Failed payments

Cards fail. They expire, they get replaced after fraud, a bank blocks a foreign charge. When a payment for Sharedrop Pro or a Team workspace fails, nothing is taken away straight away. You get three weeks, several reminders, and your full plan the whole time. Only after that does the account go read only, and even then your documents stay up and every link to them keeps working. Images, video and archives get a further 14 days before they are hidden (see Images, video and archives).

This page explains the timeline, what read only actually stops, and how to fix it.

The timeline

When	What happens
First failed payment	Stripe marks the subscription past due. Sharedrop emails you and shows a banner in the dashboard. Your plan keeps working in full.
Stripe retries the card	Up to 4 attempts, on Stripe's own schedule, inside the 21 day window. From the second attempt the email becomes a warning.
21 days after the first failure	If the card still has not cleared, the account goes read only.
Any successful payment	The lock lifts on its own, your plan comes back, and you get a confirmation email.

Nothing is deleted during these 21 days.

The notices you get

Four emails, at most one a day per account:

We could not take your payment: sent on the first failed attempt, with a link to pay the open invoice.
Your payment is still failing: sent from the second attempt, with the attempt number and the next retry date Stripe has scheduled.
Your Sharedrop account is now read only: sent when the deadline passes and the account locks.
Your plan is back: sent when a payment succeeds and the lock lifts.

You also get a matching notification in the dashboard bell, and a banner across the top of the dashboard until it is resolved.

During the 21 days

Nothing changes. Full Pro or full Team, every feature, every upload. The only difference is the banner and the emails asking you to update your card. That is deliberate: a card that failed on Monday is usually fine by Friday, and losing access in the meantime helps nobody.

What read only means

Once the account locks, Sharedrop stops accepting new writes, and the plan drops to Free. Everything already in the account stays exactly where it is.

The drop to Free does not touch your documents. No document is deleted or hidden, no link to one stops working, and nothing changes for the people you shared with. Images, video and archives are Pro and Team features, so the drop to Free starts their 14 day clock (see Images, video and archives). Your plan and its limits come straight back on the next successful payment.

What stops

Uploading a new file, or re-uploading over an existing page.
Uploading a folder bundle.
Creating an archive.
Changing a page: its title, visibility, mode, address or folder.
Moving a page into or out of a folder.
Sharing a page with someone new by email.
Creating a disappearing link.
Restoring an earlier version of a page.
Restoring something from the trash.

Each of those returns 402 PAYMENT_REQUIRED on the API, with a message naming the page you fix the card on.

What keeps working

Viewing every page you already have, in the dashboard and in the viewer. Images, video and archives only until 14 days after the lock.
Every public link, every shared link and every disappearing link you created before the lock. Recipients see no change to documents, and a document link never breaks because of the account owner's card.
Downloading and fetching your own content. Images, video and archives only until 14 days after the lock.
Deleting pages, and emptying the trash.
Revoking a share.
The dashboard itself, including your settings and the billing pages.

Images, video and archives

Images, video and archives need a Pro or Team plan. When the plan that pays for them drops to Free, because a payment failed and the account locked or because the plan was cancelled, they run on a clock:

When	What happens
Days 0 to 14	Everything still works: viewing, downloading and fetching.
Days 14 to 28	They are hidden. The viewer shows a locked screen, and every download and fetch (dashboard, API, CLI, MCP, custom domains) answers not found, for you too. The files are kept.
Day 28	They are permanently deleted.

Paying the open invoice, or subscribing again, at any point before day 28 stops the clock and brings everything back straight away. The dashboard banner and the bell tell you when the clock starts and how long is left.

A workspace's images, video and archives follow the workspace's Team plan, not the plan of the person who uploaded them.

Storage add-ons

Storage add-on space counts toward your storage cap only while the subscription it is on is paid: active, trialing, or past due during the 21 day retry window. Once the subscription is unpaid or cancelled, the add-on no longer counts.

If you remove an add-on, or it stops counting, and you are storing more than the smaller cap allows:

Nothing is deleted, and every file stays viewable.
New uploads are refused on every surface (dashboard, API, CLI and MCP) with 402 STORAGE_LIMIT, which links to the billing page, until you are back under the cap.
To upload again, delete files and empty the trash (trash still counts), or add storage.

Uploads you have started but not finished also hold their space for up to 10 minutes, so several uploads started at once cannot share the same free space.

How to get your account back

Open Dashboard > Settings > Billing (or the workspace's billing page for a Team workspace).
Choose Pay now. That opens the Stripe billing portal.
Update the card, or pay the open invoice.

The lock lifts automatically on the next successful payment. There is nothing to click in Sharedrop afterwards and nothing to ask support for. Your plan and your limits come straight back, and the banner disappears.

If you would rather not carry on with the plan, you can cancel in the same portal. Cancelling ends the subscription; it does not clear an unpaid invoice.

Team workspaces

A Team workspace follows the same timeline, with two differences:

The notices go to the workspace owners, not to every member. Members and viewers cannot see or pay the bill, so they are not emailed about it.
Members see workspace wording when a write is refused: the message asks them to get a workspace owner to update the card, rather than telling them to update a card they have no access to.

A workspace owner sees the owner wording, which points straight at that workspace's billing page.

Complimentary Team plans

Sharedrop sometimes gives a workspace the Team plan at no charge, for a set period or with no end date. The workspace's billing page then shows Complimentary Team plan with its seats, its storage (50 GB per seat) and the date it ends, or "No end date". There is no card, invoice or billing portal, and seats and storage add-ons cannot be changed there.

Before it ends: 14 days before a dated plan ends, the workspace owners get an email and a bell notification.
Subscribing: an owner can choose Subscribe to Team at any time. Once the payment goes through, the complimentary plan ends and normal Team billing takes over.
When it ends: unless the workspace has subscribed, it moves to Free and keeps its files. Images, video and archives then follow the 14 day clock, the same as any plan that ends.

If you use the API, the CLI or MCP

The refusal is the same everywhere: HTTP 402 with the code PAYMENT_REQUIRED.

REST API: see the API reference.
CLI: the command prints the message and exits with code 7. See the CLI guide.
MCP: the tool returns Error [PAYMENT_REQUIRED]: ... with the same message. See the MCP guide.

Reads keep working on every surface, so an agent can still list, get, fetch and download documents while the account is locked. Images, video and archives follow the 14 day clock: from 14 days after the lock, fetching or downloading them returns not found until the plan is restored.