Failed payments

Summary#

If a subscription charge fails, Metric Vault does not cut you off. Your account keeps its full plan for the whole time the payment provider is retrying the charge. Access ends only if those retries are exhausted and the subscription reaches a terminal state, at which point the account drops to Free. The fix is always the same: open the billing portal and update the payment method.

Symptoms#

Any of these can be the first sign:

• Your bank or card app shows a declined or reversed charge from Metric Vault.
• You receive notice of a failed payment from Stripe, our payment processor, at the billing email address on the subscription.
• Your plan badge suddenly reads FREE and the credit indicator shows a zero quota.
• A premium report is refused with This tool needs a paid plan. Free includes the 10 technical SEO tools; upgrade to Pro to unlock the rest.
• A feature that used to work now says This feature requires the Pro plan. Your account is on Free. Upgrade to unlock it.

Diagnosis#

1. Check what plan the platform thinks you are on.

Go to Dashboard → user menu → Account. The Plan tile and the credit indicator in the header show the plan currently applied to your account. If it still shows your paid plan, the subscription has not reached a terminal state and you have not lost anything yet.

2. Open the billing portal.

On the Account screen, in the Subscription card, click Manage Billing. The portal shows the subscription, its payment method, and the invoice history including any unpaid invoice.

If instead you see this message, the subscription has already ended or was never created under this email address:

You are not on a paid subscription yet, so there is no billing to manage.

Pick a plan with the Upgrade button and your invoices, payment method and cancellation options will appear here.

3. Confirm you are signed in with the right email address.

Your plan is held against the email address on your Metric Vault account. A subscription bought under a different address will not appear against it, and that looks identical to a failed payment from the inside. Check the email shown on the Account screen against the one on the invoice.

4. Work out which state you are in.

The full status table is in Subscription states.

Resolution#

If you still have access — retries are in progress

1. Go to Dashboard → user menu → Account.
2. In the Subscription card, click Manage Billing.
3. In the portal, update the payment method to a working card.
4. The provider retries the outstanding invoice on its own schedule. When the charge succeeds, the subscription returns to normal with nothing further to do — your plan never changed, so nothing needs restoring.

Do not wait for the retry window to close. Once the subscription reaches a terminal state, restoring access means subscribing again rather than fixing a card.

If access has already ended

1. Go to Dashboard → user menu → Account.
2. Click the Upgrade button in the Subscription card and confirm at Continue to secure checkout, or pick the plan you want on the pricing page.
3. Complete checkout with a working card. Your plan is restored as soon as the checkout completes, normally within seconds.

Two things to expect when you resubscribe:

• The 14-day free trial is not offered again. It is available to first-time customers only, so a returning customer is charged at checkout even though the confirmation dialog mentions a trial. See The 14-day free trial.
• Nothing was deleted. Your saved results, monitored competitors, connected integrations and team memberships are untouched by a lapse in the subscription. The plan-gated features resume.

If the payment keeps failing

Card declines are decided by your bank, not by Metric Vault, and the portal will not tell you why. Common causes are an expired card, a billing address mismatch, an issuer block on international or recurring charges, and insufficient funds on a debit card. Ask your bank to authorise the charge, or use a different card.

If you cannot resolve it, contact support at support@metricvaultai.com with the email address on the account and the approximate date of the failed charge. See Contacting support.

Prevention#

• Keep the card current. Card expiry is the most common cause of a failed renewal. Update it in the portal before the expiry month.
• Use the portal to keep the billing email right. The portal is where the billing email, address and tax ID are set, and it is that address the payment provider writes to. See Managing billing in the customer portal.
• Know your renewal date. Support can tell you the exact renewal date from the subscription record if you need it.
• Prefer a card that will not be reissued mid-term for annual plans, or arrange invoicing. Annual invoicing is available on custom agreements; see Enterprise and custom agreements.
• On a team, put a shared billing address on the subscription rather than one person's inbox, so a failed-payment notice does not sit unread while someone is on leave.