Account
Plans & Billing
The four xDiscount plans, what counts as a discounted order, how overage and spending limits work, and why there is no free trial on any plan.
The Four Plans
xDiscount has four plans: Free, Starter, Growth and Scale. Every plan applies discounts automatically at checkout, so shoppers never enter a code. What changes between plans is how many discounts you can have Active at once, how many discounted orders are included each month, what an extra order costs beyond that, and whether you get priority support.
To see your plan:
Open Settings
Open Settings from the sidebar.
Find Plans and billing
Scroll to the Plans and billing section.
Read the banner
The banner at the top reads “You’re on Starter, 128 of 500 discounted orders used this period.”, with a progress bar underneath.
Compare the plan cards
Below that is one card per plan. Your current plan carries a green Current badge, and its button reads Current plan.
Plan Comparison
| Free | Starter | Growth | Scale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | USD 19 a month | USD 49 a month | USD 149 a month |
| Active discounts | Up to 3 | Up to 25 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Discounted orders included / month | 50 | 500 | 2,500 | 10,000 |
| Per extra order beyond that | No charge | $0.03 | $0.02 | $0.01 |
| Monthly spending limit on extra orders | None | USD 50 | USD 150 | USD 400 |
| All four discount types | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| The full rules engine | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic at checkout | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Storefront offer card | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Connect AI | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Analytics and the campaign order field | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Priority support | No | No | No | Yes |
What the plans really differ on
All prices are in USD, billed through Shopify every 30 days. There is no free trial on any plan: a paid plan starts billing the moment you approve it on Shopify’s screen. The storefront offer card, Connect AI and analytics are included on every plan, Free included, so what changes between plans is volume, the rate on extra orders, the spending cap, and priority support on Scale.
What Every Plan Includes
Exactly one feature is plan-bound, and it is priority support, on Scale. Everything a shopper can see is on every plan, Free included:
- all four discount types, Percentage off, Fixed amount off, Buy X get Y and Free shipping;
- the full rules engine, which is all three conditions, Item quantity, Cart value and Inventory;
- Priority ordering, and a start date and end date in Discount period;
- the Shopify Function that applies your price at checkout, on every order;
- the storefront offer card on your theme, including the gift picker that makes Buy X get Y work;
- Connect AI, so your own AI assistant can draft discounts for you;
- the Analytics page, the storefront pixel, and the campaign name stamped on every order xDiscount discounted.
What Counts as a Discounted Order
A discounted order is an order where xDiscount actually reduced the price. Settings says it in one line: “You’re billed per discounted order beyond your plan’s allowance. An order only counts when xDiscount actually reduced its price.” Home repeats it: “A discounted order is one where xDiscount actually reduced the price. Orders we didn’t touch never count.”
- Only orders Shopify itself reports to xDiscount are counted, and only when one of your xDiscount discounts was applied to them.
- An order that went through with no xDiscount discount on it never counts, however many discounts you have live.
- Storefront activity, meaning product views, add-to-carts and checkouts seen on the Analytics page, never counts toward billing. Those numbers come from the storefront, not from Shopify’s order record, and they cannot move your bill.
What Happens When You Hit a Limit
The Active-Discount Limit
Free allows 3 active discounts and Starter allows 25. Growth and Scale are unlimited.
- Drafts are always free. The limit is on discounts that are live at checkout, so you can keep as many Draft discounts as you like. It is checked when a discount is created as Active, and when an existing one is switched to Active.
- Re-saving a discount that is already Active never trips the limit against itself.
- At the limit, Save is refused with: “Your Free plan includes 3 active discounts, and you have 3. Pause or archive one, or upgrade your plan to add more.”
- Home shows a warning banner headed “You’ve used all 3 discounts on Free”, reading “Upgrade to create more. Your existing discounts keep working either way.”, with a See plans button that takes you to Settings.
To free up a slot: open Discounts, open the discount, set Status to Draft or Archived, and click Save.
The Monthly Discounted-Order Allowance
Your live discounts keep working past the allowance on every plan, including Free. xDiscount never switches off a promotion to ask for money.
| What you see on Home | When |
|---|---|
| Info banner Approaching your monthly limit | You have used 80% or more of the month’s included orders |
| Warning banner You’ve passed the free monthly limit, on Free only | You have reached 50 discounted orders. “Your discounts are still running on all 50 orders. Upgrade to keep creating new ones.” |
| Nothing at all | You are comfortably inside the allowance |
On Starter, Growth and Scale, orders past the allowance are billed as overage, described below. On Free there is no overage at all, so nothing is ever charged.
If Your Subscription Is Paused
If Shopify cannot collect payment, your subscription is frozen. Home shows a critical banner headed Your subscription is paused: “Shopify couldn’t collect payment, so discounts are running on free-plan limits. Update your billing to restore your plan.”, with an Update billing button pointing at Settings.
While frozen, your store is treated as if it were on Free for limits and for paid features. Your plan and subscription are kept intact, so clearing the payment problem with Shopify restores everything without you approving anything again.
Upgrading, Downgrading and Cancelling
To change plan:
Open Plans and billing
Go to Settings, then the Plans and billing section.
Choose the plan you want
Click Upgrade on a plan above yours, or Downgrade on a plan below it.
Approve the charge with Shopify
You are taken out of the app to Shopify’s own charge-approval screen.
Come back to xDiscount
Approve the charge. Shopify sends you back to xDiscount, which re-reads your plan from Shopify and lands you on the Settings page.
