Billing

Seedly Sites includes native Stripe billing so each client site can carry its own subscription - your client paying you, through your Stripe account. It is fully opt-in: sites without billing configured behave exactly as before and are never restricted.

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How It Fits Together#

Piece	What it is
Your Stripe account	Owns the products, prices, customers, and payments
Per-site Billing page	Where a subscription is started and managed for one site
Operator billing dashboard	Every site's billing state in one table
Enforcement	What (if anything) happens to a site when payment lapses

Plans and prices live in Stripe - the platform references a Stripe price and displays its nickname as the plan label. To change what you charge, change the price in Stripe.

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The Per-Site Billing Page#

Each site has a Billing page showing the subscription status, plan, and renewal date.

Starting a Subscription#

1. Open the site's Billing page
2. Click Subscribe
3. Complete payment on Stripe's hosted checkout page
4. You are returned to the Billing page; the status flips to Active once Stripe confirms

Managing a Subscription#

Once a subscription exists, Manage billing opens Stripe's hosted customer portal for that site: update the card, view invoices, cancel, or resubscribe. A canceled site's button becomes Resubscribe.

Who Can Use It#

Managing a site's billing requires administrator-level access on that site (or the operator) - see Users and Roles. Editors and below see the billing state but are told to contact their account manager. Payments are processed entirely by Stripe on Stripe-hosted pages; card details never touch your instance.

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Billing Statuses#

The platform mirrors the Stripe subscription into one of six statuses:

Status	Meaning
No subscription	Billing was never set up for this site - never restricted
Trialing	In a Stripe trial period - healthy
Active	Paid and current - healthy
Past due	A renewal payment failed - delinquent
Unpaid	Payments kept failing - delinquent
Canceled	The subscription ended - delinquent

Status updates flow in automatically from Stripe (via the webhook you configure at setup). Only the three delinquent states can ever trigger enforcement.

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Non-Payment Enforcement#

Each site has an Enforcement setting that decides what happens while its subscription is delinquent:

Setting	Effect while delinquent
Instance default	Defers to your instance-wide default (edit-lock unless you configure otherwise)
None	Never restrict this site
Edit-lock	Client editing, publishing, and deploys are frozen; the live site stays up
Suspend	Everything edit-lock does, plus the live site is taken offline

Points that matter in practice:

• Sites with no subscription are never enforced. Adding the billing feature to your instance cannot disturb existing client sites.
• The operator always bypasses enforcement - you keep full editing and deploy access on a delinquent site so you can fix, restore, or wind it down.
• Enforcement lifts automatically once the subscription is healthy again (the client pays through Manage billing).
• Suspension is applied at the serving edge and is deliberately fail-safe: if the platform cannot be reached to confirm a suspension, the live site stays up.

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The Operator Billing Dashboard#

Operator portal -> Billing aggregates every site: status, plan, renewal date, and the enforcement that currently applies. Delinquent sites sort to the top, so the dashboard doubles as your "who needs a nudge" list.

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Setting It Up#

Billing activates when your instance has its Stripe configuration set (as part of provisioning):

• A Stripe secret key
• The Stripe price to subscribe sites to
• A Stripe webhook pointed at your instance, so subscription changes sync automatically
• Stripe's customer portal enabled in your Stripe dashboard (it powers Manage billing)
• Optionally, an instance-wide default enforcement mode

Until those are set, Billing pages show "Billing isn't configured for this instance yet" and nothing is enforced.

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Summary#

• Per-site Stripe subscriptions through your own Stripe account, opt-in per site
• Subscribe = Stripe Checkout; Manage billing = Stripe customer portal
• Six statuses mirrored from Stripe; only past due, unpaid, and canceled are delinquent
• Enforcement per site: none, edit-lock (default), or suspend - operator always bypasses
• The operator billing dashboard shows the whole fleet, problems first