Plans and Billing

Sway has four plans: Basic, Starter, Studio and Roster. Basic is the state of every page that has never subscribed, and it is a working product, not a trial. You can create pages, publish events, sell tickets and send email marketing on Basic. What the paid plans buy you is a handful of extra screens and larger allowances on the ones you already have.

A plan belongs to a page or to a crew. It never belongs to you. Two people sharing a promoter page share its plan; one person owning four pages pays for each one separately unless those pages sit in a crew.

The four are compared side by side, with prices, on the public pricing page. Inside the admin the same comparison appears on the plan panel, and that is the one to buy from: it already knows which page you are subscribing.

See which plan a page is on

1. Open Manage, then click your artist, venue or promoter page.
2. Click Subscription in the left rail. The screen is headed Subscription.
3. Read the plan card. It names the plan: Basic, Starter, or the Studio or Roster of a crew. On a plan the page pays for, a status sits beside the name, in the same words as on Billing: Active, Free trial, Payment failed, Paused, Ending or Ended. Under the name, Free plan with essential features means the page has never subscribed, and This page inherits its plan from the Crew subscription. means a crew pays for it.

Reading the screen and acting on it are separate rights. Anyone who can open Subscription can read it. The actions belong to the page owner and to members holding the subscription-management permission. For everyone else the three-dots menu, the button in the state block, Invoices and payment, the Starter offer and Upgrade to Studio are not drawn, and a line under the card reads Only the page owner, or a member allowed to manage the subscription, can change this plan.

Subscribe a page to Starter

1. Open Manage, then the artist, venue or promoter page.
2. Click Subscription in the left rail. On Basic, the Starter offer sits beside the plan card and lists what is Included in Starter.
3. Under Billing cycle, pick Monthly or Yearly. The line underneath gives the price, fetched live: yearly is billed once and carries two months free.
4. Click Subscribe to Starter. The checkout opens on Subscribe to Starter, with 7-day free trial under the price.
5. If the page was not carried through, choose it under Select which page to subscribe: and click Continue to checkout. Pages already inside a crew, and pages already on Starter, are not listed.
6. Pay. You land back in the admin, a welcome dialog offers Discover your features, and the screen switches to its Starter shape.

Switch billing cycle

1. Open Subscription.
2. Open the three-dots menu at the top right of the plan card and choose Switch to yearly billing or Switch to monthly billing. A confirmation opens.
3. Read the amount. Moving to yearly charges a prorated amount immediately; moving to monthly changes nothing until the current yearly period ends.
4. Click Confirm & Pay Now or Confirm Switch.

A switch to monthly is booked for the end of the paid year. Until then the card says Switches to monthly billing on …, with Keep yearly billing to call the switch off, and the menu stops offering a switch.

Pause instead of cancelling

1. Open Subscription.
2. Open the three-dots menu on the plan card and choose Pause the subscription.
3. Type a Number of days. The dialog shows the date the plan resumes on, and the Pause days left this year out of 62.
4. Click Pause the subscription.

While paused, the status reads Paused and the card says Paused until …, with Resume now to end the pause early. Until then the menu keeps only the cancellation.

Cancel, and undo a cancellation

1. Open Subscription.
2. Open the three-dots menu on the plan card and choose Cancel the subscription. The dialog asks Cancel this subscription? and names the date the page keeps every feature until.
3. Click Cancel the subscription, or Keep it to back out.

The subscription then runs to the end of the paid period. The status reads Ending and the card says Ends on …. Until that date, Undo cancellation puts it back with no gap and no new charge.

Where a plan lives

Studio is the entry level for a crew. There is no Starter for a crew, and no Studio for a single page: a page reaches Studio by joining a crew that holds one. Crews themselves are covered in Crews.

What a plan unlocks

Two different things are gated, and they behave differently on screen.

Screens the plan opens or closes

CRM, Shop and API are locked in the rail: the row is greyed and cannot be clicked. Notifications is not. Its row stays clickable on Basic and the screen opens, but instead of the composer it shows the plan panel described below. The URL tab behaves like a rail row: greyed, with a sparkle, inside Settings.

