Payments, billing & Stripe
Two separate relationships run on Stripe: you paying BLAM8 for your subscription, and your customers paying you for the work. Here is how each one works, what Stripe sees, what we keep, and what never touches our systems. The legal detail is in the Terms of Service; Stripe is listed as a sub-processor in the Privacy Policy.
They use different Stripe accounts, different webhooks and different signing secrets. Money from one can never end up in the other.
Your monthly subscription, on BLAM8's own Stripe account. A Stripe-hosted checkout takes the card; Stripe's customer portal is where you change plan, update the card or cancel. BLAM8 never sees the card.
How the subscription works ↓Optional. Connect your own Stripe account and every invoice goes out with a Pay Now link. Your customer pays on a Stripe page in your business's name, the money lands in your Stripe, and BLAM8 takes no cut.
How getting paid works ↓From the free trial to cancelling, in the order it happens.
Every account starts with a 14-day trial of the full product, the Concierge included, capped at 100 handled emails, whichever runs out first. It asks for no card, and no Stripe customer record exists until you choose a plan. If the trial ends before you decide, everything you set up is kept and waits.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | £39 per month | 300 emails/month, 1 mailbox |
| Pro | £99 per month | 750 emails/month, 1 mailbox |
| Pro + Concierge | £249 per month | 750 emails/month, 1 mailbox |
| Extra mailbox | £39 per mailbox / month | Each additional mailbox, adding 300 emails/month |
| Email top-up | £39 one-off | 300 prepaid emails, used only once your plan's allowance runs out, never expire |
All prices in GBP. Any VAT that applies is shown on Stripe's checkout page before you confirm and on every Stripe invoice. No per-seat pricing.
Choosing a plan sends you to a checkout page hosted by Stripe. You enter the card there, it is kept there, and BLAM8's servers never handle it. The page shows the exact total before you confirm and accepts promotion codes. One trial clock: upgrading during the trial keeps the trial's original end date and the card is charged when it ends. If the trial has already finished, billing starts the day you subscribe.
Stripe sends BLAM8 a signed message for every billing event: checkout completed, subscription created, updated or cancelled, invoice paid or failed. BLAM8 checks the signature, ignores duplicates, and mirrors the subscription's current state onto your account. That state is what unlocks the plan's features, so upgrading or downgrading is self-serve with no operator step.
Plans & billing inside BLAM8 opens Stripe's customer portal: switch plan, update the card, download past invoices and receipts, or cancel. Plans are monthly with no annual lock-in. Cancelling stops the next renewal and you keep access until the end of the period you have paid for. Fees already paid are not refunded except where the law requires it, as the Terms set out.
Connecting a mailbox beyond your plan's allowance adds one extra-mailbox line to your Stripe subscription, pro-rated from that day; disconnecting it removes the line. Before you connect another mailbox, BLAM8 shows the new monthly figure and asks you to confirm. The quantity on Stripe is rechecked against your live mailboxes on every billing event, so the bill and the product can never disagree.
Stripe retries the card on its own schedule and emails you each time. Your subscription reads past due in BLAM8 until the payment clears; updating the card in the customer portal settles it. Nothing you have built, your inbox, drafts, diary, CRM or knowledge, is deleted because a card declined.
Stripe Connect, in plain terms: your Stripe account, your money, BLAM8 just builds the payment page.
From Settings › Getting paid, Connect your Stripe account sends you to Stripe's own consent screen. No Stripe account yet? Stripe offers to create one in the same flow. When you come back, BLAM8 stores one thing: your connected account's identifier. It never holds your Stripe login or your API keys, and it uses the connection for one purpose, creating the payment page for each invoice. It never moves money out of your account.
The link opens the invoice on a page BLAM8 hosts: your business name, the lines, the total, the due date. Pay now opens a Stripe checkout on your account, labelled with your business and the invoice number, for the outstanding balance. It accepts cards and any wallets your Stripe account has enabled, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, and Stripe handles 3-D Secure. Bacs Direct Debit and Pay by Bank can join them from an invoice size you choose, because they cost less than a card on a big invoice. The link never expires; each click starts a fresh session. A customer with several unpaid invoices can settle them all in one payment from the same page. A quote accepted with a deposit raises the deposit invoice with the same link.
