Chapter 06: Plans, Trials, and Entitlements

Billing is where 7DEA turns product interest into commercial truth. It is also the page that explains many locked or unlocked behaviors elsewhere in the app. Users who treat billing as a separate administrative afterthought often struggle later because they misread Aegis behavior, export locks, or plan-lens availability. In reality, billing is one of the clearest interpretation surfaces in the whole product.

Plan Tiers and Billing Surface

Use /billing as the source of truth for current plan state, trial countdown language, plan comparison, upgrade calls to action, and the exact limitations that still apply during trial. The page is designed to be explicit. Read it closely before making inferences from older sessions or from what you expected the plan to include.

This matters because commercial state in 7DEA is intentionally precise. A trial account is not the same as a paid account. A paid account with cancellation scheduled is not the same as a never-subscribed explorer. A signed-in account without an active commercial state is not the same as an active paid member. The billing page is where those distinctions become easiest to see.

Examples of public billing language you may see:
Choose a plan to generate deliverables.
Trial: Day X of 7
Trial will auto-convert after day 7 unless you cancel before trial end.
Upgrade to unlock downloads, sharing, and exports.
Not eligible (already paid or trial used)

Plan Overview

7DEA positions its plans around workflow scope rather than around vague feature inflation. The practical questions are how many people need to work in the environment, which lenses need to be operationally available, and which export or sharing behaviors the team expects to use. The current billing page is the authoritative source for live pricing, packaging, and seat or usage posture, so use the public plan cards as the final commercial reference.

The most stable public interpretation is this: entry plans support early or smaller-team workflow validation, mid-tier plans support recurring production use with broader lens access, and enterprise planning exists for organizations that need larger seat scope, deeper operational confidence, or procurement-oriented support. Those categories matter more than memorizing a price point that may change over time.

Starting a Trial Safely

The trial exists so users can test live guidance and the core workflow in a real commercial state without immediately committing to a paid plan. It is not meant to simulate every paid export or sharing behavior. The platform says this directly, which is a sign of commercial maturity. Trial is for real evaluation, not for pretending all paid distribution features are already open.

In current production use, trial activation involves sign-in and payment-method verification before the trial is actually started. That design supports a cleaner transition between trial and paid continuation. Once the trial is active, the billing page should show the trial day counter and related copy. Treat that visible state as authoritative.

1. Sign in with email OTP so the billing surface can associate the action with your account.
2. Review the trial limitations carefully before activation.
3. Complete the payment-method verification step shown on the billing surface.
4. Start the trial and then confirm the visible state change on the billing page or dashboard.
5. Return to Aegis or the dashboard and confirm live guidance or plan-aware behavior before assuming the change has propagated.

How to Evaluate the Trial Well

The strongest trial sessions are specific. Instead of trying to touch every page, decide what question the product must answer before you would consider paying for it. Perhaps you need to know whether your team can move from onboarding to a credible first deliverable in one working session. Perhaps you need to know whether the lens model feels proportionate to your deployment. Perhaps you need to know whether Aegis can guide a non-expert operator without collapsing into generic advice.

Once you know that question, the trial becomes much more valuable. You can move through billing, dashboard, Aegis, creation, and artifact review with a standard of evidence instead of curiosity alone. That is also the fairest way to judge a commercial product. You are testing whether it solves a meaningful problem, not whether it can entertain you with surface breadth.

What Each Plan Unlocks

The correct way to read plan differences is by workflow outcome. Ask: can I use live Aegis? Can I create the lens-backed deliverables I need? Can I download the export I care about? Can I share the output with the people who need it? Can my team work in the plan posture that fits our organization? Those are better questions than asking whether a plan has “more features” in the abstract.

In practice, the trial opens the evaluation path and live guidance. Paid plans extend that into durable production use with more lens reach and distribution capabilities. The billing page itself explains the current live differences, so if your team is comparing plans, keep the comparison anchored to the billing surface and the lens catalog rather than to memory or screenshots.

Reading Plan Value Without Guesswork

One of the easiest mistakes in software buying is to compare plans by raw quantity rather than by operating fit. A better method is to ask which plan supports the exact kinds of outcomes your organization expects to repeat. If you need occasional internal evaluation, you should read the pricing surface differently than a team that expects repeatable deliverables, controlled sharing, and multi-person review. The same public plan cards can serve both readers, but only if they are read in terms of workflow rather than status.

