Payments fail for ordinary reasons: an expired card, a new card issued after a fraud check, a bank declining a foreign charge, or a company card with a monthly ceiling. It is rarely dramatic and it is almost always quick to fix.
What happens first
We email you and show a notice in the portal. Nothing is switched off at this point. Your scans keep running and your data is untouched.
Putting it right
- Open Billing.
- Update your payment method, or re-enter the existing card if the details are still valid.
- The charge is retried.
If it fails again, the message from your bank is usually the useful clue. A decline for an unfamiliar merchant is worth a call to them rather than another attempt.
If it stays unpaid
An account that remains unpaid eventually moves to a reduced plan. Two things are worth knowing:
- Your data is not deleted. Your websites, scans and reports remain.
- Your limits shrink to the smaller plan's. If you are over them, the same choose-what-to-keep step applies as for any downgrade. See Downgrading your plan.
Sorting the payment out before that point avoids the whole business, which is why the notifications start early.
Make sure the emails reach somebody
Billing notifications go to the account Owner. If that is a personal address belonging to someone who has left, or a mailbox nobody reads, the first you will know is when your limits change. Check who receives billing notifications, and consider giving your finance colleague the Billing-only role so the messages reach two people.
Next
See the notifications you can control for how to make sure billing messages get through.