Plans & billing
Alpacon offers a Free plan and paid plans (Essentials and Enterprise) that raise your workspace’s limits and unlock additional features. For the full plan lineup, prices, and included limits, see the Alpacon pricing page.
This page covers what you see and do inside the product: where to manage your plan, what happens when you reach a limit or a locked feature, how paying for an upgrade works, what happens if a renewal charge fails, and how to cancel.
Where to manage your plan
The Billing menu lives inside workspace settings.
- In the left sidebar, click Workspace settings. This entry is only shown to Staff and Superuser members.
- Open Billing > Overview.
The Billing group has three items:
- Overview—your current plan, this period’s usage, and the estimated cost.
- Payment—the cards this workspace is charged on, and the billing details behind them.
- History—the invoices, payments, and credits recorded for this workspace.
All three need billing permission (Staff and Superuser). Without it the Billing group isn’t listed at all, and opening one of its pages by URL says only that you don’t have permission to view billing information.
What the Overview page shows
- Current plan—your plan name, a Trial badge during a trial, and a Fixed term tag on a contract. Upgrade (on Free) or View plans (on a paid plan) opens the upgrade panel over the page you’re already on. Under the name, a subscription shows Renews on (Trial ends during a trial) and the Billing period; a contract shows a single Contract term stat covering the whole term, with the days left as its caption. A workspace billed through a company account also carries a line saying it’s billed to that company, with a Contact your account manager link.
- Estimated next charge—what the workspace is due to pay next and the date it’s charged. It appears once there’s a subscription with a next billing date. A prepaid contract shows Next payment as None instead, captioned with the date it’s paid through. Available credit joins that row whenever the workspace holds any; credit comes off the next invoice on its own.
- Usage this period—a tile each for Active users, Active servers, Websh session usage time, and FTP file transfer volume, every title linking to the matching page for details. Where the plan sets a limit, the tile reads usage against that limit with a gauge and a percentage; where it doesn’t, the figure stands alone and the section notes once that the plan has no usage limits. Websh time reads as a duration, such as 5h 15m.
- Estimated month-to-date cost—a per-service breakdown with any overage, plus subtotal, credit applied, tax, and total. A prepaid contract is paid in full for its term, so this section isn’t shown for one.
The Billing period these figures cover (Contract term on a contract) is shown at the top of the page. The cost is an estimate. The final invoice is issued at the end of each billing period and may differ.
On a monthly plan, each renewal bills you for the server count you have at that moment—the capacity you’re reserving for the period ahead. Removing servers mid-period doesn’t refund what you already paid; it only lowers what’s billed at the next renewal. If your server count runs above what you’re paying for at any point in the period, that overage is settled once, at the following renewal, based on how long you ran above your reserved count over the whole period rather than a single snapshot. Annual plans don’t add overage automatically this way—if you need more capacity than your annual term covers, your account manager arranges it.
What happens at a limit or a gate
When you reach a plan limit or open a feature your plan doesn’t include, Alpacon shows a dialog naming the plan that unlocks it, summarizing what you gain, and linking to the pricing page. Continuing from that dialog opens the upgrade panel over the page you were on. Nothing opens a new browser tab and you don’t lose your place. The action you attempted isn’t completed until the plan is upgraded.
What the panel offers depends on how the workspace is billed and on what you’re allowed to do:
| What the panel says | When you see it |
|---|---|
| Start your free trial | You manage billing and the workspace hasn’t used its trial. Every limit lifts for the length of the trial, and nothing is charged until it ends. |
| Upgrade this workspace | You manage billing and the trial is already spent. The new limits apply as soon as the charge goes through. |
| Ask an admin to upgrade | You don’t manage billing. The panel names the members who do and gives you a link to email them. If nobody in the workspace manages billing, it points you to support instead. |
| Talk to your account manager | The workspace is billed under a contract. Its limits are agreed there rather than bought from the console, so there’s no checkout. |
| Contact us for a bigger plan | The plan you’d need isn’t sold from the console. Enterprise is arranged with us directly—write to support@alpacax.com. |
You can open the same panel yourself from the Overview page—Upgrade on Free, View plans on a paid plan. Started that way it opens on the plan summary; reached from a limit it opens straight on card entry, because the dialog already asked.
The table below is qualitative. For the exact numbers behind each limit and the features each plan includes, see the pricing page.
