Subscription & Billing

SmartCAD is sold as a monthly or annual subscription. Both give you the full app — no feature gates, no tier shenanigans.

Plan	Price	What you get
Monthly	$18 / month	Full SmartCAD + continuous updates while subscribed. Cancel any time.
Annual	$162 / year (~$13.50/mo)	Everything in Monthly — save 25% by paying yearly.

Pick a plan on the home page or sign in to the customer portal to manage an existing subscription.

The customer portal

portal.smrtcad.com is your self-service hub. Sign in with the email you used at checkout — a one-time link is emailed to you, no password required.

From the portal you can:

• View your license — see your tier, status, and (for monthly) renewal date
• Copy your license key — click "Show license key" to reveal the JWT, then copy
• Download your install bundle — get a fresh docker-compose.yml + .env with your license pre-filled
• Manage billing — opens the Stripe Customer Portal where you can update your card, view invoices, or cancel
• Change Discord server — re-mint your license bound to a new guild ID (we'll email you the new key)
• Re-send your license email — handy if you misplaced it

What happens if my subscription ends?

Your CAD keeps running — we don't lock you out of software you've already deployed. What changes:

1. The Community Oversight panel shows a "Subscription required" banner to Command-level users
2. Watchtower can still pull new images, but you stop receiving security and feature updates after the end date (we don't push new images to inactive subscribers)
3. Regular officers and supervisors see no change — the banner is admin-only

This applies to both monthly and annual plans. To resume updates, sign in to the portal and click Manage billing. Once your subscription is active again, the banner disappears within ~6 hours (the entitlement check interval).

Switching from monthly to annual

1. In the portal, click Manage billing → cancel your monthly subscription

2. Buy the annual plan

3. You'll receive a new license email

4. Replace LICENSE_KEY in your .env with the new value and restart the backend:

   docker compose restart backend

Changing the Discord server your license is bound to

If you move to a new Discord guild (rebrand, server migration, etc.):

1. Sign in to the portal
2. Under Discord server, enter the new guild ID
3. Click Update
4. You'll get a new license email — replace LICENSE_KEY in .env and update DISCORD_GUILD_ID to match, then restart the backend

Refunds

Contact us within 7 days of purchase if SmartCAD doesn't work for your community. Open a ticket in our Discord.

Existing lifetime customers

If you bought SmartCAD before the new subscription system launched, your existing license still works and remains valid forever. You don't need to do anything — your tier is lifetime and you'll never see the subscription banner.