How MapleGather pricing and billing work

MapleGather charges based on how many contacts your organization has — every feature is included for every paying organization, with no plans, tiers, or feature gates. Sales tax, where it applies, is added on top as its own line.

The short version

Your first 14 days are free with full feature access and no payment method required. After the trial, you subscribe and are billed monthly based on your contact count. Your price scales with the size of your organization, not with what you’re allowed to do — there are no locked features.

Your subscription is $29.00 per month, which includes your first 100 contacts, plus $0.06 per month for each contact above 100. Both of those figures are before tax. If we’re registered to collect sales tax where your billing address is, that tax is added on top and shown as its own line.

How it works

Trial period

When you create your organization, your account enters a 14-day free trial. During the trial, all features are available and no payment method is required. The subscribe prompt in Subscription (at /admin/admin-security/subscription) shows a projected quote based on your current contact count so you know what to expect.

If the trial ends without a subscription, your organization enters read-only mode. People can still sign in, read what their roles already allow, and use exports they were already allowed to make. You can still subscribe and submit or complete privacy requests; other changes, including contact-alert settings, are paused. This read-only window lasts 30 days. Authorized exports keep working until the organization closes, so take a copy during the window if you need one. At closure, subscription changes and exports are unavailable; retained records are not physically deleted. A dedicated closed-account page is not available yet, so someone who can still sign in may currently read records their role permits. That read access does not restore writes or exports. A successful subscription during the read-only window can restore full access. If the page cannot confirm whether payment was taken, or says your subscription couldn’t be switched on, it names the cause, and MapleGather’s team is alerted automatically and will contact you. Check your card statement before trying again, and wait for us to contact you rather than starting fresh attempts. Check the displayed status rather than assuming a transition from the date alone. See MapleGather subscription statuses reference.

Subscription billing

After your trial, you subscribe and MapleGather bills you monthly. Your bill before tax has two components:

Base fee — a flat $29.00 per month, which covers your first 100 contacts.
Per-contact fee — $0.06 per month for each contact above 100.

Both figures are shown on your subscription page and are worked out from your real contact count. It’s an estimate based on today’s counts, so it moves if your contact count does — your issued invoice is the amount that counts. (While a promo code is active the breakdown lines are hidden and your discounted subtotal is shown on its own, so you never see two lines that don’t add up to the third.) There are no Starter, Professional, or Enterprise plans. All features are available at every contact count. Your cost goes up as your organization grows — not because you need to unlock something.

Sales tax

Sales tax is not included in the $29.00 base fee or the $0.06 per-contact rate. Where we are registered to collect it, it’s calculated on your whole pre-tax amount — base fee and per-contact fee together — and added on top.

Which tax applies depends on the billing address you give us when you add your payment method. That address is used only to work out your tax; it’s kept separately from your organization’s mailing address, and changing one never changes the other.

Your subscription page and your invoices show the same three-part picture:

your subtotal before tax,
one line for each taxing authority that applies, named the way that authority spells it, and
your total.

If no tax applies to you, there is simply no tax line — you won’t see a zero or a dash, and your total is the same as your subtotal. To learn more, see Why am I being charged sales tax?.

Being a nonprofit does not by itself make your subscription tax-exempt, and you can’t switch exemption on yourself. See Nonprofit sales tax exemption.

Promo codes can reduce the per-contact rate or grant credit toward your first few months. They never unlock features, because all features are already available.

Soft cap alerts

You can set a soft cap — an advisory contact count. When your organization’s contact count reaches it, a non-blocking warning shows on the Subscription page. MapleGather checks the count about once a day and emails the admins who can view the Subscription page the first time a check finds it at or above the cap. Another email is sent only if a later check finds the count below the cap (but above zero) and a check after that finds it at or above the cap again, or the cap is changed; no email is sent while your account is read-only. A soft cap is advisory only; it does not block member signups, restrict any feature, or affect billing.

Invoices

Every charge produces an invoice you can see under Subscription (at /admin/admin-security/subscription). The three most recent are listed there, and View all invoices opens the full history. On that history, each invoice can be expanded to show its subtotal, any tax lines, and its total — a tax line is only ever final on an issued invoice, so that is the record to keep.

