Skip to content
RoutingCatRoutingCatRoutingCat Docs

Plans, billing and emails

Your plan, Hobby or Pro, is your RoutingCat account’s, and covers every site you own: their visitors, their live variants and the sites themselves count together against it. This guide says what each plan includes and costs, what happens at its limits, how billing follows the calendar month, and which emails RoutingCat sends. You manage it in the dashboard’s Settings → Billing, which the account menu at the sidebar’s foot opens. A site’s members see the plan it is on and its own visitors, never your other sites.

Choose a plan

You start on Hobby.

Hobby Pro
Price $0 $100 a month, or $960 a year: $80 a month
Sites Up to 3 Any number
Visitors a month, across your sites Up to 10,000 100,000 included, $100 of routing at $0.001 a visitor; past them, $0.001 a visitor
Live variants Up to 10 across your sites, the slots’ defaults not counted Up to 100 a page
Counts Every hour Every 15 minutes
Learning Once a day As conversions mature, up to every hour
Card On file before routing starts, nothing charged Charged for the plan
  • Pro also has an optional monthly cap, and a 14-day trial, once per owner.
  • Everything else is the same on both plans: routing, the control and the measured gain, the command, the dashboard and the emails. A site can have any number of members on either plan.
  • Enterprise has custom terms, agreed with the founder: talk to the founder through routingcat.com.

Know what counts

Your plan counts the visitors on the routed pages of every site you own, in each UTC calendar month, added up:

  • Each visitor counts once a month on each site, on the day of their first visit there that month. A visitor is a browser, so one person on a phone and a laptop counts twice.
  • Safari forgets a visitor after 7 days without a visit, since RoutingCat’s script writes the visitor id, so a person who comes back later in the month counts again. The server helpers set the id from your server, which Safari keeps 400 days.
  • The control counts too, since its visitors see your routed pages, with your defaults.
  • People only. Automated traffic is left out, and shown apart.
  • Only routed pages count, and only while routing is on.
  • The count starts again on the 1st, at 00:00 UTC.

Hobby’s live variants are the variants the routed pages of your sites serve, the slots’ defaults not counted: a hero slot with its default and three new headlines uses 3. Paused, retired and held variants don’t count. Hobby’s sites are the sites you own; archived sites, and those RoutingCat exempts, don’t count.

Settings → Billing shows the month across your sites: the count against your plan, with a projection at its pace so far, then the new visitors by day, stacked by site, each site in its own color. The list under the chart gives each site’s visitors and share of the month, and its live variants on Hobby; untick a site to leave it out of the chart, and every site shows again the next time you open Billing. Home’s “Visitors this month” gives you the same count, with the part of the site you’re on, and the sidebar’s meter gives it in brief. npx routingcat status prints it too, with the site’s part, on its visitors and variants lines.

Add a card to start routing

On Hobby, a new site’s routing starts once you, its owner, have a card on file, and nothing is charged. Until then, your changes register as usual and every visitor sees your defaults:

You add the card in Settings → Billing, with “Add a card”, on Stripe’s page, or start Pro’s trial instead. Routing starts within about 2 minutes, with nothing to redeploy.

  • One card serves every site you own: a site you create once it is on file routes as soon as its first page goes live.
  • Stripe keeps the card. RoutingCat keeps only its brand, its last four digits and its expiry date, to show which card is on file.
  • A site RoutingCat exempts routes without one, and Billing says so.

Add a site past Hobby’s 3

On Hobby, you own up to 3 sites. init refuses a 4th, with the site limit message, and the dashboard’s site switcher says Hobby’s sites are in use, with the way to Billing. To add it, upgrade to Pro, which has no limit on sites, or have RoutingCat archive a site you no longer use; then run npx routingcat init again.

Back on Hobby, when Pro or its trial ends, you keep every site you own, and they share Hobby’s visitors and live variants.

Go past Hobby’s 10 live variants

A change or an act that takes your sites past 10 live variants on Hobby still succeeds: each variant past the 10th is held. A held variant is registered and kept, with its versions, and isn’t served until there is room.

  • Which are held: what your pages serve stays live; the other variants go live in the order they were declared, across your sites, while there is room, and the rest are held. So a change that adds several holds the newest.
  • Where it shows: push names the held variants after its receipt’s first line, with the held-variants warning; plan marks each one before you push; status reads held on its row; the dashboard marks it “Held by the plan”, and the plan’s banner turns red. Billing’s list of sites counts each site’s live variants, and those held.
  • When they go live: once room frees, as you retire or pause a live variant on any of your sites, a site is archived, or you move to Pro or its trial. Held variants then go live in the order they were declared, within about 2 minutes, with nothing to redeploy, each with a scorecard against its slot’s default.
  • Promoting a held variant makes it its slot’s default, which is never held.
  • Back on Hobby, when Pro or its trial ends, what your pages serve past 10 across your sites is held again, the newest first, and their scorecards close. A revert that brings back variants past 10 holds them too.

Go past Hobby’s visitors

In the first month your sites pass 10,000 visitors together on Hobby, routing keeps going. You get an email at 80% and at 100% of the 10,000, and the dashboard’s banner and Settings → Billing say what the next month would do.

Past 10,000 visitors on Hobby two months running, every site you own stops routing. When the hourly count passes 10,000 in the second month, routing turns off on each of your sites, and every visitor sees your defaults until you’re on Pro.

