Most pricing pages tell you what you get. They are less good at telling you what happens on the day you run out. This post covers both: what each Docutrain tier includes, and what actually happens when you hit a document cap, a seat cap, or a gated feature.
How plans work
The plan lives on your owner group, not on individual accounts, so everyone in the group shares the same limits and features. Billing is managed by the Primary Admin — the group's first administrator is the only owner admin who can change the plan, add a payment method, or cancel. Other admins see "Plan changes are managed by your Primary Admin" where a billing action would otherwise appear.
Limits are enforced everywhere. Whether you upload, invite a member, or switch on a gated feature, the same rules apply, and actions beyond your tier are blocked with a message and a link to view plans. Payments run through Stripe, so card details are never stored by Docutrain.
The four tiers
| Capability | Free | Pro | Business | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Documents | 1 | 5 | 10 | Unlimited |
| Users / seats | 1 | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Public & passcode sharing | — | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Collections | — | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Analytics | — | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom branding | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Custom domain | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Embed widget | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Voice training | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Chat customization | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Discoverability | — | — | Yes | Yes |
The same comparison appears in the product, on Plan & Usage and under Compare on the Billing page.
Free is where every new group starts, no credit card and no time limit; those workspaces see an "Unlock the rest of Docutrain" banner with View plans and Not now. Pro unlocks sharing and insight — public access, passcode protection, collections, analytics — but stays single-seat. Business adds unlimited seats and the white-label layer, including a custom domain and the embeddable chat widget. Enterprise removes the caps and is not self-serve; the pricing page presents it as Contact us.
Three rows are easy to misread. Documents counts documents live at once: archived and deactivated ones do not count, while a published form creates a document and does. Users / seats counts the primary admin, members, and pending invitations. Embed widget covers saved embeds: if the plan lapses, published embeds keep serving but new ones are blocked.
Limits that apply on every plan
Separate from tiers, every upload has platform-wide size limits — a maximum file size, a PDF page limit, a text-length ceiling — identical on every tier.
Each organization also has a daily chat allowance across all of its assistants and readers — by default 300 questions per rolling 24 hours, independent of plan. When it runs out, readers see a banner saying the assistant has reached its daily question limit and when more become available; capacity returns gradually as the window rolls forward. The Docutrain team can raise or remove the allowance if your audience needs more.
Watching usage, and what happens when you hit a limit
Document-limit messaging lives in one place: the Plan usage card at the top of the Documents tab. Below 80 percent it reports the count. At 80 percent the bar turns amber — "Approaching your document limit. Consider upgrading before you hit the cap." — with a View plans button. At 100 percent it turns red, "Document limit reached. Archive a document or upgrade to add more.", and the button becomes Upgrade. On Enterprise the card is hidden, and it updates as documents finish processing or are enabled and disabled.
The same number appears on the dashboard home, where the Profile & settings tile reads something like "pro plan · 4/10 used". For the full picture, Owner Settings → Plan & Usage shows your plan with its status chip and renewal date, the usage meter, the comparison table, and a Plan history log of every change and who made it. That tab is read-only; Manage billing opens the Billing page, which carries its own compact Usage card.
Reaching a limit is specific rather than generic:
- Uploading past your document limit is rejected, with an upgrade dialog headed More documents. Deactivating or deleting a document frees a slot.
- The upload queue holds up to three documents but never offers more slots than your plan allows, so on a one-document plan you cannot build a three-file queue at all. A document that reaches the front with no allowance left is failed rather than trained.
- Publishing a form is checked against the same allowance and refused with the same message.
- Inviting past your seat limit is blocked with "User limit reached for your plan." Pending invitations count alongside current members, and approving a join request runs the same check.
- Using a gated feature opens a dialog headed "Unlock" plus the feature name, showing your plan under Now and the lowest tier that includes it under Unlocks. The rule is enforced server-side too, so gated features cannot be reached another way.
The Billing page
Billing appears in the sidebar for the primary admin. Top to bottom: Current plan with its status (Active, Past due, Unpaid, Canceled, an end date, or a scheduled change) and the buttons Change plan, Cancel plan, Resume plan and Cancel scheduled change; the plan chooser; an Archived documents card if any exist; Usage and Payment Method; then Invoices, each row offering View and PDF. A dashboard banner appears whenever billing needs attention — informational ones can be dismissed, a failed-payment banner cannot.
Subscribing for the first time: View plans, pick a tier, Continue to _tier_, and pay on Stripe. You return to a brief "Confirming your subscription" while the plan applies. Back out at checkout and a "Checkout Cancelled" screen confirms no charges.
Upgrading between paid tiers applies immediately, prorated against your card on file, and automatically restores documents previously archived by a plan limit, up to the new limit.
Downgrading never takes effect mid-cycle. Schedule downgrade starts the lower tier at the end of your billing period, unused time is not refunded, and Cancel scheduled change undoes it before then. If you have more live documents than the lower tier allows, a picker appears first — "Pro allows 5 documents, but you have 8." — with the newest pre-selected and a confirm button reading Archive 4 & Schedule Downgrade. Capabilities the lower tier lacks switch off, but your logo, colors, domain name and assistant profile are kept, so re-upgrading restores your setup.
Cancelling ends the subscription at the end of the billing period: you keep current features until that named date, then the workspace moves to Free, and Resume plan undoes it until then. A failed renewal shows Past due; unresolved, it ends the subscription and moves the account to Free with the same automatic archiving.
Archived, not deleted
"Archived by plan limit" is the safety net. Rather than deleting work when a plan shrinks, Docutrain pauses the documents that no longer fit. They stop being available to chat with, but all content and configuration is kept, and the Billing page reports how many are archived. Upgrading or re-subscribing restores them automatically, up to the new limit, and Docutrain emails your workspace when documents are archived or restored.
If you are choosing a tier, the honest test is not the document count but the sharing model: whether your readers sign in, and whether they arrive through your own domain.