The formal invoice document and its PDF are hosted by our payment processor. View invoice and Download PDF open them in a new tab.

These are the invoices for your organization’s MapleGather subscription — what MapleGather charges you. They are separate from any invoices your organization sends to its own members, which live in the Billing area.

Payment failures and grace periods

If a charge fails, your account enters a past-due state and your access does not change. Payment is retried automatically for 14 days, and the outstanding invoice appears on your subscription page with a Pay now button. Paying it clears the state straight away.

If the 14 days pass without payment, your organization becomes read-only: people can still sign in, read what their roles permit and use exports they were already authorized to make. You can still pay and complete privacy requests; other changes are paused, including outbound email your organization sends. Your subscription page shows when the read-only window ends, and we email you seven days before it. Authorized exports keep working up to that date. A confirmed payment of the outstanding invoice restores full access.

Pay now opens the invoice on our payment processor’s hosted page. That page both settles the charge and lets you put a new card on file in the same step, so when you have an outstanding invoice it is also how you replace an expired or declined card.

If nothing is outstanding, there’s no Pay now button. The route for adding or changing a card depends on the subscription state:

With an open invoice, use Pay now on that invoice. The provider’s hosted page settles it and can take a replacement card.
With a live subscription, a billing profile, no open invoice and no pending cancellation, use Update payment method. It opens the provider’s secure page in a new tab; card details never touch MapleGather. If your browser blocks the new tab, check its pop-up settings and try again. For other failures, follow the message’s retry or support action.
During a trial without a billing profile, use Subscribe; there is no existing card to replace.
After cancellation, use Re-subscribe while the window is open. Settle any surviving open invoice first. The billing portal is not the route for a cancelled subscription.

Cancellation and data retention

When you cancel in good standing, full access normally continues through the paid period. A read-only period is planned before closure: role-authorized reading and exports, payment and privacy-request work remain, while other changes are paused. The automatic switch at the end of the paid period is not available yet, so check the subscription page’s displayed status rather than assuming access changed on the date alone.

If you cancel while a payment is overdue, the committed closure deadline is the earlier of the deadline already running and the usual post-cancellation window. Cancelling never extends an earlier deadline. The plain cancelled subscription view does not publish an exact closure date; MapleGather’s warning email names it seven days before closure.

To re-subscribe before that committed date, settle any surviving open invoice first, then follow Re-subscribe. Confirm an active subscription before relying on restored write access; if the page cannot confirm whether payment was taken, or says your subscription couldn’t be switched on, it names the cause, and MapleGather’s team is alerted automatically and will contact you, so check your card statement and wait for us to contact you before another attempt. If your role allows export, take a copy before closure. After closure, subscription changes and exports are unavailable, but retained records are not physically deleted; a dedicated closed-account page is not available yet, and existing role-limited reads may remain reachable to someone who can sign in.

Why it works this way

Membership organizations should focus on growing their membership, not managing feature gates. Transparent contact-count pricing means your cost scales predictably with your organization’s size, and you always have access to the full product.

Edge cases & boundaries

During the trial, contacts count toward the projected quote shown at subscribe time — so the number you see reflects your real starting point.
Before you enter a billing address, your subscription page shows your bill before tax and says so. It won’t show a total until it knows your address, because it can’t yet know whether tax applies.
If you correct your billing address later, the change applies to your next invoice. Invoices already issued are never re-taxed.
If a taxing authority’s amount works out to zero for your bill, that authority gets no line at all — the same as if it didn’t apply.
We don’t set tax rates and we don’t show one. Only the amount appears.
Re-subscribing before the committed closure date can restore full access after any outstanding invoice is settled and an active subscription is confirmed. The exact outcome depends on the subscription and payment state.
Once the committed deadline closes the organization, re-subscription and export are unavailable from inside the product. Closure does not physically delete retained records; someone who can still sign in may currently read what their role permits. A dedicated closed-account page is not available yet, so an accessible read is not evidence that the organization is active or that writes and exports are restored.
Downgrading mid-cycle is not applicable — there are no tiers to downgrade to.
SMS messages are not a billed dimension. Your bill is based on your contact count only.