Panelbotdocs
SearchStart free

Upgrades, downgrades, and the Free plan

How Panelbot plan changes work: upgrades apply immediately and prorate, paid downgrades credit unused time, and a paid plan never drops back to Free.

Every Panelbot account starts somewhere and moves as the business does. Upgrades apply immediately and are prorated, downgrades between paid plans apply immediately and credit the unused time, and a paid plan cannot be moved back to Free. You do all of it yourself from the plans page. This page covers the Free plan you start on and every move you can make from there.

Try it on real chats first

The only honest way to judge a support tool is to run your own customers’ problems through it, on your own servers, connected to your own portal. So the Free plan lets you do exactly that with nothing on file: wire Panelbot into your billing portal, connect a server over the panel API, enable the widget, and watch it handle real conversations before you commit to anything.

How the Free plan works

Signing up is self-serve and takes no card. You get the real product, not a stripped-down demo, connected to your own portal and your own servers. Unlimited servers of every type, the full diagnostic engine, the knowledge base, the complete audit log, and the live Chat Dashboard with unlimited seats.

The one difference from a paid month is volume: Free includes 30 conversations a month, a hard limit rather than a soft warning. It resets every month for as long as you keep the account. Free plan terms has the detail.

No card, and nothing to cancel. There is no time limit and no conversion date. If you never upgrade, nothing is ever charged, because there is nothing on file to charge.

The widget shows a badge. On Free and Lite the widget carries a small “Powered by PanelBot” line. White-label starts at Starter.

When 30 conversations a month stops being enough

That is the moment to upgrade, and it is the only thing that starts a charge. You add a card, choose a paid plan, and billing begins that day at the price shown at checkout. Your conversation limit lifts to the new plan’s monthly volume immediately.

Everything you set up carries straight over: the servers you enrolled, the widget you configured, your knowledge base articles, and your conversation history. There is no reconnecting or reconfiguring.

If you started a trial before the Free plan launched, it runs to its original end date on the terms you accepted then. Trials are no longer offered on new signups, and nothing about the Free plan changes a trial already under way.

Upgrading and downgrading

You are never locked into the plan you start on. Plans are meant to move with your business, and changing them is something you do yourself from the plans page when you are signed in.

Upgrades take effect immediately. When your customers generate more support than your current plan comfortably covers, moving up applies right away, and the cost is prorated against what you have already paid for the period. You do not wait for a renewal date to get the larger conversation quota. See Compare Panelbot plans for what each plan includes.

Downgrades between paid plans apply right away too. You can move to a smaller paid plan whenever you like, and the change takes effect immediately. Any unused time on your current plan is credited back and put toward your next invoice, and your conversation quota simply moves to the smaller plan’s level from that point rather than cutting you or your customers off mid-period.

A paid plan does not move back to Free. Free is a starting point, not a landing spot. If a paid plan stops being right, cancel it: cancelling stops the next renewal and your plan runs to the end of the period you paid for. See Refunds and cancellation.

Monthly or yearly, your choice. Every paid plan can be billed monthly or yearly, yearly works out cheaper, and you can switch between the two whenever you want. Your conversation quota resets every month either way; on a yearly plan it resets monthly on the same day of the month your yearly period started, not once a year. There is more on quotas and credits in Usage, quotas, and credits.

A quick reality check before you pay

Use the Free plan for what it is for. Connect a real server, embed the widget on your actual portal, and let a handful of genuine customer questions run through it. Watch how the read-only diagnostics resolve or explain the common tickets, and see where escalation hands a case to your team. That is the picture thirty real conversations give you that a feature list never can, and it is the honest basis for deciding whether Panelbot earns a place in your support stack.