When you onboard your clients to CloudCannon, you can choose who pays for the resources they use. Depending on the business model of your agency, you may prefer to pay for CloudCannon directly or have your clients receive and pay their own invoices. CloudCannon has no preference about who pays for each Subscription Plan A set of features available to your Organization, the monthly usage limits for resources, and the price you pay for access to those features and resources, monthly or annually. Each Organization in CloudCannon can have one Subscription Plan, and can update or cancel at any time.Subscription Plan
Pay for your Partner Organization#
Your Partner Organization A CloudCannon Organization that belongs to a member of the Partner Program and serves as their base for managing client work. From their Partner Organization, Partners create and manage Client Organizations and track their Partner Points.Partner Organization
If you don't host your own Sites on CloudCannon, and you keep each client in their own Client Organization, we recommend the Lite Plan for your Partner Organization. It is available only to members of the Partner Program, and you can select it from the Subscription page under Org Settings.
The Lite Plan includes one Seat The unit of paid capacity in your Organization's Subscription Plan. Every Organization Member you invite uses one Seat, as does every person you add through Site Sharing, and each Site with Guest Access enabled uses one Seat however many Guests share its Guest Password. Members of a Partner Organization working inside a Client Organization do not use a Seat. Extra capacity (Organization Members, bandwidth, custom domains, or build time) that extends a plan's included limits. When Overages are enabled, CloudCannon automatically adds capacity as your Organization exceeds its plan's included limits.Seat
Add-On
Paying for those Seats once covers your whole team's client work. Everyone in your Partner Organization can work in every Client Organization you manage, and never uses a Seat in a client's Subscription Plan, however many clients you have. For more information, please read our documentation on how Partners access their Client Organizations.
Guest Access A CloudCannon feature that allows you to invite someone from outside your Organization to view, edit, and publish content for a specific Site. Unlike Site Sharing, Guests invited through Guest Access do not need a CloudCannon account. Instead, they log in using a Guest Password through a dedicated Guest Login Page. Each Site with Guest Access enabled uses one Seat, regardless of how many Guests use its password. The Guest Access feature was previously called Client Sharing.Guest Access
If you invite someone as an Organization Member and also turn on Guest Access for them, they use two Seats and the Organization is billed for a Seat nobody is using. Pick one method for each person.
Select who pays for your clients#
The CloudCannon Partner Program allows you to manage clients in two places: as a separate Client Organization you can manage, or as Sites inside your Partner Organization.
- Keeping client Sites on a separate Client Organization gives them their own Subscription Plan, with its own payment method and its own invoices. Your client can pay directly with their own card, or you can add yours and keep covering the cost. You can add members of your Partner Organization for no extra cost and they do not contribute to the number of seats in their Subscription Plan. CloudCannon will warn you if there are any payment issues.
- Keeping client Sites in your Partner Organization means the resources they use are bundled into your Subscription Plan and billed to your Partner Organization's payment method on your single invoice. If you pay for the invoice, you can choose how to incorporate it into how you already bill the client, for example alongside web maintenance or other services.
In both cases, each Organization has its own Subscription Plan and its own payment method. For more information, please read our documentation on what a Subscription Plan is and managing your payment methods.
Who pays and who receives the invoices are separate choices. CloudCannon emails each invoice to the address in the Billing Email field, which you set in the Billing contact information modal on the Subscription page under Org Settings, so you can send a Client Organization's invoices to your client while your own payment method covers the cost, or the other way around. If that field is empty, CloudCannon does not email invoices for that Organization at all. For more information, please read our documentation on adding billing contact information.
Other than billing, there are several factors that may influence where you choose to keep your clients. For more information, please read our documentation on best practices for structuring client Sites.
Partner discounts and Free Trials#
As you rise up the tiers of the Partner Program, you unlock a discount of up to 20% off the price of all Subscription Plans on your Partner Organization and connected Client Organizations you manage. This discount is not applied automatically; you add it as a coupon to the Subscription Plan for each Organization you want to discount. For more information, please read our documentation on what Partner Points and Rewards are and adding a coupon to your Subscription.
Your Partner Organization starts on the standard 21-day Free Trial A trial period that gives a new Organization access to Standard Plan features without requiring a payment method.Free Trial
Five actions shorten a Client Organization's extended six-month Free Trial so that it ends five days later:
- Serving one of its Sites on a Subdomainof a Custom DomainGlossary term
Subdomain
An additional name on the front of your URL, prefixing your Base Domain name (e.g., "docs" in docs.example.com or "blog" in blog.example.com). In CloudCannon, every address on your Custom Domain, including the Base Domain itself, is a Subdomain with its own hosting, HTTPS, and DNS settings. Each Subdomain serves Sites, each at its own path, or redirects visitors to another domain. A Subdomain with no Site yet shows its visitors a 404 page until you add a Site.
, when that Subdomain wasn't serving a Site yet.Glossary termCustom Domain
A domain you own and connect to your CloudCannon Organization, so visitors reach your Site at your own address instead of its Testing Domain. You buy the domain from a domain registrar, connect it to your Organization, then add it to your Sites.
- Turning on Guest Access for one of its Sites.
- Adding one of the client's own Organization Members to a Permission Group.
- Sharing one of its Sites with someone outside the Client Organization using Site Sharing.Glossary term
Site Sharing
A CloudCannon feature that allows you to invite an existing Organization Member from within your Organization to view, edit, and publish content for a specific Site. With Site Sharing, you can control what an Organization Member can interact with by limiting access to individual Sites rather than all Sites in your Organization. This is distinct from Guest Access, which is used to invite external clients who don't have CloudCannon accounts.
- Accepting a transfer that brings in a Subdomain serving a Site, a Site with Guest Access turned on, or a Site Sharing member who is not already in the Client Organization.
Serving a Site on a Subdomain or turning on Guest Access shortens the trial as soon as you save the change. Adding an Organization Member or sharing a Site shortens it when that person accepts their invitation, and a transfer shortens it when you accept the transfer. All five apply whether or not the Client Organization is still within the limits of its Subscription Plan. Adding members of your Partner Organization, people who are already Organization Members of the Client Organization, or anyone in the Partner Permission Group does not shorten the trial, so you can build with your own team and keep the full six months. Once five days or fewer remain, these actions no longer change the trial end date.