Self-serve plans
Three tiers are available for an administrator to subscribe to directly, without contacting Zion.| Tier | Price | Student cap | How to subscribe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $399/mo | 150 students | Self-serve checkout |
| Standard | $799/mo | 500 students | Self-serve checkout, marked “Most popular” |
| Enterprise | $12,000/mo | Unlimited | Contact sales (mailto link, no self-serve checkout) |
Open Settings > Billing
An administrator with no active subscription sees a Choose a plan screen with Lite, Standard, and Enterprise cards.
Founding 50
Founding 50 is a flat $99/month rate that includes every feature, capped at 50 seats, available only during a 90-day window from launch. There is no self-serve Founding 50 signup and no Founding subscribe button anywhere in the app. A school is placed on Founding 50 by the Zion team, which enforces the 50-seat cap and rejects new assignments once the window has closed. While the window is still open, a non-Founding school sees only a passive note acknowledging the offer, not a way to claim it. When a Founding 50 school’s window closes, it can be given a temporary comped Standard plan for a grace period while it chooses a permanent tier. If that grace period lapses before the school subscribes, access is cut off and the billing dashboard shows a message that the access bridge has ended, with a prompt to subscribe to Standard.How entitlement is decided
Zion never calls Polar live to check whether a school is entitled to use the app. Instead, a local subscriptions table mirrors each school’s Polar status, kept in sync by webhooks and a reconciliation cron. Every entitlement check, on every page load, reads that local mirror. The read is deliberately strict. A school still counts as entitled while a payment is past due and Polar is retrying it, and while a canceled subscription runs out its already-paid period. A school stops being entitled once a checkout is abandoned and expires, once a payment fails outright as unpaid, or once a canceled subscription passes its final paid day. If the mirror can’t be read or the data doesn’t parse, the check fails closed and treats the school as not entitled.What each role sees when billing lapses
When a school’s subscription is no longer entitled, anyone signed in to that organization is redirected to/subscription-required. What appears there depends on the role.
- Administrator
- Supervisor or monitor
- Parent or student
Sees a remedy specific to the subscription’s status: a reactivate action that returns to Settings > Billing for statuses that need a fresh checkout, or a direct link into Polar’s customer portal for a past-due or unpaid card.
Updating a card or viewing invoices
Manage billing and Update payment method both link to Polar’s hosted customer portal. This link only appears when the school has a real Polar customer record and billing is enabled. The billing summary also shows a read-only card hint, such as the card brand, last four digits, and expiry, and never shows a full card number.Billing kill switch
Zion has a global kill switch that puts the entire billing suite into a dormant state. While dormant, every school is treated as entitled with no lockouts, checkout and the customer portal both refuse to open new sessions, and the daily billing cron takes no action. In this state the billing dashboard shows an inline note that self-serve billing is not open yet and that the school has full access in the meantime, instead of dead-end buttons.Billing recipients (which email addresses get billing notices) and a history of billing emails sent are configurable by administrators from Settings > Billing.
Roles and permissions
See what each role can access across the app.
School settings
Configure the rest of your school’s account.
Notifications
How billing and other notices reach staff.
Getting started
Set up your school in Zion.