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Trademark Sentinel Docs

Billing and subscriptions

Trademark Sentinel uses Stripe-managed checkout for all paid subscriptions. We never store card numbers on our servers — Stripe owns the payment surface, the saved payment methods, and the invoice PDFs. See Plan tiers and entitlements for what each tier includes.

Starting a paid subscription

From any page in the app, open Account → Billing and click Upgrade. Pick a tier and a billing period (monthly or annual), then Continue to checkout. We redirect you to a Stripe-hosted checkout page where you enter your payment details and confirm.

When checkout succeeds, Stripe sends us a webhook. The app updates your subscription within roughly 30 seconds — refresh the Billing page to see the new tier and the next renewal date.

If checkout fails or you close the page, the webhook never fires; your account stays on the previous tier and Stripe does not charge you.

Upgrading

Upgrades take effect immediately. Stripe prorates the unused portion of your current period and bills the difference for the remainder. The new tier’s features (additional watch slots, hourly scans, API access) are available as soon as the webhook lands.

Downgrading

Downgrades take effect at the end of the current billing period, so you keep what you paid for. The Billing page shows the scheduled tier change and the date it kicks in.

If your new tier has a lower Max watches quota than your current count of active watches, the app keeps the existing watches readable but pauses scanning on the over-quota watches at the changeover. Archive or delete watches to bring the count under the new quota and resume scanning.

Cancellation

You can cancel from Account → Billing → Cancel subscription. Cancellation:

  • Stops the auto-renewal at the end of the current billing period.
  • Leaves the account on the paid tier until that date.
  • Reverts the account to the Free tier on the renewal date — over-quota watches and paid-only features behave the same way as for downgrades.

You can resume the subscription at any time before the period ends and the cancellation is undone with no proration.

Failed payments and dunning

When Stripe cannot charge a renewal (expired card, insufficient funds), it retries on its standard dunning schedule and sends payment-failure emails to the address on file. The in-app Billing page also shows a banner with a Update payment method button that links into Stripe’s customer portal.

If all dunning attempts fail, Stripe cancels the subscription and we revert the account to the Free tier on the next webhook.

Invoices and receipts

Every renewal generates a PDF invoice that Stripe emails to the billing contact. You can also browse and download past invoices from the Stripe customer portal — open Account → Billing → Manage in Stripe.

Support

For billing questions we cannot answer in-app — refunds, EU VAT, switching billing emails — contact billing support. The link is published on the marketing site footer and inside the in-app Help menu.