Plans, fees, and the AI photo allowance

Broidry is free until you make a sale, and the free plan is the whole product, not a demo. Here is exactly how the money works.

The plans

Free includes the full order, quote, mockup, shop-page, and production toolkit, with a 2 percent fee on payments that run through Broidry and up to 15 orders a month. That 15-order limit does not apply in any month where at least one customer pays you by card on your Broidry shop page. Take one card payment this month and the limit is off for the month; it comes back next month unless a customer pays by card again. You turn card payments on from your Money page, and the money goes to your own bank account. If your customers pay you in cash, by Venmo, or over text and you would rather keep it that way, the Maker plan lifts the limit instead. The marketing engine, your own domain, a second seat, AI photos, and removing Broidry's branding come with the paid plans.

Maker is 19 dollars a month: unlimited orders however you take payment, all Broidry branding removed, a 1.5 percent fee, 50 AI photos a month, and the full gift registry.

Gift registries are on every plan, Free included: a customer picks pieces, shares one link, and every gift comes to you as a normal order. The full gift registry comes with Maker and every plan above it. It adds a cover photo and a greeting, a countdown to the event, Most wanted tags, an order-by date, a link for gifts bought somewhere else, a thank-you list, a QR code, and printable cards for invitations.

Shop is 39 dollars a month: a 1.5 percent fee, the marketing engine, your own domain, one extra seat, and 150 AI photos a month.

Atelier is 79 dollars a month: everything in Shop, a 1.5 percent fee, 300 AI photos a month, production scheduling for more than one machine, and first access to every new feature.

Any paid plan can also be billed yearly, and a year costs the same as ten months, so two months are free.

Sales you took somewhere else

Broidry's fee only ever comes out of a card payment your customer makes on one of your Broidry pages: your shop page, a quote link, a group order, or a drop. That is the only kind of payment it can be taken from, because the fee is deducted from the card charge itself as it goes through. Which company handles the card makes no difference. A payment through Stripe and a payment through your own Square account are both payments through Broidry, and both carry the same fee your plan shows.

A sale you took somewhere else costs you no Broidry fee at all, even though the order shows on your board as paid. That means a sale rung up on your Square reader at a market, a sale on your Square online store, an Etsy sale, cash at your table, or a Venmo transfer. Those orders reach the board two ways: a connected Square or Etsy account copies them over by itself, or you record the payment on the order yourself. Either way the money never came through Broidry, so there is nothing for Broidry to take. Square and Etsy still charge you their own processing fee on that sale, and that fee is the only one on it.

So Square sits on both sides of this rule, and where your buyer paid is what decides it. A card your buyer typed into one of your Broidry pages carries the fee. A sale you rang up on Square yourself does not. The guide called Square sales land on your board automatically covers both halves.

You can check any single order. Open it and read the line under Payments: a payment that ran through Broidry says card, and one that did not names where you took it instead — Square, Etsy, Cash, whatever you typed. Only a card line can carry a Broidry fee.

The founding shops

The first fifty shops to open on Broidry are the founding group. If you are one of them, three things are true and they stay true: you get your first two months free, the Shop plan costs you 19 dollars a month instead of 39 for as long as you keep it, and you carry a numbered Founding Shop badge you can put on your own page and posts.

The founding rate is only on the Shop plan, because Maker already costs 19 dollars and Atelier stays at its normal price. The founding rate itself never expires or converts to a higher rate later. If you hold a founding badge, the price you see on your Billing page is already the founding price, so you are never quoted a number you will not be charged.

The free months are the one part that ends, and Broidry makes sure the end is never a surprise. Your Today page shows a countdown card for the last thirty days, and the day it happens you get one email saying exactly what changed and what did not. Your founding price stays either way. Nothing is deleted: your shop keeps running, and if you were using your own domain, it sends buyers to your broidry.com page for fourteen days instead of showing an error, so no link you have handed out ever breaks while you decide on a plan.

The countdown card links to a page called Your founding window, at broidry.com/dashboard/plan. It shows what your shop has already run through Broidry, what keeps working on the Free plan and what stops, and a finder that checks which web addresses are free to buy for your shop name right now. The button at the bottom starts the Shop plan at your founding price. The page is only there for founding shops whose free months are ending or have ended; everyone else sees their plan on the Billing page.

The AI photo allowance

Photo-real mockups and listing photos draw from one shared monthly pool. The Billing page shows the pool, how much you have used, and the date it resets, which is the first of each month in your shop's own time zone.

If a picture comes out looking artificial and you report it, the credit goes back to your pool. Reports are capped at ten a month, which is high enough that honest reporting never runs out and low enough that the refund cannot be used as a way to make free pictures.

If your card gets declined

Cards expire, banks reissue numbers, and a renewal fails. When that happens Broidry tells you twice: an email that says your card was declined, and a red banner across the top of every page in your dashboard until it is sorted out.

Nothing about your shop changes while the card is being fixed. Your orders, your listings, your shop page, and every feature on your plan all keep working exactly as they did, and none of your customers can see any of it.

To fix it, open your Billing page and click Update your card. That opens your card settings, and the new card is charged right away for what is owed. Your bank keeps retrying the old card for about three weeks in the meantime.

