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Subscription Management

Manage your subscription from Settings → Billing.

Subscription lifecycle

Subscribe → Active → (Auto-renew) → Active → ...
              ↓ Cancel
           Active until period end → Downgrade to trial

When you subscribe, the plan is active immediately and bills again at the same price each month / year (your choice at signup).

Renewal

Subscriptions renew automatically. Picora sends an email 3 days before each renewal as a reminder.

If your card expires or fails before renewal:

  • You receive a “payment method needs attention” email
  • A grace period of 3 days keeps the plan active
  • After 3 days without resolution, plan downgrades to trial automatically — your data is preserved but access to pro features (video, etc.) is paused
  • Data is retained for 90 days after downgrade; if you don’t re-subscribe within 90 days, video / Markdown documents may be marked for deletion (you’ll be emailed first)

Cancellation

Cancellation prevents the next renewal but does not refund the current paid period.

  1. Go to Settings → Billing
  2. Click Cancel subscription
  3. Confirm — you’ll see “Cancels at end of current period”

You retain full pro features until the period ends (e.g., if you cancel on day 10 of a monthly subscription, you keep pro access through day 30).

After period end, the plan downgrades to trial with the data retention rules above.

Bonus time & deferred downgrade

If you’ve received bonus plan time — for example, extra months from a promo code — that time extends your plan’s expiry date.

This changes what happens when you cancel or when a renewal doesn’t go through: as long as bonus time remains, your plan stays on its current tier until that bonus time runs out — the downgrade is deferred, not immediate. Picora re-checks plan status daily and only downgrades once the (bonus-extended) expiry date has actually passed.

In short: bonus months are never lost by cancelling — you keep the higher tier through the end of the time you were granted.

Downgrade (between paid tiers)

To go from pro_plus to pro:

  1. Settings → Billing
  2. Click Change plan → pro
  3. The change applies at next renewal (no immediate refund)

If your current usage exceeds the lower tier’s limits, you’ll see a warning. The downgrade still proceeds at next renewal, and at that moment:

  • Existing resources are not deleted
  • New uploads above the new limit are rejected with QUOTA_EXCEEDED
  • You’re prompted to either delete excess resources or re-upgrade

Upgrade (mid-cycle)

To go from pro to pro_plus mid-cycle:

  1. Settings → Billing
  2. Click Change plan → pro_plus
  3. Pay the pro-rated difference for the remainder of the current period
  4. The new tier activates within 30 seconds

The next full bill at renewal will be the pro_plus monthly amount.

Refund policy

Within 14 days of first paid subscription

Full refund on request, no questions asked. Email support@picora.me with your account email and order ID.

After 14 days

Refund only granted if:

  • Picora’s billing system charged you incorrectly (verifiable in audit logs)
  • Service was unavailable for >24 hours within the billing period
  • You’re entitled to local consumer protection rights (e.g., EU 14-day cooling off — already covered above)

In these cases, Picora pro-rates the refund based on usage gap.

Mainland China specifics

Per 消费者权益保护法, mainland users have:

  • 7-day no-reason refund for first paid subscription if no significant usage occurred (defined as <10% of plan quota consumed)
  • Subsequent refunds at platform’s discretion based on actual service interruption

Invoice / receipt

Lemon Squeezy / Polar / WeChat / Alipay each send their own receipts:

  • Lemon Squeezy: email + downloadable PDF (with EU VAT if applicable)
  • Polar: email + downloadable receipt
  • WeChat / Alipay: in-app transaction record (Picora can issue 增值税普通发票 on request, see below)

For mainland Chinese users requesting 增值税专用发票 (special VAT invoice for B2B), email finance@picora.cn within 90 days of payment with your 公司名称 / 税号 / 开户行 / 银行账号.

Subscription receipts in dashboard

Settings → Billing → History shows all payment events with:

  • Date
  • Amount + currency
  • Plan changed to
  • Gateway
  • Receipt link

Records are retained 5 years for tax compliance.

Common issues

Payment succeeded but plan didn’t activate — webhook delivery may be delayed. Wait 5 minutes; if still not active, contact support with the order ID. We can manually re-trigger webhook from the admin panel.

Cannot cancel — button disabled — your subscription was created via Lemon Squeezy / Polar / etc. and you must cancel from their dashboard if your account is linked to multiple gateways. We’re working on unifying this.

Receipt missing tax info — Lemon Squeezy auto-includes VAT for EU; for other regions, contact finance@picora.me.