Subscription tiers, limits, and soft lock
Carrier Stash bills at the organization level. Each organization sits on one of four tiers, and that tier sets two hard caps — how many active carriers and how many libraries the organization can have — along with which features are unlocked. This page explains how those limits are enforced and what soft lock means.
The four tiers
There are four tiers: Free, Starter, Pro, and Community. Each is built around a different kind of library, from a single home collector on Free up to a multi-chapter network on Community. Only active (non-archived) carriers count toward the carrier cap.
| Tier | Price | Active carriers | Libraries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10 | 1 |
| Starter | $9/mo ($90/yr) | 30 | 1 |
| Pro | $25/mo ($250/yr) | 75 | 3 |
| Community | $40/mo ($400/yr) | 500 | Unlimited |
Prices shown here are display values. Stripe is always authoritative for the amount actually charged, and it’s what you see at checkout. Annual billing is ten months’ price (two months free).
Features unlock as you climb: waitlists, renewals, and events arrive at Starter; advanced reporting and the Financial Tools add-on arrive at Pro. Equipment items have their own separate cap and never consume carrier slots.
How the caps are enforced
The carrier and library caps are enforced in two places at once, and both matter.
The application layer checks your usage before a form is submitted — this is what produces the friendly “your plan has room for N more” message and blocks the action early. The database enforces the same caps as a final backstop with a trigger that runs on every carrier insert, so the limit holds even under a bulk import or a race. The two are kept deliberately in lockstep; neither replaces the other.
Because the cap counts active carriers only, archiving a carrier frees a slot immediately, and restoring one from the archive re-checks the cap.
Soft lock
Soft lock is what happens when an organization is over a limit rather than merely at it. This almost always follows a downgrade or a trial ending at a lower tier — for instance an organization with 40 carriers dropping from Pro to Free, whose cap is 10.
The design goal is that an over-limit organization can always wind down cleanly. So soft lock is read-only, not a lockout:
- Reading is never blocked. All carriers, caregivers, loans, and reports stay visible.
- Check-in always works. Returned carriers can be received and loans closed at any time.
- Existing loans keep functioning — returns and renewals on already-open loans aren’t blocked, and existing waitlist entries can be cleared.
What soft lock blocks is growth: adding carriers and creating libraries, until the organization is back under its limit or upgrades. Getting back under the limit — by archiving active carriers — lifts the block, as does upgrading to a tier whose caps cover current usage. A warning is shown before a downgrade or trial expiry that would trigger this state.
Sponsored and Founding Partner organizations
Two flags sit outside the tier system entirely. A sponsored organization bypasses all tier enforcement and doesn’t go through Stripe billing. A Founding Partner organization carries the same bypass plus an internal and public recognition tag. Neither ever enters soft lock, and no carrier or library cap applies to them.