This is also why it is useful to keep the lens catalog nearby while reading the billing page. Commercial value in 7DEA is not only about abstract access. It is about which evaluative postures, outputs, and distribution behaviors become practical for the team you are trying to support.

Understanding Gated Controls

Gating in 7DEA is designed to be legible. A control that is unavailable should tell you why it is unavailable. The explanation might point to plan entitlement, trial limitation, deliverable state, or a required re-auth step. The mistake to avoid is treating all locks as equivalent. They are not. The right fix depends on the kind of gate.

• A plan gate means the current commercial tier does not unlock the action.
• A trial gate means the action is intentionally reserved until a paid state is active.
• A state gate means the deliverable is not yet Final or otherwise not ready.
• A security gate means re-auth or another stronger confirmation is still missing.

The most productive response to a gate is to read the explanation text and then move to the surface that owns the truth for that category. Billing owns commercial truth. Deliverables owns output readiness. Account owns sensitive-action verification. Once you learn this pattern, locked controls become much easier to interpret.

Explorer, Trial, and Paid Commercial Behavior

Explorer accounts can read the docs, browse the catalog, and understand the product. They do not use live paid Aegis guidance. Trial accounts can use live Aegis and core product flows while still seeing selected export and sharing limits. Paid accounts unlock the broader capability set defined by the live plan cards. These differences are deliberate because they preserve commercial coherence and make the upgrade decision understandable.

Renewals, Cancellation, and Scheduled Change

Billing state is not only about activation. Renewal and cancellation language also matters. If the page says cancellation is scheduled or that a trial will auto-convert unless canceled before the end date, take that wording seriously. It tells you what the system expects to happen next from a billing perspective. This is much more useful than relying on memory of what you clicked earlier.

Cancellation scheduled does not necessarily mean instant access loss. The visible wording normally explains whether access continues until the current period ends. Read that language carefully. Users often create unnecessary anxiety by assuming the harshest interpretation instead of the stated one.

Upgrades, Downgrades, and Commercial Transitions

Commercial transitions deserve a little calm. An upgrade is not just a payment event; it is a change in what the account can responsibly do next. A downgrade or scheduled cancellation is not just a loss event; it is a reminder to confirm how distribution, export, or future team workflow will be affected. Users make better decisions when they read plan transitions as workflow transitions rather than as purely financial states.

That framing is particularly helpful for teams. If a team lead is changing plan posture, they should also think about what that means for the people consuming deliverables, sharing artifacts, or relying on specific export paths. The billing surface tells the truth about entitlement, but the organization still has to translate that truth into operating choices.

Choosing the Right Commercial Path

For evaluators, the usual choice is between staying in explorer mode long enough to clarify needs or starting the trial to test live guidance and the first deliverable workflow. For teams already convinced of fit, the choice is usually between the paid tiers that best match seat count, lens needs, and export posture. The correct commercial path is the one that matches the work you actually need to do next, not the one that merely sounds most comprehensive.

When Billing Explains Product Behavior Elsewhere

One of the most important habits in 7DEA is checking billing when another route feels surprising. If Aegis is inviting you to activate access, if PDF download is locked, if share controls remain unavailable, or if lens execution seems narrower than expected, billing is often the page that explains why. Commercial state is not a side variable. It is one of the governing inputs of the product.

Verifying payment method for trial

Trial activation is intentionally more serious than casual sign-in. The current product requires a verified payment method before the trial actually begins. Publicly, the important thing is not the implementation detail. It is the user understanding that trial is a real commercial state with a real transition into paid continuation if it is not canceled before the stated horizon. That is why the billing page explains trial timing, conversion language, and limitations in one place.

Checkout success and activation

After a paid checkout, the product should move from payment success into visible billing-state confirmation. The right interpretation of the success flow is not simply that a payment happened. It is that the account’s runtime posture changed. Users should therefore return to billing or dashboard and confirm the visible plan state before assuming that Aegis, exports, or sharing will behave differently.

When Commercial State Should Trigger a Support Question

Most billing surprises are explainable by reading the page carefully. A smaller class of surprises deserve support. Escalate when the visible plan state and the observed product behavior truly disagree, when trial activation appears to succeed but the billing surface does not move, when paid activation is visible on the checkout path but not on the account afterward, or when cancellation wording appears inconsistent across routes. In each case, the best report starts with the billing page because that page owns the truth.