Plans, Pricing & Subscriptions

Every school starts on the free plan (free for up to 40 students). Upgrade to a paid plan based on your student count as you grow. Paid plans are billed per school term (one term grants four months of access), in Nigerian Naira. You can also pay for a full session (all three terms) up front and save 5%.

Plans

See the pricing page for current plans and prices.

A plan priced as Custom is arranged with us rather than bought from the page. Its card carries a Contact us button that opens your own mail app with the message already addressed, so nothing has to be copied down.

Free plan

Schools with 40 students or fewer can run on the free plan indefinitely, with no payment required. Select it from Subscription in your admin portal. It activates instantly for a school that is not already paying for something else; if you are, the switch is scheduled for the end of the period you have paid for, so no paid days are lost (see Downgrading). If your enrolment grows beyond 40, upgrade to a paid plan.

Payment

Paid plans are processed via Paystack. Go to Subscription in your admin portal, choose a plan, and pick how to pay: per term, or per session (all three terms at once for a 5% discount). Complete payment on the Paystack checkout page and your subscription activates immediately, for one term or for the full session.

Renewing

Your current plan has a Renew button on its own card under Subscription, so renewing never means switching plans. Renewing adds a full term (or session) to the end of your current period, so paying early costs you nothing: if you renew with three weeks left, those three weeks are still yours and the new term starts after them.

We email a reminder 7 days, 3 days, and 1 day before a subscription ends, so there is time to renew before anything is interrupted. See Who receives billing emails for who those go to.

Your WhatsApp allowance follows the same principle. Renewing early adds the new period's messages to what you have left rather than starting the count again, so nothing you have already sent is double-counted and nothing you have paid for is lost. A period that genuinely begins fresh (your first activation, an upgrade, or renewing after a subscription has lapsed) starts the allowance over, and unused messages from the finished period do not carry across.

On the free plan there is no renewal, so the allowance refills on its own: a term's worth at a time, on a date the Messaging page shows you. Nothing needs to be renewed or re-selected for that to happen.

Upgrading part-way through a period

Upgrading takes effect immediately, and you only pay the difference. If you move up while a period you have already paid for is still running, you are charged the difference in price for the days you have left, not the new plan's full price. Your renewal date does not change. Upgrade with 62 days left on a ₦40,000 term and a ₦80,000 plan costs you ₦20,327.87 today, your renewal date stays where it was, and the new price applies from your next renewal. Only whole days you have yet to use are counted, so the rest of the day you upgrade on is not charged for.

Because an upgrade tops up the period you are already in rather than buying a new one, the per term / per session choice does not change what it costs. Switching to per-session while upgrading sets how you are billed from your next renewal; the upgrade itself still covers the days left on the period you bought. The Subscription page says so on the plan card.

The Subscription page shows the exact amount before you commit, alongside how many days it covers and the renewal date it keeps. Your WhatsApp allowance is topped up the same way, by the extra the new plan carries, for the part of the period still to run, and messages you have already sent still count, exactly as with an early renewal.

A few cases are charged as a normal full period instead, because there is nothing to prorate against: moving up from the free plan, restarting after a subscription has expired, a plan granted to you by our team rather than paid for, and upgrading in the last day or two of a period (where you get a whole fresh period rather than paying a token amount for the remainder).

Downgrading

Downgrading is scheduled rather than immediate: your current plan runs to the end of the period you have already paid for, then switches automatically. A downgrade is refused if your enrolment is above the smaller plan's student cap. Reduce enrolment first, or stay on your current plan.

On the day the change takes effect we email everyone at your school who handles billing, naming the new plan, its student cap, its WhatsApp allowance and when the period runs to. Nothing is charged that day: the period was paid for when the change was scheduled, and the receipt was sent then.

Switching to the free plan is a downgrade too, and is scheduled the same way. If you still hold time on a plan you paid for, your school keeps every day of it: the switch is arranged for the day that time runs out rather than taking the paid plan away the moment you press the button, and it is refused, before anything is scheduled, if your enrolment is above the free plan's cap. The switch applies straight away only where there is nothing left to keep: a subscription that has lapsed, a school that never subscribed, and a school already on the free plan. That last case is what gets a lapsed school working again, so it is deliberately not deferred.

