with a 30-day free trial. (Enterprise agreements start active, with no trial.) A payment method, either a card or a US bank account (ACH), is required at signup, but nothing is charged until the trial ends, and you can cancel during the trial without being charged.
Founding-member rate. Signups before 2026-12-31 get the FOUNDING50 discount applied automatically: $75/mo for Shared and $300/mo for Dedicated (50% off the list prices above) for 24 months.
Annual billing saves 20%: $120/mo for Shared and $480/mo for Dedicated, billed annually. Founding members pay $60/mo Shared and $240/mo Dedicated, billed annually.
Nonprofit discount. Registered nonprofits and NGOs get $25/mo off the Shared Tier monthly plan ($300/yr off the annual plan) and $100/mo off the Dedicated Tier monthly plan ($1,200/yr off the annual plan); none on Enterprise. It is not combined with the founding-member rate: a founding-member nonprofit moves to the nonprofit rate when its 24 months end. Claim it by emailing sales@openboxes.cloud with your registration details; full terms at openboxes.cloud/nonprofits.
Dedicated is self-serve. Sign up directly at app.openboxes.cloud/auth/signup?plan=dedicated; the trial and founding-member rate apply there too.

Choosing the Right Plan#

Shared: Best for Small Teams#

Ideal for organizations with fewer than 10 users getting started with OpenBoxes. You get your own isolated database schema on shared infrastructure, keeping costs low while maintaining data separation.

Dedicated: Best for Growing Organizations#

For teams that need more capacity, faster performance, and higher availability. Your OpenBoxes instance runs on its own dedicated database, giving you better performance isolation and daily backups. The application itself gets guaranteed memory and priority scheduling on dedicated capacity, so your instance is not squeezed by other tenants' load. That is a capacity guarantee, not a promise that the instance is never restarted: routine node maintenance can still restart a Dedicated instance for a few minutes.

Enterprise: Best for Large Organizations#

For organizations that need availability, data-protection and change-control commitments in a contract. The base is $1,800/mo ($1,440/mo billed annually) and includes everything in Dedicated on its own server with guaranteed CPU and memory, an SSD-backed database, a 99.9% availability target measured per instance (remedies defined in your agreement), backups every 6 hours kept 90 days with second-region copies, upgrades on your schedule rehearsed on a copy of your data first, a staging copy of your instance on demand, IP allowlisting managed on request, 100 users and 250 GB, priority support with an 8-business-hour first-response target (onboarding and guided migration included), and an MSA, DPA and invoice billing. A high-availability database, disaster recovery, named engineers and extra capacity are add-ons at published prices (see the pricing page). Audit logging is not available on any plan today, Enterprise included; organizations that need it should raise it before signing an Enterprise agreement.

Add-ons#

Most add-ons raise a specific limit on your current plan without changing plan; one (Priority Support, on Shared) changes how your support requests are handled rather than a limit. They are self-serve on Shared and Dedicated once your subscription is paid (they are not available during the trial), and each is listed at its own price:

Add-on	Shared	Dedicated
More users	+5 users per pack, $25/mo ($240/yr); up to 2 packs (20 users)	+25 users per pack, $100/mo ($960/yr); up to 2 packs (100 users)
More storage	+25 GB $25/mo ($240/yr), or +100 GB $100/mo ($960/yr); one band at a time (up to 110 GB included)	+100 GB $60/mo ($576/yr) per band, up to 3 bands (up to 400 GB included)
Higher API rate	API 2× (2,000/hour) $30/mo ($288/yr), or API 5× (5,000/hour) $70/mo ($672/yr); one band at a time	API 2× (50,000/hour) $175/mo ($1,680/yr)
Longer backup retention	90 days $15/mo ($144/yr), or 1 year $30/mo ($288/yr); one at a time	Not available (backups are kept 30 days; a longer period is not sold yet)
Priority Support	$99/mo ($950/yr): your portal chat conversations are answered ahead of the standard queue, with an 8-business-hour first-response target	Not needed (the same 8-business-hour first-response target is already included in the plan)
Staging days	Not available (staging copies are a Dedicated feature)	5-day pack, $100 charged once ($20/day); up to 4 packs (20 days) per purchase
Company sign-in (SSO)	Not available	$299/mo ($2,900/yr), bought in Browse add-ons, then set up with our team
AI assistant questions	+500 questions a month per pack, $25/mo ($240/yr); up to 4 packs, while the assistant is on	+500 questions a month per pack, $25/mo ($240/yr); up to 4 packs, while the assistant is on

About the storage add-on. Your storage figure is an included quota, not a hard cap, and a storage band raises the quota rather than adding an enforcement. On Shared it is fair use: nothing is blocked when you reach it, and you hold one band at a time. On Dedicated your database disk is provisioned with headroom above the included quota; each band grows the disk, online and without taking the instance down, usually within a few minutes of the add-on going Active, and growth beyond the quota is handled with you through support. Removing a Dedicated band returns the included figure to your plan's straight away. The disk itself is never shrunk, so the Usage page can read over quota until you are back inside the included figure.

