"This feature requires the ... plan"

Summary#

Metric Vault has four distinct plan gates, and they produce four different messages. Two of them are about your plan tier, one is about the Free plan specifically, and one is about team seats. A fifth message looks similar but is not an upgrade problem at all. Reading the wording tells you which gate you hit and therefore what actually unlocks it.

Symptoms#

You tried to do something and got one of these back:

• This feature requires the <Tier> plan. Your account is on <Plan>. Upgrade to unlock it.
• This tool needs a paid plan. Free includes the 10 technical SEO tools; upgrade to Pro to unlock the rest.
• AI recommendations are available on the <Tier> plan and above. Your account is on <Plan>. Upgrade to turn any result into a step-by-step action plan.
• Team invites require the Pro plan or higher. Your account is on Starter.
• Team seat limit reached (<N> members on the <Plan> plan). Upgrade for more seats.
• Plan check temporarily unavailable, please retry.
• The recommendations panel shows Recommendations are a paid feature with a See plans button.

Diagnosis#

The plan ladder#

Every gate compares your plan against a minimum. The order is:

Free → Starter → Pro → Agency → Enterprise

A plan at or above the minimum passes. Anything below it gets one of the messages above. Starter is a real, purchasable plan even though it has no card on the public pricing page.

Which gate produced your message#

1. This feature requires the <Tier> plan. Your account is on <Plan>. Upgrade to unlock it.

This is the general feature gate. The <Tier> in the message is the minimum you need, and <Plan> is what you are on now. The features behind it are:

Upgrading to the named tier or higher removes the message.

2. This tool needs a paid plan. Free includes the 10 technical SEO tools; upgrade to Pro to unlock the rest.

This is the Free-plan gate. Free includes the ten technical SEO tools, which cost nothing and always will. Everything else costs at least one credit, and Free has no credit allowance, so any credit-priced tool is blocked. This message is not about running out of credits: it appears on your very first attempt. Any paid plan removes it. See What you get on Free.

3. AI recommendations are available on the <Tier> plan and above. Your account is on <Plan>. Upgrade to turn any result into a step-by-step action plan.

The Get Recommendations button on every result has its own minimum plan, separate from tool credits. The recommendations panel renders this as a gate card headed Recommendations are a paid feature with a See plans button. If instead it reads You've used your recommendations with an Upgrade for more button, you are on a qualifying plan but have spent the monthly allowance, which is a different problem. See Get Recommendations.

4. The team messages

Team invites require the Pro plan or higher. Your account is on Starter. means your plan includes no invitable seats. Starter and Free both have none.

Team seat limit reached (<N> members on the <Plan> plan). Upgrade for more seats. means you have filled the seats you have. Pending invitations occupy a seat, so an invitation nobody accepted still counts. Removing a pending invitation frees the seat. See Seats and plan limits.

5. Plan check temporarily unavailable, please retry.

This is not an upgrade problem. Your plan could not be read at that moment, so the request was refused rather than allowed through unverified. Wait a minute and try again. The team equivalent is Could not verify your team seat limit, please retry. Both are covered in 503 and service-unavailable errors.

It is not a plan gate at all#

Two other messages are easy to confuse with an upgrade gate:

• Anything ending Upgrade to continue using premium reports now. is a spent monthly allowance, not a plan gate. See I ran out of credits.
• This account is suspended. Please contact support. means the account is suspended. Upgrading will not clear it. See Contacting support.

You already upgraded and the message is still there#

Your plan is read when the app asks for your usage, which happens on page load, on sign-in, and after a successful premium run. A tab that was open before you paid will keep showing the old plan and can keep producing the old gate message. Reload first. If a reload does not fix it, work through My plan did not update after paying.

Resolution#

1. Read which tier the message names. That is the minimum you need, and the message also tells you what you are on now.
2. Reload the page if you upgraded recently. This is the fix in a surprising share of cases.
3. Confirm your current plan. The credit pill in the top bar carries your plan badge, and Account → Account Settings shows the plan, its price and the feature list. See Tracking your usage.
4. Upgrade if you need the feature. Use Upgrade to <Tier> on Account → Account Settings. It opens a summary and then a secure Stripe checkout. The change applies immediately once the plan is written. See Upgrading and downgrading.
5. For a seat limit, free a seat first. Remove a member or a pending invitation before buying a larger plan, in case you do not need one. See Removing a member.
6. For Plan check temporarily unavailable, please retry., just retry. If it persists beyond a few minutes, report it. See Contacting support.
7. If you are on the plan the message asks for, send us the exact message, your account email and what you were doing. That combination is enough to resolve it. See Contacting support.

Prevention#

• Check the plan before you build a process on a feature. Scheduled reports, white-label branding and API access are the three features with hard tier minimums. Plan capability matrix lists what each plan includes.
• Count pending invitations against your seats. They occupy a seat until they are accepted or removed.
• Do the plan change once, from inside the app. Starting the upgrade from Account → Account Settings uses the email you sign in with, which avoids the mismatch described in My plan did not update after paying.
• Reload after any plan change so every open tab reads the new plan.
• On Free, plan around the ten technical SEO tools. They are complete, free forever, and never metered. Everything beyond them needs a paid plan.