Plans & billing

Every PickleFriend plan — Lite, Pro and Club — is billed once a year through PayPal and renews automatically until you cancel. Prices and what each plan includes are on the pricing page; the plan that counts for a group is always its owner's — a sub-organizer works in your group on your plan, and players never pay or sign up.

This page is about the money side: the free first month, trials, moving up, renewals, cancelling, and what ends when a plan does. Your current state is always on Profile → Plan & Billing: your plan, the date of your next charge (or the date you are covered through), and a Manage or cancel in PayPal button.

The free first month of score entry

Every account, free included, gets score entry free for its first month after signup — the Enter Scores button, scores entered from players' phones, and auto-recording while mixing — so you can watch ratings build from real games before deciding on Pro. Nonstop Courts and Box League are open in that month too. This is a grant, not a trial: there is nothing to cancel and nothing is ever charged for it.

About a week before the month ends you are told once, with the date: a notice in the app for everyone, and an email as well if either box under Profile → Email settings is ticked (Lite subscribers get the email regardless, as a notice about a plan they pay for). After that, recording new scores needs Pro; everything already recorded stays, and ratings you set by hand keep working on every plan. See Score entry.

The 10-day free trial

Each paid plan starts with a 10-day free trial the first time you take that plan — one trial per plan, per account. PayPal sets up the subscription at checkout but makes the first charge on day 10; cancel in PayPal before then and nothing is billed. The trial is a way to answer "is this plan worth it?", so:

• Coming back to a plan you have had before — whether you trialed it and walked away, or paid and let it lapse — you are billed the day you subscribe. The checkout page says so before you tap.
• Moving up from a paid plan (Lite to Pro, Pro to Club) skips the trial entirely; your unused time carries over instead, as described next.
• A free trial you later let run into a paid year is an ordinary subscription from then on: it renews yearly at the price you signed up at.

Your confirmation email names the first-charge date and the year it pays for.

Moving up a plan

Move up from Lite or Pro and nothing is wasted: the unused part of your current year is converted into days on the new plan, at the new plan's price (the same dollars buy fewer days on a pricier plan, which is why Pro and Club can show different dates).

• You are on the new plan the moment you switch.
• We cancel your old subscription in PayPal for you at that moment, so it never bills again.
• Your first charge on the new plan is the day the carried-over time runs out — the date is on the plan card before you confirm, on Profile → Plan & Billing afterwards, and in your confirmation email.
• There is no free trial on top; the carried-over days stand in for it.
• Change your mind before that first charge? Cancel the new plan in PayPal and nothing is charged — you keep the new plan until the carried-over time runs out, then your account moves to the free plan. The old plan stays cancelled.

Renewals and "Continue your plan"

A live subscription renews automatically each year on its anniversary; the date is shown as Renews on Profile → Plan & Billing.

If your plan is not going to renew — you cancelled the renewal in PayPal, or your paid time came from a gift or a free year — Plan & Billing shows the date you are covered through, and the upgrade page offers Continue your plan: set up the next year now, and it is billed only when the current plan ends, so your plan carries straight on with no gap. Nothing is charged until then, and cancelling in PayPal before that date costs nothing. (Continuing a plan you have never subscribed to before — say, a gifted year — still carries its 10-day trial, which then runs from the end date.)

We also warn you before a paid plan ends without renewing: an email about 14 days before the end date and a notice in the app during the final week, each sent once per end date. If you cancel a renewal in PayPal, you get one email confirming the cancellation and the date you keep your plan through. These are account notices, not marketing, so they need no email opt-in; only the unsubscribe-from-all switch at the foot of any email stops them, and the in-app notice shows regardless — see the notifications reference.

Cancelling

Stopping billing never requires deleting your account.

1. Open your Profile and find the Plan & Billing card, right after Account Information.
2. Tap Manage or cancel in PayPal. (The same subscription is under your PayPal account's Settings → Payments → Automatic payments.)
3. Cancel the subscription there.

Cancelling stops the renewal; you keep your plan through the period you have paid for, then your account moves to the free plan with everything you created still in place. During a free trial, or during carried-over time after moving up, cancelling means nothing is charged at all.

Paid time is not refunded when you cancel. If something has gone wrong with a charge, write to me@picklefriend.net; refunds are at our discretion and reverse any benefits they produced (the full policy is in the Terms).

When a paid plan ends

Nothing you created is deleted. You return to the free limits:

• You can't add players, groups or sub-organizers beyond the free limits until you renew; everything above them stays saved.
• Launching the Mixer from a saved group brings in up to the free number of players at a time — the rest stay saved and can be added by hand.
• Recording new scores, ladder cycles and Box League need Pro again; ratings and history already recorded stay visible.
• Cloud session backups are removed 30 days after the plan lapses, so renew or load them down to your device within that window (see Managing mixer sessions).

Renewing later brings all of it back as it was.

Deleting your account

Deleting your account cancels every live PayPal subscription first, so nothing bills afterwards — but it also removes your groups, players and history. If all you want is to stop paying, use Cancelling above instead.

Free years, gifts and donations

Referrals can earn free years of your plan, and free-for-life accounts can gift a year to a friend — see Free years & gifting. Donations are a tip jar: they don't change your plan, and a donation balance on your account is separate from the carried-over time you get when you move up a plan.

What's next

• Accounts and your data — what a free account holds.
• Score entry — what the free first month includes.
• Notifications reference — every billing email and what triggers it.