Plan limits
| Limit | What happens when you reach it | Raised by |
|---|---|---|
| Members in a workspace | Inviting another member shows an upgrade dialog, and the member isn’t added. | Any paid plan |
| Registered servers | Registering another server shows an upgrade dialog, and the server isn’t added. | Any paid plan |
| Applications (identities for automation) | Adding another application shows an upgrade dialog, and the application isn’t created. | Any paid plan |
| Workspaces you can create or join | On Free you can have one workspace; creating another prompts an upgrade. | Any paid plan |
| Websh session usage time, FTP transfer volume | Metered each billing period; you can track consumption on the Overview page. | Any paid plan |
| Activity log retention window | How far back activity history reaches depends on your plan. | Higher plans |
Features by plan
| Feature | On Free | Unlocks with |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal session history and record search | Prompts an upgrade | Essentials or higher |
| Command history for Deploy Shell | Prompts an upgrade | Essentials or higher |
| File transfer history for WebFTP | Prompts an upgrade | Essentials or higher |
| Activity log and system logs | Prompts an upgrade | Essentials or higher |
| Session sharing in Websh | Sharing shows an upgrade prompt | Essentials or higher |
| AI session analysis and threat insights | Prompts an upgrade | Essentials or higher |
| API access tokens (API tokens) | Creating a token prompts an upgrade | Essentials or higher |
| Email and Slack notifications, webhooks, monitoring rules | Prompts an upgrade | Essentials or higher |
| Advanced server metrics and higher-frequency monitoring | Basic metrics only; disk I/O and network traffic are hidden | Essentials or higher |
| Join by email domain without an invitation | Prompts an upgrade | Essentials or higher |
| Enterprise SSO (Okta Integration Network or SAML IdP) | Not available | Enterprise |
| Security groups (firewall) | Not available | Enterprise |
| Extensions (IP, DNS, Proxy, Private SSL, Package mirrors, Power control) | Not available | Enterprise |
Paying for an upgrade
Card entry happens in the upgrade panel, on the page you’re already on.
- Card: the card fields render inside the panel itself. Your bank can still send you to its own verification page and bring you straight back, and the panel picks up where it left off.
- Postal code: asked alongside the card and used only to work out sales tax. Your country comes from the workspace, so you’re never asked for it here.
- Workspaces billed in Korean won: Toss opens its own window for the card instead, and no postal code is asked. In a desktop browser that window stays inside the console; on a phone it takes over the tab and returns you here when it’s done.
- Workspaces with no billing details yet: the first charge needs a billing record. If there isn’t one, the panel stops and offers Add billing details, which takes you to Billing > Payment. Fill the form in, then start the upgrade again.
Once the charge goes through, the new limits apply straight away and the panel offers to take you back to what you were doing.
If a renewal charge fails
If a scheduled charge doesn’t go through, a banner appears at the top of the Overview page. It says whether the card was declined or we couldn’t calculate tax from your billing address, with a button straight to fixing it (Manage cards or Fix billing address) and a Retry payment button that tries again right there.
We also retry automatically—on a monthly plan, on day 1, day 3, and day 7 after the failed charge (day 3, 7, and 14 on an annual plan)—and email you at each stage: when the first attempt fails, again before the last retry, and once more if the workspace ends up paused. If the final retry still fails, the workspace is paused and moved to the Free plan; fixing your card or billing address before then keeps it on its current plan.
Cancelling a subscription
Cancel subscription sits at the bottom of the Overview page, for any self-serve paid plan that isn’t already on Free or under a contract. Cancelling is immediate: the workspace returns to the Free plan right away, not at the end of the current billing period, and nothing renews after that.
What you already paid for this period isn’t refunded for the days left in it. If your server count ran above what you’re paying for at any point in the period, that’s settled once, at the moment you cancel, on the same whole-period basis a normal renewal uses—so most cancellations add nothing further, and only a fleet that ran well above its reserved count for much of the period is charged more.
Cancelling is blocked while the workspace is over the Free plan’s limits—too many members, or more servers than Free allows—until you bring it within them. During a trial, the same button ends the trial immediately instead, and nothing is charged.
A workspace billed through a company account or under a contract doesn’t cancel this way—reach your account manager instead.
Payment and history
Billing > Payment holds two sections:
- Payment method: the cards this workspace is charged on. Add a card, make one the default, or remove one. A card the subscription is currently using is labeled, so you can tell which one pays.
- Billing details: who the invoice is addressed to and the location tax is worked out from—name, email, country, postal code, city, state, street address, and phone. This is the full form, and it only has to be filled in once. Afterwards the upgrade panel asks for the postal code alone, because everything else is already on record.
Billing > History has three tabs:
- Invoices: every invoice issued to the workspace—Issued, Item, Invoice number, Amount, and Status (Estimated, Issued, Paid, or Cancelled). Selecting a row opens that invoice; where a document exists, the last column downloads it as a PDF.
- Payments: every charge against the workspace—Issued, Item, Amount, and Status (Paid, Pending, or Failed). A row expands in place, under itself, for the card it was charged to, the charge breakdown, a refund note if there was one, and a View receipt link that opens the payment provider’s receipt page in a new tab, where the payment provider issued one.
- Credits: each credit’s Code, Amount, how much is Used, what’s Remaining, and when it was Redeemed. A long code is shortened, with a button beside it that copies the full value.
Who can manage billing
- See the plan, usage, and estimated cost: Staff and Superuser members. Without billing permission the Billing group isn’t shown, and opening Overview by its URL only says you can’t view billing information.
- Manage cards, billing details, invoices, and payments: Staff and Superuser members. Payment and History don’t appear for anyone else.
- Change the plan: Staff and Superuser members. Anyone else who reaches a limit is shown the members who can change it, with a link to email them, and is pointed to support if the workspace has none.
Self-hosted deployments
Plan, usage, and billing apply to Alpacon Cloud. Self-hosted deployments have no payment service, so the Billing menu, the usage meters, and the cost estimate aren’t shown, and an upgrade prompt sends you to us rather than to a checkout.