While a downgrade is waiting to take effect, the other plan actions are unavailable, and a banner on the Subscription page says so. Any other change would replace the scheduled one, so the choice is made explicitly rather than as a side effect of renewing or upgrading. Cancel scheduled downgrade on that banner releases the other actions and keeps you on your current plan.

Cancelling a downgrade you paid for does not refund it automatically, because sending money back is a decision rather than a side effect of a button. (A scheduled switch to the free plan cost nothing, so cancelling that one loses nothing and the page says so.) What it does do is record the payment as owed back to you, so it stays visible on our side rather than quietly becoming a payment that bought nothing. Contact us and we will issue it against the original payment. The same applies if a plan change is replaced before it takes effect, whether by a later payment of your own or by a plan our team grants you directly.

Payment history

Subscription lists every payment your school has ever started, whatever became of it: paid, failed, or never completed, with the plan it was for, the amount, and the date. A payment that never succeeded shows the date it was started, so nothing reads as blank. A mid-period upgrade is labelled Upgrade, rest of period, so its smaller amount reads as what it is rather than as a shortfall.

Occasionally a payment sits at Awaiting confirmation: the bank took it, but confirmation arrived after you had already left the payment page. Those rows carry a Check status button that asks your payment provider again. If the money did go through, your subscription is applied there and then, and you do not need to pay a second time or contact us.

Check status is also offered on a row reading Not completed or Failed, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight. A checkout you closed is a statement about the browser window rather than about the money: the same payment is often finished from a banking app minutes later, and re-checking is the only way that reaches us. Whatever comes back, the row is updated to say it, and the message you are shown is that outcome rather than an error.

Who receives billing emails

Three emails come from us about your subscription: the receipt when a payment succeeds, the expiry reminders before a period ends, and a refund notice if money is ever sent back. All three go to the same people, so the school can never be warned by one list and receipted by another.

They go to every staff account holding the Manage billing permission, plus your school's own contact address. Each address is written to once, so an administrator whose address is also the school's address gets one email rather than two.

Because it follows the permission rather than a job title, this tracks whatever your school has actually decided. Out of the box that is the Owner and School Administrator roles. Grant Manage billing to a custom role, say a Bursar, and they start receiving receipts; take it away and they stop. Staff who merely work in the office, such as a receptionist or a librarian, do not receive them.

Changes take effect within a few minutes of granting or removing the permission.

Refunds

If a subscription payment needs to be reversed, for example a duplicate charge or a scheduled plan change that was cancelled before it took effect, the 1410SMS team issues the refund through the same payment provider that took the money. It goes back to the account or card it came from, and your bank usually takes a few working days to show it. You will get an email when it is issued, naming the amount, the original payment reference and the reason.

The refunded amount then appears under that payment in your Payment history, so the row still shows what was charged and separately shows what came back. While the money is still on its way the row reads refund on its way rather than showing an amount, because until it lands there is nothing in your account to find.

Refunds are issued by the 1410SMS team rather than from your own portal, because the payment was made to us. This is the opposite of the school fees your own parents pay you online, which settle straight into your school's bank account and never pass through 1410SMS. Those are recorded in the platform but repaid by your school directly, since we never hold that money. See Online payments for how that side works.

From the phone

Subscription is on the mobile app too, under More → School, for any staff account holding View billing. It carries the same period panel, the same plan comparison priced for your school, the same scheduled-change notice with its cancel action, and the same payment history with Check status on a payment that never settled.

On Android it also takes the payment. Choosing a plan opens your payment provider's page in a browser tab, with the address bar visible so you can see who you are paying, and returns you to the app when you are done. The app then confirms the payment and updates your plan, and if you close it mid-way the payment still applies itself: the confirmation is a courtesy, not the mechanism.

On iPhone and iPad the page is read-only, and says so. Apple requires digital subscriptions sold inside an iOS app to go through Apple's own purchase system, so the plan is changed from the web portal instead. Everything else, including the history and how long you have left, is on the phone.

If a subscription expires

Access is suspended for everyone at the school (staff, students and parents) until it is renewed. Signing in still works, and administrators can still reach the Subscription and payment pages, so a lapsed school can always get back in by renewing. Nothing is deleted; all your data is exactly as you left it and returns the moment payment completes.