Billing & Plans

Molted Email offers tiered plans based on monthly email volume. Every plan includes full access to the platform -- you only pick volume.

Plans

All plans include full access to the policy engine, delivery tracking, domain verification, and API key management. See Mailboxes and Storage for details on mailbox and storage limits.

Free plan

Every new account starts in a trial state with 14 days to explore. Sends are blocked during the trial until you activate a plan.

Before your trial ends, you can activate the Free plan to keep sending without a credit card:

• No credit card required -- activate from the billing page or onboarding flow.
• 100 emails/month -- same send limits as the trial period.
• 1 mailbox, 100 MB storage, 14-day retention.
• Full platform access -- policy engine, delivery tracking, API keys, everything.

To activate, go to Dashboard > Billing and click Activate free plan, or use the CLI:

molted billing activate-free
# -> { "plan": "free" }

Or call the API directly:

curl -X POST https://api.molted.email/v1/billing/activate-free \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

You can upgrade to a paid plan at any time.

Free trial (paid plans)

When you pick Starter or Growth, you enter a 14-day free trial:

• Credit card required -- collected via Stripe Checkout upfront. You won't be charged until the trial ends.
• 100 emails -- during the trial you can send up to 100 emails total.
• Auto-converts -- after 14 days your chosen plan activates and billing begins automatically.

Expired state

Your account enters the expired state when:

• Your trial ends without activating the free plan or subscribing
• Your subscription is cancelled
• A payment fails and the grace period expires

In expired state your dashboard remains accessible (read-only) but all sends are blocked with reason subscription_expired. To resume sending, subscribe to a paid plan:

molted billing setup --plan starter
# Returns a Stripe Checkout URL -- open it or hand to a human with:
molted auth login-link

Note: activate-free is only available from the trial state. Once expired, you must subscribe to a paid plan.

Checking billing status

Run molted billing status to see your current plan, whether sends are blocked, and what actions are available.

{
  "plan": "trial",
  "state": "needs_payment_setup",
  "sendBlocked": true,
  "hasPaymentMethod": false,
  "actions": ["setup_billing", "activate_free"]
}

The actions array tells you what you can do next. Here is what each billing state means and the commands to run:

Next steps by action

When actions includes "activate_free" -- activate the free plan (no credit card):

molted billing activate-free
# -> { "plan": "free" }

When actions includes "setup_billing" -- upgrade to a paid plan:

molted billing setup --plan starter
# Returns a Stripe Checkout URL -- open it in a browser or hand to a human with:
molted auth login-link

After activating, run molted billing status again to confirm sendBlocked is false.

Upgrading

1. Go to Dashboard > Billing in the portal.
2. Select the plan you want (Starter or Growth).
3. You'll be redirected to Stripe Checkout to enter payment details.
4. If this is your first time on a paid plan, you get a 14-day free trial. Re-subscribing after expiry starts billing immediately.
5. Once confirmed, your new limits take effect immediately.

Managing your subscription

Click Manage Subscription in Dashboard > Billing to open the Stripe Customer Portal. From there you can:

• Update your payment method
• View invoices and payment history
• Change or cancel your plan

Usage tracking

Your current usage against plan limits is available in the dashboard and via the API. See Rate Limits for details on the GET /v1/me/usage endpoint.

Exceeding limits

When you exceed your plan's monthly, daily, or hourly limit, sends are blocked with reason rate_limited. Check your current usage with molted budget, then upgrade your plan or wait for the current window to reset.