The crew's own Shop row is not plan-locked: it lists the shops of the crew's pages, and each page's plan decides whether that page can sell. The plan also sets the shop's commission: Sway keeps 4 % of the products after discount on Starter, 3 % on Studio and a negotiated rate on Roster. See Shop.

Allowances that grow with the plan

These are not on or off. Every plan has some, and the number rises as you move up.

• Storage per page, shown as a bar on the Subscription screen. It is what the page's Drive and its press kits both spend.
• Team members per page, shown on Permissions as a used-over-limit figure.
• Email marketing, which works on every plan including Basic. Only the contact and send allowances change. See Email.
• Push notifications, which start at Starter. Basic has none, which is why the screen shows the plan panel rather than the composer. See Push notifications.
• Presskits, on artist pages. Every plan can create at least one. The plan sets how many, how many assets each may hold, and whether password protection, link expiry, referrer analytics and country analytics are available. See Presskits.

Sway Verified

Sway Verified appears in the plan comparison marked Mobile only. It is requested from the Sway mobile app, not from the web app. The Sway Verified tab in a page's Settings is the separate claim flow for taking ownership of a page, covered in Claim an existing page.

Reading a locked row

Three different things grey a row out, and only two of them announce themselves. Hover the row and read the tooltip before assuming a plan is the problem.

The sparkle is the only reliable signal that money is the answer. It sits at the far right of the row and appears only when the rail is expanded; on the narrow rail the tooltip carries the whole message. Locked tabs inside a screen use the same sparkle and the same wording.

A silent grey row is the common case, and the rail will not explain it. When a row has nothing to say, its tooltip falls back to the row's own name, which the wide rail then suppresses because it would only repeat the label you can already read. Hovering does nothing at all. On the narrow rail you get the name back, which is no more informative. Two things produce that silence:

• Sway Tickets is off on the event. Five event rows are gated by that flag: Tickets, Presales, Coupons, Scanners and CRM. Only Tickets and Scanners say so. Presales and Coupons go silent, and so does CRM once its plan requirement is met, since the sparkle only stands for the plan. Turn the flag on in Event settings and all five come back together.
• You lack the permission. Ask an owner to grant it on Permissions.

Do not read Enable Sway Tickets to use this option. as proof that the flag is the cause: Tickets and Scanners print that message whenever they are greyed, including when the real reason is a missing permission. Check the flag on the event's own Settings screen rather than trusting the tooltip.

A row can be locked by a plan and a permission at once, and on an event by the Sway Tickets flag as well. CRM needs Starter, the CRM view permission and the flag; Shop needs Starter and the shop view permission; the crew API row needs Studio and the API permission. Satisfying one leaves the row grey.

The plan panel

Where a whole screen is gated rather than a row, the screen opens and shows the plan panel in place of the tool. You get it on Notifications for a page on Basic, and on the crew API screen below Studio.

The panel carries, from the top:

• Notifications used with a counter for the current month and a progress bar, then You're currently on … plan with a Manage subscription link straight to that entity's Subscription screen.
• A Monthly / Annual toggle. Annual carries a 2 months free badge.
• Four plan cards, with prices fetched live from Stripe.
• Common features, a table comparing all four plans row by row.
• A short FAQ, then the pause and VAT notes.

The Starter and Studio cards start the matching checkout. The Roster card opens a contact form instead: Roster is quoted, not bought from a button.

What the Subscription screen shows

The screen has three shapes, all built on the same plan card as Billing: the plan's name and status, a single block when the plan needs you, the facts in tiles, and what the plan includes. Compare plans, at the top right, opens the public pricing page.

On Basic

• The plan card reads Basic and Free plan with essential features, with a Storage bar and the five lines under Included in Basic.
• Beside it, the Starter offer: Upgrade to Starter to unlock premium features for this page., the lines under Included in Starter, a Monthly or Yearly choice with its price, and Subscribe to Starter.
• Upgrade to Studio, with Create a Crew to manage multiple pages and unlock even more features. and a Start a crew button.

