Billing
Usage and seats
What each product has used this month, against what its plan includes.
What this is
Usage is the detail behind the product cards on the Billing page: what you are using against what you pay for, product by product.
It is the page to check before you buy more, and the page to check when a charge looks bigger than you expected.
How it works
Each product is measured in its own terms.
Mail is measured in seats. A seat is one mailbox on a paid plan.
- Owned — seats you are paying for.
- In use — seats given to a mailbox right now.
- Spare — owned minus in use: paid for, not yet used. Worth having just before a hire; waste after months.
Mailboxes without a seat are on the free plan, which has its own limits on storage, daily sending and how many mailboxes you can have.
Send is measured in emails a month from your application, through the API or SMTP. A plan includes an amount; emails beyond it are billed on your next invoice, on the 1st. Without a plan, application email has a free daily allowance.
Marketing is measured in contacts and emails.
- Subscribed contacts against the plan's size. If you pass it, we email you, and the plan moves up to the size that fits at your next renewal.
- Marketing emails this month against the plan's allowance. We email you at 80% and when it is used up. Then new campaigns cannot be scheduled, and journeys wait at their next email, until the 1st. Nobody is dropped from a journey.
- List checks, people with access and live journeys, each against what the plan includes.
Every monthly count starts again at 00:00 UTC on the 1st.
Set it up
Nothing to configure. This is how to read it.
- Go to Usage, or read the meters on each product's card on the Billing page.
- For Mail, compare owned with in use. More than one or two spare seats is capacity nobody uses.
- For Send, compare this month's emails with the plan's amount. A month that keeps going over is cheaper on the next plan up than in extra emails.
- For Marketing, watch subscribed contacts against the plan's size before a big import, and emails against the allowance before a big campaign.
- Check here before buying anything. A spare seat costs nothing more to give to a mailbox.
When something is wrong
A mailbox cannot be created. The free plan's mailbox limit may be reached, or there is no spare seat on the paid plan you chose. Buy a seat, or free one from a mailbox nobody uses — see Creating mailboxes.
In use is higher than you expected. Every paid mailbox holds a seat, including ones for people who have left. Suspending a mailbox is not the same as freeing its seat.
Send went over and you did not expect it. Look for an application sending in a loop: Email logs shows what went out and from where.
Campaigns will not schedule. This month's marketing emails are used up. Wait for the 1st, move to a larger plan, or — on a paid plan — buy a top-up on the Billing page.
The contact count looks wrong. Only subscribed contacts count; people who unsubscribed do not.