If you land outside your admin
The approval screen is outside your admin, so the page you come back to may open outside it too. If you land on Open xDiscount from your Shopify admin, your plan is already active. Reopen the app from Apps in your admin and it will be there.
What happens behind the scenes:
- Your old subscription stays in place right up to the moment you approve the new one, and Shopify swaps them at approval. If you close the approval page or change your mind, nothing changes and you stay on the plan you were paying for.
- A new plan only takes effect once you approve it. Until then, xDiscount shows your old plan, because an unapproved subscription grants nothing.
- Upgrading and downgrading between paid plans use the same flow and the same approval screen.
To cancel and go back to Free:
Open Plans and billing
Go to Settings, then the Plans and billing section.
Use the button on the Free card
While you are on a paid plan, the Free card’s button reads Downgrade. On Free it reads Current plan and is disabled.
Read the confirmation message
Your paid subscription is cancelled with Shopify, and the app shows the message “Your plan was cancelled.”
Cancelling has no are-you-sure step
The click cancels straight away. Shopify decides when the cancellation itself takes effect, and xDiscount re-reads your plan from Shopify rather than assuming.
If the plan shown looks wrong: click Refresh plan in the Plans and billing section. That re-reads your subscription from Shopify directly. If the read fails you get a warning, “We couldn’t read your plan just now. Your discounts keep working either way, this only affects what’s shown here.”, with a Try again button. xDiscount never quietly falls back to showing “Free” when it could not read your plan.
Messages you may see instead of a redirect: “You’re already on Growth.”, “There’s no paid subscription to cancel.”, or “We couldn’t read your current plan just now. Try again in a moment.”
There Is No Free Trial
There is no free trial on any plan, of any length. When you choose Upgrade on a card, Shopify shows you its approval screen, and billing for that plan starts the moment you approve it there. The Free plan is free for as long as you stay on it, with no card to enter and no trial to expire.
The one case where nothing is charged is a development or test install, covered at the end of this page.
Overage and Your Spending Limit
How Overage Is Charged
Once you pass the included orders for the period, each further discounted order is charged at your plan’s per-order rate: $0.03 on Starter, $0.02 on Growth, $0.01 on Scale. Free has no overage at all.
- Each order is charged for itself only, not as a recalculation of the running total.
- Rounding to cents happens on the period total rather than on each individual order, so fractions of a cent do not accumulate into real money against you.
- Each charge appears on your Shopify bill as “Discounted order #1234”, using the order’s own name.
- Orders that were within your allowance are recorded with a zero charge. That record is written before any money is attempted, so an order that was inside your quota when it happened can never be charged later.
- Every order is keyed so it can only ever be metered once. Webhook retries and reconciliation never produce a second charge for the same order.
The Spending Limit
Every paid plan carries a hard monthly ceiling on usage charges: USD 50 on Starter, USD 150 on Growth, USD 400 on Scale. The plan card states it: “Capped at USD 50 a month, we can never charge more than that without asking you first.”
You approve that ceiling once, on Shopify’s approval screen, when you subscribe. Shopify itself refuses any usage charge that would take you past it.
Your usage against the cap is shown under the progress bar in Plans and billing: “USD 12.40 of USD 50.00 usage charges this period.”
What happens when you reach the cap:
- Your discounts keep running. Nothing switches off, and nothing is owed for the orders past the cap. They simply are not charged.
- Settings shows a warning banner: “14 discounted orders have gone past your spending limit and weren’t charged. Your discounts are still running. Raise the limit to resume billing.”
- Home shows a critical banner headed Usage limit reached: “Your discounts are still running, but usage charges have hit your USD 50 limit. Raise it to keep your account in good standing.”, with a Raise limit button that takes you to Settings.
To raise it:
Open Plans and billing
Go to Settings, then the Plans and billing section.
Click Raise my limit
Click Raise my limit in the warning banner.
Approve the new ceiling
You are taken to Shopify’s approval screen for the new ceiling. Raising what can be charged always needs your fresh approval.
Billing resumes
Approve it, and billing resumes.
The new limit defaults to double your current one, so $50 becomes $100 and $150 becomes $300. If something is off you will see “Your plan has no usage charges, so there’s no spending limit to raise.” on Free, “Your limit is already USD 50. Choose a higher one.”, or “We couldn’t read your current limit just now. Try again in a moment.”
Where Your Invoices Appear
xDiscount does not bill you directly and has no invoice screen of its own. Both your plan charge and any per-order overage charges are created through Shopify’s billing, and appear on your regular Shopify bill alongside your other app charges.
To see them, leave xDiscount and go to your Shopify admin, then Settings, then Billing.
Inside xDiscount, the Plans and billing section of Settings is where you see the live picture for the current period:
| What it shows | Where |
|---|---|
| Your plan and orders used this period | The banner at the top of the section |
| Progress toward the included orders | The bar beneath it, for example “128 / 500 discounted orders” |
| Usage charges so far against your cap | The subdued line beneath the bar |
| Orders that went past the cap unbilled | The Raise my limit banner |
Check it from Home
Home carries the same usage figure in its This month section, “128 of 500 discounted orders used on Starter”, so you can keep an eye on it without opening Settings.
If You Are on a Test Install
Development and test installs run Shopify’s billing flow without charging anyone. You will see an info banner: “This is a test install. You can subscribe and cancel freely, no card is ever charged.” Subscribe, cancel and change plans as much as you like. No card is touched.