About the staging-day pack. This one is not a subscription line. It is a pack, charged once when you buy it, and it never renews. Five staging days cost $100 ($20 a day), and you can buy up to four packs at a time. Days you buy never expire; they sit on your balance until you use them. A pack must be charged to a card, so if your account's default payment method is a US bank account the purchase is refused and asks you to add a card and make it the default first. A pack is not refundable, and packs cannot be bought during the free trial. A staging day is spent when a copy becomes ready and each time you extend a lease, and days are not returned if you tear a copy down early. What the days buy is described in Staging Copies.

About the retention add-on. Retention sets how far back your backups go: with 1-year retention, backups are kept for a year instead of 30 days. It does not change how recent the newest backup is (a nightly backup is still up to 24 hours old), and the full period accrues from the day you add it rather than appearing at once. Because backups are kept for the whole period, deleted records remain inside them for that period. It is sold on Shared today.

About the Priority Support add-on. It applies to the support chat in the portal: your conversations there are answered ahead of the standard queue, with a first-response target of 8 business hours (business hours are 9am to 6pm US Eastern, Monday to Friday), measured from the moment a conversation is handed to a person, which is what happens when you ask for one (or the assistant escalates for you). It is a target, not a guarantee: no service credits are attached to it, it does not extend coverage outside business hours, it does not put a named engineer on your account, and it makes no promise about how long a resolution takes. Email to support@openboxes.cloud is unchanged by it: email is not prioritised and has no target on any plan. Priority takes effect within about 5 minutes of the add-on going Active, and it is applied per conversation, so a conversation that is already open keeps its earlier state until it next reaches a person. It is sold on Shared only. Dedicated and Enterprise already include the same 8-business-hour first-response target as part of the plan, so there is nothing to add there.

About the AI assistant pack. The AI assistant in OpenBoxes is included on every plan and is off until the account owner turns it on; once it is on, your instance gets a monthly allowance of questions. Each pack adds 500 questions a month to that allowance, and raises the daily limit with it (a fifth of the month's total). Unused questions do not carry over to the next month. Only the account owner can buy a pack, from Buy more questions on the portal's AI assistant page. A pack can be bought only while the assistant is on for your instance. If the owner turns the assistant off, every extra question pack is scheduled to end at the end of the current billing period: there is no further charge after that, and no refund for the current period. On Enterprise, extra questions are part of the agreement rather than a pack.

About company sign-in (SSO). Your people sign in to OpenBoxes Lift and to your OpenBoxes instance with their company account, over SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect. On Dedicated it is $299/month on the Dedicated Tier monthly plan or $2,900/year on the Dedicated Tier annual plan; on Enterprise it is included; on Shared it is not available. On Dedicated you buy it in Billing under Browse add-ons, like the other add-ons. Unlike them, buying it does not switch anything on by itself: the setup is done with our team, so after you buy it email sales@openboxes.cloud or ask in the portal support chat and tell us which identity provider you use. See Company Sign-In (SSO).

Enterprise add-ons (high-availability database, disaster recovery, named engineers, users, storage and API bands) are listed on the pricing page and added to your agreement through sales.

Adding an Add-on#

Go to Billing in the portal sidebar
On the Add-ons card, click Browse add-ons
Click Add next to the add-on you want (for a user pack, choose how many packs)
The dialog shows What you pay (the exact amount charged today and what your next invoice will be), then click Add to plan

Once the add-on's row on the Add-ons card shows Active, the new figure applies and shows on the Usage page (a longer retention shows on the Backups page). On Dedicated the included figure moves straight away; the database disk itself is resized in the background and usually catches up within a few minutes. To change the number of user packs (or Dedicated storage bands), click Change on the add-on's row. One API band, one Shared storage band and one retention length can be active at a time, so to move between API 2× and 5×, between +25 GB and +100 GB on Shared, or between 90-day and 1-year retention, remove the current one first (the unused part of the period is credited) and then add the other.

How Add-ons Are Charged#

Pro-rated to start. You are charged today for the remainder of your current billing period only; after that the add-on is billed with your plan, on your plan's billing date and interval, and renews with it.
Annual billing saves 20% on add-ons, the same as on plans.
The founding-member discount applies to your plan only: add-ons are always at their listed price.

