When a new customer joins, a Stripe customer record is created automatically behind the scenes — at first with no subscription or payment method attached, just a secure link between the customer's Newo account and their Stripe profile. This guide explains how the billing flow works for your customers, and what happens to their AI Employee when a payment fails.
Plans
Customers choose from three plans, all billed monthly — there are no annual plans:
Pay As You Go — $0/month, with 50 free units included one time, then $1.75 per unit.
AI Receptionist — $299/month, with 200 units included each month, then $1.50 per unit.
Enterprise — custom pricing for high-volume, multi-location organizations.
Starting out
A new customer starts with no subscription. The Billing page shows a Temporary account notice with a Select Subscription action, warning that the account will be suspended if no subscription is chosen.
On Pay As You Go, a customer can get going without a payment method — the account receives 50 free units to train and use the AI Employee, and a card is requested before the first billable unit. The 50 free units are granted once per account for the lifetime of that account, so a customer who cancels and resubscribes does not receive them again.
Activating a paid subscription
To move to a paid subscription, the customer opens Billing, clicks Manage on the Subscription card, chooses a plan, and completes checkout through Stripe. The payment details they enter become their default payment method.
Upgrading, downgrading, and cancelling
Customers manage their subscription from the Manage button on the Subscription card, which opens the Manage Subscription panel. There they can upgrade or downgrade their plan, or cancel with Cancel Active Subscription. Cancellation takes effect immediately — future billing stops and access is limited straight away.
What happens when a payment fails
A customer whose subscription or overage payment fails moves through a defined sequence rather than being cut off at once. Newo.ai retries the payment automatically throughout, and the Billing page shows a banner explaining the current state.
State | What the customer sees | What the AI Employee can do |
Active | No banner | Everything |
Limited | Agent limited. Your agent usage is limited until payment is received. | A reduced number of sessions per day |
Blocked | Agent blocked. Your agent has been blocked. | No calls, chat, or SMS, inbound or outbound. The phone number is still held |
Deleted | The AI Employee is removed | Nothing — the phone number is released |
The AI Employee is limited first, then blocked, and only removed if the payment is never resolved. The exact number of days at each stage and the daily allowance while limited are set by Newo.ai and can change.
Restoring service
Service is restored automatically once all three of these are true:
Every unpaid invoice has been paid.
A valid payment method is on file.
The latest billing status is Paid.
The customer's existing configuration is kept, and no manual intervention or support ticket is needed. The AI Employee returns to normal on its own.
Helping a customer who is limited or blocked
The fastest route back to service is for the customer to add or update their payment method — they can do this even while their AI Employee is blocked. Point them to Billing in their Portal, where the banner links straight to the payment method screen.
If a customer no longer wants the service at all, cancelling the subscription is a separate action from archiving the account. Both steps are needed to fully decommission an AI Employee: the customer cancels the subscription from their Billing page, and you set the customer's Stage to Archived in your Partner Portal.