Overages

When your monthly voice minutes exceed your plan limit, Spelo behaves differently depending on the plan.

Plan behavior

Plan	Over limit
Free	Hard cap. New sessions are blocked — the orb shows “Unavailable. Try again later.” Upgrade to continue.
Starter	Soft cap. Sessions keep working. Additional minutes charged at $0.08 / minute.
Pro	Soft cap. Additional minutes charged at $0.06 / minute.
Enterprise	Unlimited — usage counts against your contract, no marginal per-minute charge.

Preventing surprise charges

Three ways to cap your exposure:

1. Set a monthly budget

Dashboard → Billing → Monthly budget. Specify a dollar amount. When your projected overage would exceed it, we block new sessions and email you.

You can still:

Override the budget temporarily from the dashboard
Set a soft budget that only alerts, doesn’t block

2. Set per-site budgets

For workspaces with many sites, give each a budget. When one site hits its budget, other sites keep working. Configured per-site in the site detail page.

3. Watch usage webhooks

Subscribe to usage.threshold via webhooks. Events fire at 50%, 80%, 100%, and 150% of your plan’s monthly limit. Hook them into your ops Slack for early warning.

How overages are billed

Measured in the same minutes metric as bundled usage (session seconds, summed and rounded up per billing period).
Overage = total_minutes_this_period - bundled_minutes.
Billed on your next invoice alongside the base plan fee.

Example on Starter ($29/mo, 500 bundled, $0.08/min overage):

Usage	Base	Overage	Total
400 min	$29	$0	$29
500 min	$29	$0	$29
600 min	$29	$0.08 × 100 = $8	$37
1,000 min	$29	$0.08 × 500 = $40	$69

At 600 min on Starter, it’s still cheaper than upgrading to Pro ($99). At 1,000 min it’s roughly a wash — check the calculator in the dashboard.

Plan auto-upgrade (optional)

Dashboard → Billing → Auto-upgrade → On. If your usage would cost more on overages than on the next-tier plan, we automatically switch you the following month. Prevents surprise overages while optimizing cost.

Off by default — you must opt in.

Refunds

Accidental overruns (one-time spike from e.g. a viral tweet) — we’ll consider a one-time credit. Email support with details within 7 days of the invoice.
Abuse by bad actors (scripted session opens, credential stuffing) — credited in full. See Security.
Plan-confusion (e.g. you thought you were on Pro but signed up Starter) — credited if raised within 7 days.

Hard blocks

If you’d prefer a hard cap on a paid plan (for peace of mind), enable it in the dashboard. The orb stops accepting new sessions at 100% of bundled minutes until the next billing period.

Tracking an in-progress overage

The dashboard shows three numbers prominently:

Used this period — minutes so far.
Projected — where you’ll end the period at the current rate.
Projected cost — expected invoice, bundled + overages.

Refreshed hourly.

Volume discounts

Enterprise plans include tiered rates starting around 5,000 minutes. Contact sales for a quote if your projected usage is >2,000 min/mo and you want a predictable contract.