Removing an Add-on#

Go to Billing in the portal sidebar
On the Add-ons card, click Remove on the add-on's row
Confirm with Remove add-on

The add-on stops applying straight away and the unused part of the current period is credited to your account, against your next invoice. You can add it again at any time. If removing a user pack leaves you with more users than your plan allows, existing users keep their access, but new invitations are refused until you are back under the limit.

Add-ons and Plan Changes#

Moving between Shared and Dedicated hosting is always arranged with support rather than completed as a self-serve plan change, and that stays true while an add-on is active, and we keep your add-ons intact. If you are planning that move, it is simplest to do it first, or ask in the support chat.

Upgrading Your Plan#

Moving from Shared to Dedicated is arranged with support rather than completed in the portal: ask in the support chat and we schedule the move with you (see Instance Management for what happens to your instance).

The Upgrade Plan page (Billing > Upgrade plan) is where you compare plans and open that conversation: Chat with us to upgrade on the Dedicated card, Contact Sales on Enterprise. Switching between monthly and annual billing is arranged with support in the same way.

What Happens When You Upgrade#

Immediate effect: Your billing moves to the new plan when the change is placed
Prorated billing: You are only charged the difference for the remainder of your current billing period
Data preserved: All your OpenBoxes data carries over. Nothing is lost during an upgrade.
Shared to Dedicated: Arranged with support, not completed in the portal. Your billing moves to the new plan when the change is placed; our team then moves your data from the shared database to a dedicated database instance and emails you to agree a cutover window, during which your instance is unavailable. There is no self-serve button and no API call for this move.
New limits apply: User limits, storage, and other quotas update to match your new plan

Downgrading Your Plan#

Moving from Dedicated back to Shared is arranged with support, like the upgrade and for the same reason: your data has to be moved off the dedicated instance onto shared infrastructure. Ask in the portal chat or email support@openboxes.cloud; billing moves when the change is placed, our team moves your data, and we email you to agree a cutover window.

Whatever the change, check the points below before you ask for it.

Before You Downgrade#

Make sure your current usage fits within the lower plan's limits:

Users: If you have more users than the lower plan allows, you need to remove users first
Storage: If your storage exceeds the lower plan's included quota, that figure becomes an overage against the lower plan's quota. Nothing is blocked because of it and fair use applies (see Usage & Monitoring for what that means on each plan)
Add-ons: A move between Dedicated and Shared hosting is arranged with support whether or not an add-on is active; with one active we keep your add-ons intact (see Add-ons and Plan Changes above)

We will tell you about any conflicts before the change is placed. Your billing moves to the new plan when the change is placed, with a prorated credit for the remainder of the current period.

Payment Methods#

Lift accepts the following payment methods:

Credit/debit cards: Visa, Mastercard, American Express (both during signup and in the Billing page's add/update dialog you can enter your card directly or provide it via Apple Pay or Google Pay where your browser offers them)
US bank accounts (ACH direct debit): available at signup, for US bank accounts only. You connect your account by logging into your bank right in the signup form, so verification is instant, with no microdeposits. Bank accounts can only be added during signup; the Billing page's add/update dialog takes cards only (entered directly, or via Apple Pay or Google Pay).
Invoice or purchase-order billing (net 30): part of every [Enterprise] agreement

A few things to know about paying by bank debit:

Bank-debit payments can take up to 4 business days to confirm after they are submitted, so an invoice remains Open for a few days while the debit is processing.
Refunds to a bank account arrive as a separate credit (typically around 3 business days), not a reversal of the original debit.
An ACH dispute raised through your bank is final (there is no appeal process), and the disputed bank account can no longer be used with Lift. Add a card under Billing > Payment Methods to keep your service going.

Adding or Updating a Payment Method#

Go to Billing in your portal
Click Add Payment Method (or the Update payment method link at the bottom of the payment method card)
In the Add Payment Method dialog, enter your card details directly or provide them via Apple Pay or Google Pay
Click Add payment method
If you already had a payment method on file, the new card becomes your default automatically and future charges go to it. To switch between saved payment methods, click Make default on the one you want. The one in use is marked Default.

Your payment information is securely processed and stored by Stripe. Lift never sees or stores your full card or bank account number.

Invoices#

Invoices are generated at the start of each billing cycle. Your billing cycle is anchored to the date you signed up (after the 30-day trial), not to the calendar month, so a monthly invoice lands on the same day each month. Invoices are available in the portal:

Go to Billing > Invoices
Click on any invoice to view details
Click Download PDF for your records

Invoices are also emailed to the account's billing contact.

