Billing & your subscription

How your salon's own account with Gloora works — the free trial, what your plan is priced on, upgrades and downgrades, and the messaging wallet that sits beside it.

There are two money stories inside Gloora, and they never touch. One is the revenue your salon collects from its own clients — bookings, memberships, products. The other is what you pay Gloora to run the platform. This guide is about the second one: your subscription, what it's priced on, and how it moves as you grow.

Your free trial

Every account opens on a 7-day free trial, and Gloora never asks for a card to start it. The trial is a real window tracked on your account from the moment you sign up — not a vague "look around" period — so you always know how long you have and the exact date a first charge would land. It counts down in the TRIAL ENDS IN figure on your subscription page.

Everything is unlocked while you trial. The only actions that wait for a paid plan are capacity changes — adjusting your branch count or switching add-ons on — which need an active subscription underneath them.

Upgrading mid-trial never costs you days

Choose a plan on day 3 of your trial and Gloora still bills you on the original trial-end date — not seven fresh days from when you upgraded. The window you were given is the window you keep, so there's no reason to hold out until the last day to pick.

What your plan is priced on

Your bill isn't a flat sticker price — it's built from your branches. Each physical location you run is one unit of capacity, and your plan's monthly (or yearly) rate multiplies by how many branches you've bought. Scale works in your favour: the more branches you carry, the larger the volume discount Gloora applies per location. You can see the ladder under VOLUME DISCOUNT TIERS.

Two things adjust that base:

Add-ons — optional features billed alongside your plan and priced per branch, so turning one on applies it across every active location.
Tax — VAT, or the equivalent for your market, added at invoicing time per local rules.

You size all of it from BRANCHES & ADD-ONS, and a live CART PREVIEW shows the new total — discount and tax already folded in — before you commit. Nothing bills until you press Save changes.

Moving between plans

Switching tiers is meant to be low-stakes. The direction you move decides when the money changes.

Upgrades apply now, downgrades apply at renewal

Move up a tier (or add a branch) and the new capacity is live immediately — Stripe charges only a prorated slice for the rest of the current period. Move down a tier (or drop a branch) and nothing changes today: you keep what you're already paying for until your renewal date, then the cheaper rate takes over. You never lose capacity mid-cycle, and you're never double-charged.

One guardrail: you can't shrink your branch capacity below the number of locations you actually have open. Archive a branch first (see Branches & brands), then lower the count.

Two balances, one account

Your subscription is not your only Gloora balance — and blurring the two is the single most common billing surprise.

Your subscription is the recurring charge for the platform, billed to your card through Stripe on a fixed cycle.
Your messaging wallet is separate prepaid credit that pays for each WhatsApp and SMS message your salon sends. It's drawn down per message and topped up on its own — it has nothing to do with your plan tier.

Paying your subscription does not refill your wallet, and topping up your wallet is not a subscription charge. So if WhatsApp sending suddenly pauses, it's the wallet that ran dry, not your plan — the Messaging usage ledger shows every message and its cost, and you top the wallet back up from Customer notifications.

Invoices & receipts

Every subscription charge lands in Invoice history with its coverage period and amount — your first one arrives at the end of your trial. Each row offers Download PDF for your accountant and View in Stripe for the full hosted receipt. Your card on file, longer history, and raw payment details all sit one click away in the Stripe portal via Manage in Stripe — Gloora never stores your card number itself.

For the click-by-click tour of the subscription page — sizing branches, changing your card, pausing or reactivating — see Your Gloora subscription.