Plans & What's Included
Plans & What’s Included
Section titled “Plans & What’s Included”SIPSTACK products are sold as separate subscriptions that combine on one account. This page explains what each product and tier includes and how plans behave — for current prices, visit sipstack.com/pricing. (Docs never quote prices; the pricing page is always the source of truth for numbers.)
| Product | Billing model | Tiers |
|---|---|---|
| Nova PBX | Per seat, monthly or annual prepay | Core · Pro · Ultra |
| Flare SMS | Flat per account, monthly or annual prepay | Core · Pro · Ultra (+ Enterprise via sales) |
| Aura AI | Not a subscription — auto-included with any paid Nova or Flare plan; usage metered via Aura Credits | Follows your Nova/Flare tier |
Phone numbers (local, toll-free, vanity), hardware, and professional services are add-ons billed alongside your subscriptions.
Every account is billed in a single billing currency — CAD for Canadian accounts, USD for US accounts — set when the account is created.
Nova PBX
Section titled “Nova PBX”Nova PBX is the cloud phone system: extensions, call routing, IVR, voicemail, queues, and device provisioning. It is priced per seat, and most plan limits scale automatically with your seat count — a 30-seat account gets more ring groups, queues, and IVR menus than a 5-seat account on the same tier.
All Nova tiers include call recording, voicemail transcription, inbound fax (faxes received on any fax-enabled number arrive as PDFs in the Fax inbox in Switchboard and the Pulse mobile app), zero-touch device provisioning, the Switchboard portal, and SARA (the in-app AI assistant).
What changes between tiers:
| Capability | Core | Pro | Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMS / MMS from your Nova numbers | — | ✅ | ✅ |
| Outbound fax (send a PDF from a fax-enabled number, via Switchboard or Pulse) | — | ✅ | ✅ |
| Skills-based routing | — | ✅ | ✅ |
| Webhooks | — | ✅ | ✅ |
| API access | — | ✅ | ✅ |
| CRM integrations | — | — | ✅ |
| Device registrations per seat | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Audit log retention | 90 days | 180 days | 360 days |
Stored media (call recordings and voicemail) is governed by retention windows rather than a storage meter: each tier keeps recordings and voicemail for a defined period — 30 days on Core, longer on Pro and Ultra — after which they are deleted automatically. Download anything you need to keep long-term before it ages out; current windows per tier are on the pricing page.
Every Nova seat also carries monthly included usage allowances — outbound PSTN calling minutes, person-to-person SMS (outbound to the US, outbound to Canada, and inbound), and (on Pro and Ultra) Aura voice-agent minutes — that scale with the tier. SMS allowances are pooled: each seat adds its allowance to one pool shared across your account. See Usage & Limits for how the meters work, and the pricing page for the current allowance quantities.
Flare SMS
Section titled “Flare SMS”Flare SMS is the two-way messaging and campaign platform. Plans are flat-priced per account and differ in monthly included messages, phone numbers, team users, contact capacity, daily send limits, throughput, and AI message generations.
| Capability | Core | Pro | Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two-way SMS/MMS | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Included outbound messages / month³ | 2,500 | 15,000 | 50,000 |
| Send throughput (platform pacing)¹ | 1 msg/sec | 2 msg/sec | 5 msg/sec |
| Daily send limit (segments per UTC day) | 2,500 | 15,000 | 50,000 |
| Contacts / contact lists | 50,000 / 100 | 500,000 / 5,000 | Unlimited / Unlimited |
| Phone numbers / team users | 1 / 3 | 3 / 10 | 10 / 50 |
| Scheduled campaigns | — | ✅ | ✅ |
| AI message generation | — | ✅ | ✅ |
| Auto-responder rules | 1 | 5 | 10 |
| Call forwarding minutes / month (external numbers)² | 100 | 500 | 2,000 |
| API access & webhooks | — | ✅ | ✅ |
¹ Platform send pacing, “up to”, per message segment. Your actual speed is the lower of this and the carrier limit for the number you send from. US 10DLC numbers are also bounded by your 10DLC campaign’s carrier-assigned throughput (set by TCR vetting, not by your Flare tier) — see 10DLC Brands & Campaigns. Canadian local numbers are paced by carriers at just under 1 msg/sec, best-effort, on every tier; use a toll-free number to send faster to Canada. See Sending Speeds for messages per hour by plan and number type.