Failed Payments#

If a payment fails, you receive a failed-payment email for each retry; the final failure sends the account-suspended email. What happens next depends on how you pay:

Card payments. The charge is retried automatically, roughly 1, 3, and 5 days after the initial failure. If the final retry also fails, your instance is suspended until a successful payment is made.

Bank-debit (ACH) payments. A bank debit can take up to 4 business days to confirm, so a failure can surface a few days after the payment date. Failed debits are retried automatically by Stripe. If an invoice is still unpaid 14 days after its date, your instance is suspended until a payment succeeds. A debit that is still processing at that point defers suspension rather than triggering it. Bank accounts can only be added during signup, so if a debit keeps failing, add a card from the Payment method card on the Billing page. It becomes your default payment method automatically (or use Make default on a card you saved earlier).

A suspended instance means:

Your OpenBoxes instance is stopped and inaccessible
Your data is preserved and not deleted
Portal access remains active so you can update payment methods
Service resumes immediately once payment is resolved

Suspension is not cancellation: your subscription is not canceled automatically. Cancellation is always an explicit action you take (see below).

Cancellation#

To cancel your subscription:

Go to Billing in the portal sidebar
Click Cancel subscription
Choose Cancel anyway (or Pause instead: pausing keeps your data and configuration and can be resumed within 90 days. Pausing is only for a paid subscription, so during the free trial there is no Pause instead and Cancel subscription goes straight to the next step. Billing restarts on the resume date you pick, or after 90 days if you pick none. You can pause once every 12 months, counted from the day your last pause started. If you have paused in the last 12 months, Pause instead is not offered and the next step tells you the date you can pause again; to pause sooner, contact support in the portal chat and our team can pause it for you. A pause our team makes counts toward the 12 months too.)
Pick a reason from the short list (Prefer not to say is one of the choices), add a note if you like, and click Cancel subscription to confirm. The reason only helps us improve; it does not change what happens next.

After Cancellation#

Cancelling stops the subscription. It does not close your account. What happens to your data depends on whether you are still in the free trial.

Cancelling a paid subscription:

Your instance keeps working until the end of the period you have paid for. We email you when you cancel, with the dates below
Changed your mind? Click Reactivate Subscription on the Billing page before the period ends and nothing is interrupted
When the period ends, your instance is suspended and is no longer accessible
30 days after that, the instance and its data are permanently deleted. We email you 7 days before and again once it is done. Backups of the instance expire within 30 days after the deletion
During those 30 days your portal login keeps working, so you can download a backup from the Backups page (on Dedicated, ask us for a full copy of your database)
To get your instance back as it was, click Resubscribe on the Billing page within the 30 days. Resubscribing starts a new paid subscription right away and needs a card. There is no new free trial, a founding-member discount is not applied again, and add-ons are not restored automatically (retention and storage add-ons ended with the subscription)
Enterprise agreements are not suspended automatically; our team handles the end of an agreement with you

Cancelling during the free trial:

You are not charged, and you can keep using OpenBoxes until the trial ends
When the trial ends, your instance is suspended
30 days after that, the instance and its data are permanently deleted
Export anything you want to keep before the trial ends (see below)

Closing Your Account#

Closing the account is a separate, deliberate action under Settings > Danger zone. Closure is recoverable for 30 days, after which your OpenBoxes data is permanently deleted. Export your data first (see below).

Data Export#

There are two self-serve ways to take a copy of your data out of a Shared instance:

A backup download. On the Backups page, Download on a completed backup gives you a compressed SQL dump of your instance's OpenBoxes database. Take an on-demand backup first if you want an up-to-date copy.
Export my data, under Settings > Danger zone (account owner only). It emails you a link to a ZIP with your account details, audit log, billing history and one CSV file per OpenBoxes table. Passwords and other secrets are redacted, you can request one export every 24 hours, and each table is capped at 50,000 rows, so a larger table is cut off at that point. Use the backup download if any of your tables may be bigger than that.

You can also export individual reports and lists from within OpenBoxes. On Dedicated, ask support how to get a full copy of your data. We recommend exporting everything you need before cancelling or closing your account.

Enterprise Billing#

[Enterprise] pricing is published: a base of $1,800/mo ($1,440/mo billed annually, $17,280/yr) plus the add-ons you choose, each at its listed price (see the pricing page for what the base includes and the full add-on catalog). How Enterprise billing works:

Invoice or purchase-order billing (net 30) is part of the base, and no card is required
Annual billing saves 20%, the same as every plan; that is the whole discount schedule, and the founding-member offer does not apply to Enterprise
No trial: Enterprise agreements start active on signature
Changes to an agreement (adding an add-on, more users or storage) are arranged with our sales team

For Enterprise billing questions, use the Contact Sales form or email sales@openboxes.cloud.