If it never goes through, your shop moves to the Free plan on its own. Nothing is deleted — you keep every order, listing, design, and customer — and you can start the paid plan again from the same Billing page whenever you want.

Why is an order frozen, and how do I unfreeze it?

The free plan covers 15 orders a month. Your 16th real order in a month, in a month where no customer has paid you by card through Broidry, is frozen. A frozen order is still yours: you can open it, edit its details, message the customer, and cancel it. Your buyer can still pay for it by card, and that payment unfreezes your whole shop for the month. What a frozen order cannot do is move forward under your own hand. You cannot change its status or its stage, add a tracking number, mark it fulfilled somewhere else, make or send a mockup for it, send a quote or a balance reminder, print its work sheet, open it at the machine, put it on the schedule, or give it a shipping label. Orders from earlier months are never frozen, and neither are the first 15 of the month.

The free way to unfreeze everything is one card payment through Broidry. As soon as any customer pays you by card on your Broidry shop page this month, every frozen order in your shop unfreezes for the rest of the month. You turn card payments on from your Money page. The other way is the Maker plan at 19 dollars a month, which lifts the limit every month no matter how your customers pay.

Orders that come in from Etsy or Square count toward the 15 like any other order, and they freeze the same way. Etsy and Square can still mark those orders paid and done on your board, because that is Broidry reflecting what happened on Etsy, not work Broidry is doing for you.

The count starts over on the 1st of every month. Your Billing page shows the number as it climbs, so you can see it coming.

If you cancel, or your plan ends

You can cancel any paid plan from your Billing page: click Manage or cancel, and Stripe's page lets you end the plan at the close of the month or year you already paid for. The moment you do, Broidry emails you the exact date your plan ends, and the same date shows on your Billing page until then. You keep everything on the plan until that day and you are not charged again.

If you change your mind before the date, click Manage or cancel again and choose Renew plan. The cancellation is undone on the spot.

On the day a paid plan ends, for any reason, your shop moves to the Free plan and you get one email that lists exactly what changed — for example that the Powered by Broidry mark is back on your emails, or that a second seat is locked. Nothing is ever deleted. Every order, listing, design, customer, and message stays in your shop, and your shop page stays live. To go back to the plan, open your Billing page and click Upgrade under it.

Yearly plans: a heads-up before the renewal

If you pay yearly, Broidry emails you one week before the renewal date to say the card on file is about to be charged for another year. If everything is fine as it is, there is nothing to do. If you want to change the card, switch to monthly, or change plans first, open your Billing page and click Manage or cancel. Monthly plans renew on the same day each month and do not get this reminder.

If Stripe switches off your card payments

Once in a while Stripe stops taking card payments for a shop until it gets one more piece of information, most often a photo ID or a bank detail. When that happens to you, Broidry emails you the moment it does and puts a red banner across the top of your dashboard. Until it is fixed, your customers cannot pay you by card on your shop page or order links; everything else about your shop is unchanged, and money already on its way to your bank still arrives.

To see what Stripe wants, open your Money page and click Finish setup. Stripe opens in a new tab and shows you exactly what it needs. When it is satisfied, card payments come back on by themselves and the banner goes away.

Turning card payments off yourself

You can stop taking card payments whenever you want, and you do not have to finish setting Stripe up first. Open your Money page and find the Stripe card. Its top line reads "Card payments are on" once Stripe is working, and "Take card payments from your customers" if you started the setup and never finished it. Either way, a line lower down on that same card asks "Want to stop taking cards?", and the "Turn off card payments" link is on that line. Broidry asks you to confirm, then unlinks your Stripe account from your shop.

Right away, buyers stop seeing the "Pay by card" button on your shop page and order links. They can still pay the other ways you list under "How buyers pay" on your Pricing page, like Venmo, PayPal, or a check. A group order keeps working too: each person saves their spot, is shown those same ways to pay you, and you mark their spot paid when the money arrives. Live drops stop taking money, because those run on card payments. Money already on its way from Stripe still reaches your bank, and your Stripe account stays yours. To take cards again later, click "Set up" on the same card and Stripe links the same account back.

If your card payments run through Square, the Square card on your Money page has a "Disconnect Square" link. Orders already on your board stay exactly as they are, and your Square sales stop coming into Broidry until you connect it again.

Change the email address you sign in with

The address you signed up with is the one you sign in with, and it is also where every order email goes. You can change it yourself, without asking us. Open your Security page and find the card called "Your email address". Type the address you want under "New email address", type your passphrase under "Your passphrase", and click "Send me the link".

Broidry sends that link to the new address rather than the old one, so an address with a typo in it can never lock you out. Until somebody opens the link from the new inbox, the card says "Waiting on" followed by the address, you keep signing in with your old one, and nothing is locked. There is a "Cancel this change" link on the same card if you change your mind. The link works once.

If someone referred you

If you opened your shop through another embroiderer's referral link, your first ninety days are better than the standard free plan: you can take 30 orders a month instead of 15, and the fee on card payments is capped at 1 percent instead of 2. This is automatic — there is nothing to claim. If the numbers on your Billing page do not match the free-plan numbers above, this is usually why.

You can also refer other embroiderers yourself. The guide called Refer other shops and earn a share explains how that side works.