Payments settle into your own Stripe balance and pay out to your bank on the schedule you set in Stripe. BLAM8 adds no application fee, commission or mark-up. Stripe's standard processing fees on your account apply, exactly as they would for any other Stripe payment you take. Refunds, if you ever need one, are issued from your own Stripe dashboard.
Stripe notifies BLAM8 the moment a payment succeeds, over its own signed and de-duplicated webhook. The invoice marks itself paid, you get a push notification, the payment lands on the customer's CRM timeline, and if the invoice belongs to a deal the assistant offers to move it to Won. A failed payment notifies you too, with the reason Stripe gave, and so does a dispute, with a link to answer it in Stripe. Refunds work in both directions: issue one from BLAM8, full or partial with a reason, or from your Stripe dashboard, and either way it lands on the invoice and the customer's timeline. Payment-confirmation emails from Stripe and similar services are recognised on arrival and never drafted a reply.
Add your sort code and account number in Settings › Getting paid and every invoice, and the same invoice page, carries them with the invoice number as the payment reference. You mark the invoice paid when the money arrives; the same notifications and CRM timeline follow. Overdue chasing at 7, 14 and 30 days works the same either way.
The Card payments page shows your available balance, what is on its way, your next payout and its date, what you took today, and the last 30 days with Stripe's fee on every payment and the net that reaches you. Each payment sits beside the invoice it paid, the customer and the deal, with a refund button in place. Payouts list when the money reached your bank. It reads your own account; the full Stripe dashboard is one click away when you want it.
Disconnect Stripe in Settings › Getting paid removes the stored account identifier; new invoices fall back to your bank details. You can also revoke BLAM8 from the authorised applications list in your own Stripe dashboard, which has the same effect from Stripe's side.
Both webhooks are signature-verified with their own secrets, de-duplicated by event id and rate-limited. Stripe is a listed sub-processor in the Privacy Policy; the wider data picture is on the Security page.
A partner who refers a business earns 20% of every subscription payment BLAM8 collects from them, for as long as they stay. Commission is written to the ledger only when Stripe confirms an invoice paid, never from list prices, and a refunded payment claws its commission back automatically. Statements are monthly and paid by bank transfer within 30 days of the month's end; balances under £10 roll forward. Details on the partner programme page.
A billing question, a receipt you need re-issued, a security questionnaire that asks about payment handling: email hello@blam8.com and you will get a straight answer. If this page and the product ever disagree, tell us; the page is meant to be checkable.
No. Every payment page is hosted by Stripe. You type your card into Stripe's page, Stripe keeps it under its own PCI DSS Level 1 certification, and BLAM8 stores only the Stripe customer and subscription references it needs to know which plan you are on. Card numbers, expiry dates and security codes never reach BLAM8's servers.
No. The free trial runs for 14 days or 100 handled emails, whichever comes first, with no card. Nothing is created on Stripe until you choose a plan. If you pick a plan during the trial, the card is charged when the trial ends, not when you enter it; the trial keeps its original end date.
No. When you connect your own Stripe account, each invoice's Pay Now link opens a Stripe checkout on your account, in your business's name. The money settles into your Stripe balance and pays out to your bank on your Stripe schedule. BLAM8 adds no fee or commission; Stripe's own processing fees on your account apply as normal.
Yes, from Stripe's customer portal inside BLAM8: upgrade, downgrade, change the card, download past invoices or cancel, with nobody to phone. Plans are monthly with no annual lock-in. Cancelling stops the next renewal and you keep access until the end of the period you have paid for.
Stripe retries the card and emails you. Your subscription shows as past due in BLAM8 until the payment clears, and you can update the card in the customer portal at any time. Nothing you have set up is deleted.
Yes. On a card-paid invoice, or on the Card payments page, Refund issues a full or partial refund on your own Stripe account with a reason. The invoice records it, the customer's timeline shows it, and you get a notification. A refund you issue in Stripe's dashboard instead lands the same way. Stripe returns the money to the customer's card in five to ten working days.
No. Your subscription to BLAM8 is paid on BLAM8's Stripe, which needs nothing from you but a card. Connecting your own Stripe account is optional and only affects how your customers pay you: with it, invoices carry a Pay Now card link; without it, invoices carry your bank-transfer details and you mark them paid.
Free 14-day trial of the full product, no card. Choose a plan only if it earns it.
BLAM8 assistant