Grace period & locking
Subscriptions lapse — cards expire, balances run out, humans forget. The system treats that as a normal event with a humane arc: a grace period with full access, then honest locking — and never a content cliff.
The arc, precisely
| Phase | Duration | Access |
|---|---|---|
| Active | Until period end | Everything on your plan |
| Grace | 9 days after the anchor (period end / cancel / failure) | FULL access — same as active |
| Locked | After the 9 days | Over-limit and gated features pause; content preserved |
During grace you will see a clear banner: what happened, how many days remain, and the renewal link. The banner is the whole drama — nothing else changes for you or your visitors.
What locking actually locks
When grace ends, the platform does NOT hide your site or delete anything. It locks by FEATURES:
- Plan-gated controls (custom domain serving, password protection, the full AI suite, custom CSS) pause.
- Over-limit content is archived-but-alive — not rendered, not destroyed; back the moment the plan covers it.
- Your published core site keeps serving; visitors are not punished for your card.
And one line is absolute: billing and account management never lock. Dashboard → Billing, plan pages and account settings stay reachable even while locked — the way back is never behind the lock.
Restoring
Renew (or re-subscribe) from Dashboard → Billing. Restoration is instant and total: gates lift, archived content re-renders, meters reset. Nothing was lost in the locked weeks because nothing was deleted during them.
Canceling vs lapsing
- Cancel — you chose it; the plan runs to period end, grace follows, locking follows that. Same arc, chosen on purpose.
- Lapse — it chose you; identical arc, minus the guilt. There is no penalty staircase, no reactivation fee, no hostage negotiation.
Caution
The 9-day grace is the whole window between "full access" and locking. If you KNOW the payment will fail (a dead card, an empty balance), renew early rather than riding the clock — the banner link does it in a minute.
For the meticulous
- The grace anchor and the exact state ("grace, 4 days left") are visible on the billing page — no hidden timers.
- Invoices from the lapsed period stay in history with their real status (
failedstaysfailed; no revisionism). - The engine behind this is one consistent state machine — the banner, the meters and the locks all read the same state, so they always agree.
Note
Downgrading (see Upgrading & renewal) uses the same archive-not-delete mechanic as locking — the platform has exactly one way of handling "plan no longer covers content", and it never involves loss.