Subscription & devices

A HelioFleet subscription is billed by device count. You pay for a number of devices, and we lease you that many real iPhones. Everything else (users, workspaces, sessions) is unlimited.

You choose the billing interval - monthly or yearly. Both lease the same devices with the same features; only the billing period and the per-device price differ. Yearly is cheaper per device and is charged once for the whole year up front; the exact saving is shown on the Yearly option.

Billing runs through Stripe. You'll be redirected there for checkout, and the Stripe customer portal is where you manage payment methods, billing details, and invoices.

Billed directly? Some accounts pay us directly instead (by transfer, by invoice, or in crypto) and are set up with a fixed term rather than a Stripe subscription. If that's you, your Subscription tab says Billing: Direct and none of the self-serve controls below apply: no checkout, no Manage billing, no Cancel, no Increase devices. Everything else in this guide is the same. Jump to Directly-billed terms.

Subscribing for the first time#

From Admin → Subscription:

1. In the Subscribe card, pick Monthly or Yearly under Billing. The yearly option shows what it saves you per device.
2. Enter the number of Devices you want to pay for. The line under the form shows the per-device price and your order total for the interval you picked, before tax.
3. Click Subscribe → you land on a Stripe Checkout page.
4. Enter payment details and confirm.
5. Stripe redirects you back to Admin → Subscription with a success banner.

It can take a few seconds for the subscription to activate after checkout. The page auto-refreshes once Stripe confirms the payment and the Status flips to Active.

Your devices don't appear instantly - we prepare and assign them from our pool, typically within several hours. Track progress with the Leased devices: X / Y counter on the Devices tab. See How leasing works.

What you see when subscribed#

The Subscription tab shows a status card with:

• Status - Active, Past Due, Canceling at period end, or Canceled.
• Billing - Monthly or Yearly.
• Devices - the quantity you're paying for. This is how many devices get leased to you.
• Period start / Period end - the current billing cycle.
• Manage billing - opens the Stripe customer portal (covered in Invoices).
• Cancel subscription - schedules cancellation at the end of the current period.

Switching from monthly to yearly#

If you're on the monthly plan, a Switch to yearly billing card appears above Increase devices, with the saving in its heading.

Click Switch to yearly, confirm, and:

• Your card is charged today for a full year at your current device count, less a credit for the unused part of the month you've already paid for.
• Your renewal date moves to today - the year runs from the switch, not from your old monthly anniversary.
• Devices, workspaces, tags, and users are untouched. Nothing is re-prepared and nothing goes offline.

If the charge is declined, nothing changes - you stay on monthly at the same price. Fix the payment method under Manage billing and pay the outstanding invoice to complete the switch, or ignore it and the change is dropped within 24 hours.

The card is hidden once you've scheduled a cancellation: resume the subscription in the billing portal first.

Switching from yearly back to monthly#

Not offered in the console. Unused yearly time doesn't come back as a refund (it would sit as a credit balance quietly absorbing later invoices), so going back means cancelling and resubscribing on the monthly plan once the year ends. If you need to move sooner, get in touch and we'll sort it out.

Increasing devices#

If you need more devices mid-cycle:

1. In the Increase devices card, enter a new quantity higher than your current one.
2. Click Upgrade.

The cost difference is prorated for the remaining days of the cycle and charged to your payment method on file. This works the same on both intervals - on a yearly plan the proration covers the rest of the year, so adding a device mid-year costs proportionally more than adding one mid-month. No checkout flow - the upgrade is done in place. The additional devices are prepared and assigned like any other, typically within several hours.

Decreasing devices#

You can't decrease the quantity in place. The upgrade flow only goes up.

To go down: cancel the current subscription (which stays active until the end of the cycle) and start a new one with the smaller quantity once the current cycle ends. There's no proration refund for unused devices in the meantime - Stripe charges by quantity for the full cycle.

Cancellation#

Click Cancel subscription in the status card. A confirmation dialog reminds you of the consequences. After confirming:

• Status changes to Canceling at period end, with a warning banner.
• The subscription stays active until the end of the current billing period - you keep your devices until then.
• At the period end, Stripe stops billing and your devices are disabled.

Your tenant, users, workspaces, and analytics are preserved.

The 24-hour grace period#

When a subscription ends (cancelled deliberately, or cancelled by Stripe after a payment kept failing) your devices are disabled immediately but not taken away. They stay assigned to your tenant for 24 hours.

Resubscribe inside that window and you get the same devices back, with their setup, workspace assignments, and tags exactly as you left them. They come back online within a minute or so of the payment landing; there's no re-preparation wait.

After the 24 hours pass, the devices are returned to the shared pool and wiped for the next customer. A subscription started later is fulfilled with different hardware, prepared from scratch - the usual few-hour wait, and none of your previous setup.

While the window is running you'll see:

• A red bar at the top of every console page with the exact release deadline.
• A Subscription ended - devices disabled notification.
• On the Subscription tab, a note on the subscribe form saying how many devices are still held for you. The device count starts at that number, since subscribing for fewer quietly gives up the rest.

Devices held for you are reserved (nobody else can buy them), so you can always resubscribe for at least the number you had, even when the pool is otherwise sold out.

If you resubscribed for fewer than were held#

The devices you paid for come back; the rest stay held for the remainder of the same 24 hours rather than being released early. Your subscription is active and the bar changes to say so ("N devices still held for you") and Increase devices will add them back to the subscription, with their setup, workspaces, and tags intact. That works even when the pool is empty, because the hardware is already assigned to you. Once the deadline passes they go to the shared pool like any other unclaimed device.

Notifications you'll get#

Tenant admins get an in-console notification (the bell in the top bar) at each billing milestone:

The "devices disabled" and "devices restored" notifications go to everyone in your tenant, not just admins - anyone watching the Devices page deserves to know why it changed. The rest are admins-only.

Past due#

If a payment fails (expired card, insufficient funds), the status becomes Past Due and a banner appears. Open Manage billing to fix the payment method in Stripe. Once the retry succeeds, status flips back to Active.

Stripe keeps retrying for a few days before giving up and moving the subscription to Canceled. If it gets that far, the 24-hour grace period above starts - so a late fix still recovers your devices, but only within that window.

Directly-billed terms#

If you pay us directly rather than by card, your account runs on a term: a device count and a date it's paid through. Nothing renews it automatically - you send the next payment and we extend it.

Your Subscription tab shows:

• Billing - Direct.
• Devices - the count your term covers.
• Term started / Term ends - the period you've paid for.
• Devices stay on until - the date they'd actually be switched off, which is later than the term end. See below.

There are no buttons. To change the device count, extend the term early, or stop it, get in touch.

The grace period#

When a term ends we keep your devices running for a further 7 days. That's the date shown as Devices stay on until, and it's the one that matters: a payment that arrives a few days late interrupts nothing at all.

We send a reminder 3 days and 1 day before the term ends, both in the console and by email, and both name that date.

If the 7 days pass without a payment, your devices are disabled - and then held, still assigned to you, for the same 24 hours described above. Pay within that window and you get the same devices back, with their setup, workspaces, and tags intact. After it, they go back to the shared pool.

Increasing your device count#

Get in touch. We'll extend or amend your term, and the extra devices are prepared and assigned the same way as any other order - typically within several hours.

What's not on this tab#

Card updates, billing address changes, email changes, tax/VAT IDs, and invoice downloads all live in Stripe's customer portal. Click Manage billing to get there. Detail in Invoices.