FAQ
Answers to the questions people ask before and after buying SootSim. If something here contradicts Plans, Plans wins — it’s closer to the source-of-truth constants.
Buying
What payment methods do you accept?
Everything Stripe handles: major cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Stripe Link. All checkouts and invoices run through Stripe — we never see or store card data.
What currency is everything priced in?
USD. Stripe handles foreign-currency conversion at checkout time.
Do prices include tax / VAT?
Stripe Tax calculates the correct tax for your billing address at checkout. Your invoice shows the breakdown. If your org is tax-exempt, add the exemption in the Stripe Customer Portal.
Why is Personal yearly-only?
The annual price ($99) matches the usage profile of an individual dev shipping previews on their own repos. A monthly plan at a comparable per-month number would end up either over-priced for light users or under-priced once support overhead gets included. Yearly is the honest version.
How does Team pricing work?
Flat per-seat with a 3-seat minimum and no base fee. $19/seat/mo billed monthly, or $14/seat/mo billed annually ($168/seat/year). Add or remove seats in the Stripe Customer Portal any time.
Can Team be billed monthly with an invoice instead of a card?
For teams of 5 or more seats we can issue invoices on request — email [email protected] with your expected seat count. Otherwise Team is month-to-month on a card via Stripe.
Trials & Free
What does the 14-day Personal trial include?
During the trial your Free account behaves like Personal: API keys, desktop recordings, full 3D controls, and a trial-window cap of 100 previews and 5 auto-flows total (whichever is lower between these and Personal’s monthly caps applies). No card is required; nothing auto-converts.
What happens when the trial ends?
The desktop app keeps working on Free. You lose Personal-only features — preview uploads, API keys, desktop recordings, and premium 3D controls — until you upgrade. Anything you uploaded during the trial stays live unless you delete it or exceed your retained-preview cap.
Do I need a credit card to try it?
No. The trial starts on signup and runs without a card. You only enter payment information when you explicitly start checkout.
Team management
How do people join my team?
Two ways:
- Invite link — the team owner copies a link from the Team panel. Anyone with the link can join, as long as there’s a free seat on the subscription.
- Allowed domains — the owner adds email domains to the team. Anyone signing in with a matching address sees a one-tap “Join” prompt the next time they log in.
How do I add or remove seats?
Open the Stripe Customer Portal from the desktop app’s Billing dialog or from the Team panel. Seat count lives entirely in Stripe, not in SootSim. Team checkout starts at 3 seats; after purchase, this is where you add more. Changes pro-rate automatically and show up in the app within seconds of the Stripe webhook firing.
What happens if my team is full?
New joiners see “This team is full” when they try the invite link or the discovery prompt. Bump seat count in the Stripe portal to let them in.
What’s the difference between removing a member and reducing seats?
They’re independent actions:
- Remove a member in SootSim → they lose access immediately, the seat becomes available for someone else to join, but you’re still paying for it.
- Reduce seats in the Stripe portal → you pay less, but no one is kicked out on its own. If you reduce seats below your current member count, the next member to be removed just won’t be replaceable until you add seats back.
The common case — “this person left the company, I want to stop paying for them” — is both: remove them in SootSim, then reduce the seat count in Stripe.
Can I transfer team ownership?
Not in v1. Reach out to support if you need this.
Can one user be on multiple teams?
Not in v1. A user is on exactly one team at a time. They can leave and join another, but there’s no team switcher.
Limits & overage
Where do I see my current usage?
Open the Billing & Usage dialog in the desktop app (account chip in the Mac menu bar). You’ll see this period’s preview uploads, auto-flow count, and retained preview count. For invoices and historical usage, use the Stripe portal.
What happens when I hit the Personal cap?
Further uploads reject with a 402 response until the next billing period, or until you upgrade to Team. Personal has no overage — it’s a hard cap by design.
What happens when my Team hits its pool?
Overage is flat: $0.10 per preview upload and $1.00 per auto-flow beyond the pool. Both stop as soon as you hit the spending cap (default $100/mo, configurable).
Can I raise or remove the spending cap?
Raise it in the Billing dialog. Can’t remove it — the cap is a safety net, not a budget. You can set it high enough that it never bites in practice, but we won’t let you run uncapped.
Cancel, downgrade, refunds
How do I cancel?
Open the Stripe Customer Portal from the Billing dialog and click Cancel subscription. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period — you keep access until then.
Do you offer refunds?
No pro-rata refunds for partially-used periods. If something has gone wrong — a double-charge, a broken feature, a mistaken upgrade — email [email protected] and we’ll sort it out. Stripe handles pro-ration on genuine mid-period plan changes automatically.
What happens to my previews when I downgrade or cancel?
Personal and Team uploads — including anything uploaded during the trial — do not auto-expire. They stay live until you delete them or exceed your retained- preview cap.
CI & API keys
What’s the difference between a Personal key and a Team key?
- Personal keys upload previews against your Personal quota. Use them from local scripts or CI for your own repos.
- Team keys draw from the team’s pooled quota and additionally unlock shared org workflows and agent flows.
Do CI uploads count against my pool?
Yes. Any upload — desktop, local CLI, or CI — consumes one preview upload from whichever account owns the key. Team keys draw from the pooled quota; Personal keys draw from the individual Personal quota.
Can I have multiple keys?
Yes. Create one per environment (e.g. main-ci, preview-pipeline,
local-laptop) and revoke them individually.
AI & models
Which AI provider do you use?
Anthropic (Claude). Default model for agent flows is
claude-sonnet-4. You can opt into claude-opus per flow or via
sootsim.config.ts.
Do you train models on my code or prompts?
No. We don’t use your code, prompts, uploaded content, or any other data flowing through SootSim to train AI models. See Privacy for the full list of sub-processors and what each one receives.
Can I bring my own Anthropic API key?
Not in v1. If you’re a larger team that needs BYO keys or a different model provider entirely, email [email protected] — we’re happy to talk.
Privacy & security
A three-sentence summary:
- We don’t sell your data.
- We don’t use your code or prompts to train AI models.
- Sub-processors are listed publicly on the Privacy page; full terms are on the Terms page.
Support
Email [email protected]. We read everything; response times are usually within a business day.