² Call forwarding to external US and Canadian numbers draws from a defined per-tier monthly minute allowance (never unlimited). Minutes beyond the allowance are billed at US$0.025 (C$0.035) per minute on every tier. That rate covers both legs of a forwarded call: the call coming in to your number and the call going out to the forwarding destination. Forwarding to your own Nova PBX extensions doesn’t count against the allowance.
³ Messages are counted in segments (a long message, or one with an emoji, uses several), and an MMS counts as 4. Inbound messages are not free: they have their own included allowance, equal to the outbound one, and beyond it bill at the same per-segment rate as outbound.
Per-segment overage rates are tier-specific — see sipstack.com/pricing for the full matrix. Overage needs an active, paid subscription with a valid payment method on file. For pools, send limits, and what happens at each limit, see SMS Usage, Limits & Billing.
Enterprise: every Flare plan has defined caps so your bill is predictable. High-volume senders can negotiate per-customer overrides (message allowance, throughput, users, SLA) — contact sales.
Aura AI
Section titled “Aura AI”Aura AI is auto-included with any paid Nova or Flare plan — there is no separate Aura subscription to buy. Which AI features your plan unlocks (transcription, text-to-speech, sentiment, summaries, voice agents, knowledge-base/RAG) is gated by your Nova or Flare tier; current per-tier inclusions are on the pricing page.
Metered Aura usage draws from a monthly Aura Credits allowance — pooled across your tenant — and then a separate prepaid balance, and is never billed as invoice overage. For the full credit model — allowance vs. prepaid, what’s free, and what happens when credits run out — see How Aura AI Usage & Credits Work.
Free Trials
Section titled “Free Trials”Selected plans offer a 14-day free trial — currently Nova Pro and select Flare plans (the signup flow and the pricing page always show which plans are trial-eligible). Trial mechanics:
- A card is required to start the trial, but you pay $0 today. The card is vaulted securely and nothing is charged during the 14 days.
- The trial gives full access to the plan’s features. During a trial, the Aura credit pool is capped at a flat trial allowance regardless of seat count — the full per-seat pool unlocks when the trial converts.
- You’ll get reminder emails about 3 days and 1 day before the trial ends. Each one offers three choices: keep the plan (do nothing — it converts automatically), downgrade to the tier below, or cancel.
- Nothing is billed during a trial, including SMS. A Flare SMS trial can send 100 messages in total (at most 50 in any 10 minutes); a Nova PBX trial gets the plan’s full SMS pool. Sending stops when a trial limit is reached — click Activate now on the trial banner to start your paid plan early. See SMS Usage, Limits & Billing.
- If you downgrade mid-trial, the original trial end date is kept and you convert at the lower tier.
- At day 14, the subscription converts to paid and the first invoice is charged to your card. If no valid card is on file, the subscription expires instead — a soft lockout that preserves your configuration so you can pick up where you left off.
See Subscription Lifecycle for the full state model.
Monthly vs. Annual
Section titled “Monthly vs. Annual”All plans bill monthly by default. Annual prepay is available at a tier-specific discount (entry tiers carry the largest discount) — current percentages are on the pricing page. Annual terms are paid in full upfront; at the end of the prepaid term you remain month-to-month unless you renew or have a sales-signed contract.
Subscribing, Upgrading & Downgrading
Section titled “Subscribing, Upgrading & Downgrading”Core, Pro, and Ultra are self-serve in Switchboard (Enterprise is arranged through sales):
- Add a product — on Account → Subscriptions, use Add Nova PBX or Add Flare SMS (shown only for a product you don’t have yet). Compare tiers on this page or at sipstack.com/pricing.
- Change tier or seats — use Change tier on the subscription’s card on the Subscriptions page. Upgrades apply immediately with proration; downgrades take effect at the next renewal.
- Cancel — see Subscription Lifecycle.
Every plan includes SARA, SIPSTACK’s AI assistant — see How Support Works for what’s included in support and when a channel partner is the better fit.