Billing and usage
How Enscale charges work — what's on your Shopify invoice, what Meta bills separately, and the spending limit that stops surprises.
Your Enscale bill has up to three parts:
- Your plan — a fixed monthly charge.
- Usage charges — AI replies, plus overage if you turned it on.
- Nothing else from us. Meta's WhatsApp fees are billed by Meta, straight to you.
For what each plan costs and includes, see Plans and limits. This page is about how the charging actually works.
Everything goes through Shopify
Enscale bills entirely through Shopify. Charges appear on your Shopify invoice alongside your other apps — there's no separate Enscale invoice and no card stored with us.
Choosing or changing a plan happens on Shopify's own hosted plan page, opened from Settings → Billing. Shopify shows the current prices there and handles the charge approval; the change then syncs back to Enscale.
That also means Shopify's rules apply to your subscription.
AI reply charges
AI agents are charged per use: $0.02 per AI reply — voice notes and images included, the same on every paid plan. Free is never billed.
Every reply your AI agent sends to a customer is one charge, whether the conversation ends resolved or is handed to your team. Follow-up nudges the AI sends when a customer goes quiet count as AI replies too. These are never charged:
- Canned lines — the holding message, the fallback line, and the "please send text" reply.
- Anything a person on your team sends.
Handing a conversation over costs nothing extra. The AI replies already sent in it are charged, but the handover itself is not. See AI usage and spend.
Voice notes and images are included
Understanding a customer's voice note or image is part of the reply — there's no extra charge for it.
Free AI during a plan's trial days
During a plan's Shopify trial days, the first 100 AI replies are free. After that, AI conversations go to your team until the trial ends.
Overage charges
Off by default. When you turn it on, work continues past your allowance instead of pausing, and you pay per unit.
| Every paid plan | |
|---|---|
| Per workflow run | $0.004 |
| Per conversation | $0.008 |
Workflow and conversation overage are separate switches in Settings → Billing — enable either, both, or neither.
When it's a good trade: a seasonal spike where having your order notifications pause mid-rush would cost you far more than a few dollars.
When it isn't: every month. If you're consistently over, the next plan up is cheaper than the overage — and the billing page will tell you when that's the case.
Your monthly spending limit
You can set one optional monthly limit on your total usage charges — AI replies and overage combined — in Settings → Billing. Enscale enforces it.
Nothing is billed past it. Once the limit is reached, AI conversations are handed to your team and overage turns off. It lifts when you raise or remove the limit, or when the calendar month rolls over. Usage held back by the limit is never billed in a later month.
Your Enscale allowances and your spending limit both reset on the 1st of the calendar month, while your Shopify subscription bills on its own cycle. These dates will not match, and that's expected. See Plans and limits.
Meta's WhatsApp fees are a separate bill
Meta bills you directly through your connected WhatsApp Business account. Enscale never sees or marks up these charges.
The two count differently, which trips people up:
- Enscale counts one campaign message per recipient.
- Meta charges per delivered message, priced by the recipient's country and your template's category.
So a 1,000-recipient campaign is always 1,000 Enscale campaign messages. What Meta charges depends on where those people are and whether your template is marketing or utility.
Before you send, Enscale shows you the template category, how many people are eligible, how many are being skipped, and an estimated Meta charge range where available. See Meta template charges.
Where to look
Settings → Billing shows your plan and cycle, usage meters for conversations, workflow runs and campaign messages, your AI reply count and projected charge, your overage switches, and your monthly spending limit.
Meters turn amber at 80% and red at 100%.
If your subscription lapses
A cancelled, expired or non-renewing subscription drops you to Free entitlements immediately.
Your data is untouched — contacts, conversations, automations and reviews all stay exactly where they are. Resubscribing restores your limits.
Common questions
Next steps
- Plans and limits — allowances and what happens at a limit.
- AI usage and spend — the one variable cost.
- Meta template charges — the separate Meta bill.