While routing is off, visits and conversions are still recorded, and visitors served then don’t count. A month that ends under 10,000 starts afresh: the next month past it is a first one again.

Cap Pro’s monthly bill

Pro keeps routing whatever the count, and bills the visitors past 100,000 across your sites. To bound the bill, you can set a monthly cap, in visitors, in Settings → Billing:

  • Reaching the cap turns routing off on every site you own until the month ends, or until you raise or remove the cap.
  • A cap at or below this month’s count turns routing off at once. The confirmation says so before you set it.
  • The projection gives the month’s count and price at its pace so far, held at the cap.

Turn routing back on

Routing your plan turned off comes back on by itself when its cause ends, within about 2 minutes, from what it had learned:

  • Waiting for a card: when you add one, or start Pro or its trial.
  • Past Hobby’s visitors: when you subscribe to Pro, on every site you own.
  • At Pro’s cap: when the month ends, or the cap rises or goes.

Until then, npx routingcat set routing=on is refused, with the way out. RoutingCat turns back on only the routing it turned off. Routing you turned off yourself stays off until you turn it on: see Routing settings.

Upgrade to Pro

“Upgrade to Pro”, in Settings → Billing, on the plan’s banner, on Home or in the setup checklist, opens one confirmation, yearly preselected, that shows today’s charge, the price from the next 1st and the card it charges: see the upgrade dialog. Pro covers every site you own, and those you add.

  • With a card on file, confirming subscribes at once. Without one, confirming opens Stripe’s page to add the card, and Pro starts when you’re back in Billing, at the charge the dialog showed. Stripe’s page opens otherwise only when your bank asks to confirm the card.
  • The charge is the one shown. If the quote changed while the dialog was open, as when you started the trial in another tab meanwhile, nothing is charged: the dialog shows the new quote and asks again.
  • When your bank asks to confirm the card, Pro waits for it: your sites stay on Hobby until the first payment goes through, and Billing, the banner and the setup checklist offer “Confirm the card on Stripe” in place of another upgrade.
  • Back from Stripe’s page with a card added for an upgrade, Billing says “Card added. Starting your Pro trial…”, or “Card added. Upgrading you to Pro…” once you’ve had the trial, and finishes the upgrade the dialog confirmed. If the quote changed while you were on Stripe’s page, nothing is charged: the dialog shows the new quote, your card on file, and asks again. Back with a card alone, Billing shows it within a minute. You never get a second subscription: the upgrade Stripe’s page holds completes once.
  • The trial: your first Pro starts with a 14-day trial. It takes a card too, and charges nothing until it ends; it then continues on the interval you chose, unless you cancel in the billing portal before it ends. Stripe emails a reminder before the trial ends.

On Pro, routing that waited for a card starts on every site, held variants go live, and you can add any number of sites.

Manage and cancel

Pro’s periods start on the 1st at 00:00 UTC, monthly and yearly alike, as the count does:

  • The first period is prorated, from the day you subscribe, or the trial’s end, to the next 1st.
  • The month Pro starts still includes the full 100,000 visitors, and its overage counts only the visitors whose first visit that month came on or after the plan’s start day, a trial’s days included.
  • Visitors past 100,000 in a month across your sites, rounded up to the next 1,000, are billed at $1 per 1,000 on the invoice of the next 1st, with a monthly plan’s renewal. A yearly plan’s overage comes on an invoice of its own that day.

You do the rest in Settings → Billing:

  • Manage billing opens Stripe’s billing portal: your card, your invoices, the switch between monthly and yearly, and cancelling. A switch from yearly to monthly takes effect at the end of the yearly period. Billing shows the next invoice’s date, and Stripe emails each receipt and invoice, and a reminder before a yearly renewal.
  • Cancel in the billing portal. Pro runs to the end of its period, then you’re on Hobby, with Hobby’s limits across your sites; Billing shows the day it ends.
  • After a failed payment, routing keeps going and the dashboard says so: update the card in the billing portal.
  • On Hobby, “Replace the card” changes the card on file, and once you have a billing account, Manage billing opens the billing portal for the card and past invoices.

Archiving a site leaves your plan as it is; from then on, the site counts toward none of its limits.

Choose your emails

Email Goes to When Your choice
Usage You, as the sites’ owner On Hobby, at 80% and at 100% of the 10,000 visitors across your sites, and at your 9th and 10th live variant, each at most once a month; and whenever the plan turns routing off or back on, a new site’s wait for its card excepted Always sent
When the site stops sending data The owner and members After a full day without records from production, at most once a week each On by default, per site
Monday report Those who choose it Each Monday, for the week before: each routed page’s visits and conversions, its measured gain with its range, and what changed Off by default, per site
Product news Those who choose it What’s new in RoutingCat, now and then Off by default, once for all sites
  • Choose in Settings → Emails, where each switch saves at once. After you sign up, Home asks once whether you want the Monday report.
  • Every email but the usage ones carries a one-click unsubscribe link.
  • The alert waits for a full day, since a site with little traffic often goes quiet for hours; a shorter silence shows only on the dashboard. When it comes and your site had traffic, your pages no longer run RoutingCat’s head partial, or their records can’t reach RoutingCat: npx routingcat doctor checks both, as nothing recorded explains.
  • Emails go to the address you sign in with.

Next