On Starter

• The plan card reads Starter with its status, and Professional page with advanced features.
• When the plan needs you, one block says so, with the button that settles it. The most urgent wins: The last payment failed (Update payment method), Ends on … (Undo cancellation), Paused until … (Resume now), then Switches to monthly billing on … (Keep yearly billing). They are the blocks Billing shows.
• The tiles give the Billing cycle, the next date that matters (Renews on, First payment on, Ends on or Resumes on) and the Storage bar.
• The five plan lines under Included in Starter.
• Invoices and payment opens the Stripe billing portal, for the payment method and past invoices.
• The three-dots menu holds Switch to yearly billing or Switch to monthly billing, Pause the subscription and Cancel the subscription.

Managed by a crew

The card names the crew's plan and reads This page inherits its plan from the Crew subscription., with the page's Storage bar and Open the crew's plan, which leads to the crew's own Subscription screen. Nothing is buyable here.

If the page still renews a paid plan of its own, the card warns This page still pays for its own plan and offers Cancel its own subscription. Its confirmation says the crew keeps paying for the page, so no feature is lost.

A page that joined a crew while paying is not charged twice: its own subscription is set to stop at the end of the period already paid, and the card says Now paid for by a crew. On yearly billing it offers Request prorated refund once the forced pause is over.

If the plan cannot be read, the screen says The subscription did not load with Try again, rather than showing a paying page as Basic.

Crew billing

A crew's screen is headed Subscription & Billing and works the same way, with the same card, blocks, menu and dialogs. Two things are its own: a Page slots card adds and drops the slots beyond the five Studio includes, and a Roster crew has no self-serve action, only Managed by your account manager. A failed payment reads Payment failed, with The last payment failed on the card.

The full walkthrough, including the page slots and what happens to a page when it joins or leaves a crew, is in Crews.

See every plan you pay for

Billing puts every subscription you own on one screen, the crews first, then the pages holding a plan of their own. It has no row in the left rail: click your avatar at the top right, then Billing. Swapy on Backstage links to it too when what you describe is a crew.

It lists what you own. A page you manage for someone else keeps its plan on its own Subscription screen. A page inside a crew has no card of its own, since the crew pays for it, unless it joined with a subscription of its own still running: that one stays listed until it ends.

Each card names the page or the crew, its plan (Starter, Studio or Roster) and one status: Active, Free trial, Payment failed, Paused, Ending or Ended. Under it sit the Billing cycle, the next date that matters (Renews on, First payment on, Ends on, Resumes on or Ended on), the Storage bar and, on a crew, its Page slots.

When a plan needs you, its card says so once, in a single block, with the button that settles it. The most urgent state wins:

The three-dots menu at the top right of a card holds the rest: Switch to yearly billing or Switch to monthly billing, Pause the subscription and Cancel the subscription. A cycle switch and a pause need a plan that is simply running, so both leave the menu while the plan is paused, ending or unpaid; the switch also leaves it while one is already booked, and the pause once the year's 62 days are used.

• Switch to … opens the same confirmation as on the Subscription screen, with the amount.
• Pause the subscription asks for a Number of days, shows the date the plan resumes on, and counts the Pause days left this year.
• Cancel the subscription asks Cancel this subscription? and names the date the plan stays on until. Keep it backs out.

Invoices and payment opens the Stripe billing portal for that plan. Stripe sends you back to the page's or the crew's Subscription screen, not to Billing. Plan details opens that same screen directly, and Compare plans, at the top right, opens the public pricing page.

With nothing to bill, the screen reads No plan yet, with Compare plans and Start a crew.

When a limit stops you

The plan surfaces as a wall in a few predictable places.

• Permissions shows Members as a used-over-limit figure. Once direct members reach the limit, the add button is disabled and its tooltip reads Member limit reached. Upgrade your plan to add more members. Members who reach the page through a crew do not count against it.
• A crew's Pages screen refuses a new page with Page limit reached — upgrade to add more.
• On artist pages, the Presskits heading counts the kits against the plan's allowance, such as 2 of 3 presskits. At the ceiling New Presskit becomes Upgrade for more, a link to that page's Subscription screen.
• An Upgrade button, tooltipped Upgrade your plan to unlock premium features., sits in the header of several screens while the page is on Basic. It is a shortcut to Subscription, nothing more.