Free trial & subscription status
Understand the 7-day free trial, the billing lifecycle, and every subscription status you can see in Llama Upsell.
Every Llama Upsell installation starts with a free trial, then settles into a normal billing cycle. Along the way, your subscription moves through a handful of states — and what your storefront does (whether offers keep showing) depends on which state you're in. This page explains the trial, the billing lifecycle, and every status you might see, so you always know what's happening and what to do about it.
The 7-day free trial
When you install Llama Upsell and choose a paid plan, your subscription begins with a 7-day free trial. The trial gives you a full week to set up campaigns, discounts, restrictions, and the Llama Cart and watch them work on a live storefront before any recurring charge starts.
What you get during the trial
During the trial you have the complete feature set of the plan you chose — nothing is held back. A trial on the Growth plan behaves exactly like a paid Growth subscription:
- All campaign types, discounts, cart restrictions, product limiters, and the Llama Cart are available.
- Your plan's feature limits are still enforced. The trial does not lift the caps on active campaigns, restrictions, discounts, and limiters — it only waives the charge. If your plan allows 10 active campaigns, that ceiling applies during the trial too.
- The app monitors your usage (orders processed, active campaigns, and the rest) throughout the trial, exactly as it does on a paid plan, so the numbers on your subscription page are real from day one.
The free trial applies to paid plans. The Free plan has no recurring charge to defer, so the trial concept doesn't change anything for it — you're simply on the Free tier with its limits.
How the trial countdown is shown
While the trial is running, the app tracks two things and surfaces them on your subscription page:
| What you see | Where it comes from | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Days left | leftDays | How many days remain before billing begins. Starts at 7 on a fresh install. |
| Trial ends on | expiresAt | The exact date and time the trial expires and your first charge is scheduled. |
As the week passes, days left counts down toward 0 and the trial ends on date stays fixed, so you can plan around it.
What happens when the trial expires
When the trial period elapses, the app marks the trial as finished (the trial.expired flag on your install record flips to true) and billing begins. Your subscription stays Active and your first recurring charge for the plan is collected through Shopify on the normal cycle. Nothing about your campaigns changes at that moment — everything that was live during the trial keeps running.
The trial is a one-time grace period tied to your install. Once it has expired for your store, you don't get another one — even if you later uninstall and reinstall. See Reinstalling after the trial below.
A note for long-time merchants
If you installed Llama Upsell a long time ago under an older pricing version, your store may have been given a 30-day trial instead of the current 7 days. The current standard for new installs is 7 days; the longer 30-day window only ever applied to stores that signed up under that earlier pricing.
Subscription status reference
Your subscription page always shows a status that tells you, at a glance, the state of your plan and whether your storefront is still serving offers. There are exactly three statuses.
| Status | What you see | What still works | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active | Plan is paid and current. | All features available; plan limits enforced. | Nothing — you're all set. |
| Limit reached | A notice that a feature cap has been hit. | Existing active items keep working; new activations are saved inactive. | Switch off another active item, or upgrade your plan, then activate. |
| Cancelled | Subscription is cancelled. | Campaigns stop serving on the storefront; your data is retained. | Resubscribe to a plan to start serving offers again. |
The trial is not a status. While it's running, your subscription is already Active and a separate trial period runs alongside it, tracked by a trial.expired flag rather than by a distinct status. The status you see during the trial is Active with a days-left countdown.
Active
Your plan is paid and in good standing. Every feature included in your plan is available, and your plan's feature limits are enforced normally. This is the steady state during and after the trial, or after you subscribe. While the trial is running, you're Active with a visible days-left countdown and a trial ends on date; when the trial period ends, billing begins and the status is unchanged.
Limit reached
You've hit one of your plan's feature caps — for example, you already have the maximum number of active campaigns your plan allows. The important behavior here:
- Items that are already active keep working.
- When you try to activate one more item over the cap, it isn't lost — it's saved as inactive instead, and the app tells you why.
Inactive items never count toward a limit, so the fix is to free up a slot (deactivate something) or move to a higher plan. For the exact caps per plan, see Plans & billing.
If a campaign or discount you expected to be live isn't appearing on your storefront, check whether your status reads Limit reached. An item saved as inactive because of the cap will not show until you make room or upgrade, then activate it.
Cancelled
The subscription has been cancelled — either by you, or as the end result of an unresolved billing problem. While cancelled:
- Your storefront stops serving campaigns — upsell offers, discounts, and the rest no longer appear to shoppers.
- Your configuration and data are retained. Your campaigns, discounts, restrictions, and settings are not deleted.
To start serving offers again, simply resubscribe (see Cancelling and resubscribing).
Trial-to-paid transition edge cases
The trial is straightforward when you install once and let it run. A few less-common paths behave differently — here's what to expect.
Uninstalling during the trial
If you uninstall the app while your trial is still running, the trial doesn't keep counting down in a way that benefits you later. Your subscription data is preserved as a draft rather than deleted, so your store's billing state is remembered. The practical takeaway: uninstalling mid-trial does not reset or extend the trial — the clock and the install state are kept.
Reinstalling after the trial ended
If your trial has already expired for your store and you later reinstall, you are not granted a new trial. Because your previous subscription state is preserved as a draft and reattached on reinstall, the app recognizes the store and resumes from where it left off — including the fact that the trial was already used.
Reinstalling is not a way to get a second free week. The trial is one-time per store. A fresh-looking install still carries your prior subscription state, so a trial that already expired stays expired. For the full mechanics of how reinstalling reconnects your store, see Install and enable the app.
Changing plan mid-trial
You can switch plans while you're still in the trial. When you do, your trial continues — switching plans doesn't end the trial early or start charging you immediately — but the features and limits update to match the new plan right away. For example, moving from Starter to Growth mid-trial immediately raises your active-campaign cap, and you keep testing on the new plan until the trial's end date arrives.
Recovering from a failed charge
Billing runs entirely through Shopify, so a failed recurring charge is resolved on the Shopify side, not inside Llama Upsell. The app doesn't expose a separate "past due" status — it only tracks Active, Limit reached, and Cancelled, and it acts on the Shopify subscription only while it's active. When Shopify can't collect a charge, Shopify freezes the app subscription on its end until the payment is fixed.
Fix the payment in Shopify
In Shopify Admin, resolve the failed app charge — typically by updating the billing/payment method on the account so Shopify can retry and collect the outstanding amount.
Confirm you're Active again
Once Shopify successfully collects the charge, your subscription stays Active and your campaigns continue uninterrupted.
The grace period exists so a temporary billing problem doesn't take your storefront offers down. Don't rely on it long-term, though — resolve the payment promptly so the subscription doesn't end up cancelled.
Cancelling and resubscribing
What cancelling does
When a subscription is cancelled, the effect on your storefront is immediate but your work is safe:
- Storefront stops serving campaigns. Upsell offers, discounts, restrictions, and other live features no longer appear to shoppers.
- Your data is retained. Campaigns, discounts, restrictions, limiters, the Llama Cart configuration, and settings are kept exactly as you left them.
How to resubscribe
To bring your offers back, choose a plan again from the subscription page in the app. Because your configuration was retained, resubscribing restores access to everything you'd built — you don't have to recreate your campaigns from scratch. Note that resubscribing does not grant a new free trial if your store's trial was already used.