Subscription philosophy

Syndik8’s pricing is limit-based, not feature-based. Every syndicate (free or paid) gets the same software. The calendar, the usage log, the maintenance record, the squawks, the member rates, auto-finalisation, notifications, the ICS feed, offline mode: all of it is available on the free tier. What the paid tier buys is room to grow.

Who the free tier is for

Very small groups. Family-run syndicates of two or three people, sharing a single aircraft, with a usage pattern gentle enough that we would struggle to spend money hosting them. The free-tier limits are deliberately tight: 1 aircraft, 3 members, and 1 free syndicate per user (that last one applies across everything you personally own, not per-syndicate).

Those limits are not a trial that expires. There is no time limit on the free tier: you can run on it indefinitely within the three caps. If your syndicate fits inside them, Syndik8 is free for you, and it stays free.

Why free also works as a trial

Most larger syndicates don’t come to Syndik8 as a committee. They come as one or two admins who want to see whether the thing works before they move the whole group off a spreadsheet. The free tier is good for that too: a couple of admins on a free-tier syndicate can build bookings, record usage, try finalisation, and see the app running on their own aircraft (not a demo) before inviting the rest of the members. Because nothing is gated, what you evaluate on the free tier is exactly what you get on the paid plan. If the workflow works with two admins and one aircraft, it will work with eight members and three.

When the group is ready to commit, the syndicate moves to paid and the member and aircraft limits lift immediately.

Why limits, not feature gating

Feature gating punishes a free user for trying the thing they came to evaluate. If finalisation were locked behind a paywall, a prospective treasurer couldn’t tell whether the finalisation model fits their group until they were already paying. If the maintenance tracker were a paid add-on, a syndicate investigating Syndik8 as an airworthiness record couldn’t test what it actually does.

A limit-based model avoids that. Everyone, free and paid, experiences the same app. What you pay for, when you pay, is capacity. By the time a syndicate has outgrown three members or is ready to add a second aircraft, it is no longer casually evaluating the software; it is relying on it. That is the moment to charge, and not before.

Paid pricing is £20 a month for the first aircraft and £12 for each one after it, with 15 members included and £1 a month for each member beyond that. Figures are ex-VAT; see pricing for the inclusive totals and worked examples.

Why the first aircraft costs more than the second

Read the rates on their own and the first aircraft looks overpriced against the ones that follow it. It is priced that way because the first aircraft is not really buying an aircraft. It is buying the platform: the ledger, the treasury and cash-call machinery, the governance and voting tools, Direct Debit collection, the whole apparatus a group needs before it can share anything at all. It also buys the 15 member seats, which most syndicates never exceed.

Every aircraft after that buys much less: another calendar, another maintenance schedule, another tech log. Charging the same for it would overprice it.

Those two choices hold each other up. Because the platform and the member seats are paid for once, the member allowance is flat rather than 15 seats per aircraft. If each aircraft carried its own seats, each aircraft would be worth the same as the last, and a flat per-aircraft rate would be the honest way to price it. You can have one arrangement or the other; taking the cheap half of each would not add up.

A flat allowance also means the number stays meaningful. A five-aircraft group would otherwise be handed 75 included members and never see the member charge at all, which defeats the point of having one. A syndicate genuinely heading past 15 members is usually turning into a flying club, and it goes on paying £1 a month for each member above the allowance.

Why adding an aircraft or a member asks before it costs you

On a paid syndicate, adding an aircraft or inviting a member above the allowance changes what the syndicate pays. Syndik8 never does that quietly. You get a prompt saying the change may increase the subscription and offering to check, and the figure you are eventually asked to accept comes back from the payment provider rather than from a price list held in the app. Reductions are the other way round: an aircraft removed or a member leaving lowers the count on its own, because nobody should have to remember to stop paying for capacity they gave up.

Checking before quoting is the point. The app cannot honestly name a price on its own: it cannot see a founding syndicate’s discount, and it cannot see whether the provider will bill the change at all, since the count on a device is derived from what has synced and can run ahead of the quantity actually being billed. So the first step warns without a number, the provider is asked, and the answer decides what you are shown. Sometimes that answer is that the change is already covered, in which case you are told so and there is nothing to agree to. A price quoted and then corrected would teach admins to ignore the prompt, which is the one thing a money prompt must not do.

The prompt lands when you send an invitation, not when the invitee accepts. That is where the decision actually is. An outstanding invitation already counts towards the syndicate’s total, which is deliberate, since otherwise the allowance could be dodged by leaving invitations open indefinitely. An admin at the limit can cancel an outstanding invitation to make room, and one that expires unaccepted frees the seat again: Syndik8 clears lapsed invitations hourly, so the seat comes back everywhere within an hour rather than lingering as a phantom on somebody’s phone.

A viewer never triggers any of this. Viewers are read-only, take up no seat, and cost nothing at any size, on the free plan or a paid one. That is why the invitation form asks about the cost when you choose the role rather than when the form opens: put in front of the whole form, the question would take agreement to a charge that was never going to be incurred.

Accepting the change does not take a payment. The difference is prorated and turns up on the next monthly invoice, so there is no card authentication to sit through in the middle of adding an aircraft.

Why mobile upgrades hand off to email and the web

Apple’s App Store and Google Play rules require a 30% commission on in-app digital purchases, and forbid in-app calls-to-action that route payment outside their stores. Syndik8 is a subscription, not a one-off app, and a 30% markup on a recurring bill is significant money we would rather not pass on to you.

So when you hit a free-tier limit on iOS or Android, the upgrade prompt does not offer a button to tap. It shows a snackbar explaining the limit, and in the background the app automatically sends an email to the address on your account with a link to complete the upgrade in a web browser. On the web version, there is no need for the hand-off; the same prompt there shows an Upgrade Now button that opens checkout directly.

This is the same pattern Amazon uses for Kindle ebooks on an iPhone: you cannot buy a book in the Kindle app; you receive an email or open the Kindle website and buy it there. The rule is external to Syndik8; we follow it to keep the app in the stores, and to keep the price you pay as close to the sticker price as we can.

The same rule catches the smaller purchases too. Adding an aircraft or a member above the allowance is still buying more digital service, so you are asked about the cost as early as the question can be answered, rather than when you try to save: for an aircraft that is the moment the form opens, and for an invitation it is the moment you choose a role that takes up a seat.

On the web, a confirmation appears over the form and the change completes where you are. On iOS and Android it cannot, and the two forms handle that differently because what is being blocked differs. The aircraft form is replaced outright by an explanation, since every field on it belongs to the purchase and a dialog you could dismiss would leave you typing into fields that were never going to submit. The invitation form stays, because a viewer invitation is free and taking the form away would block that too; the seat-consuming roles are simply shown greyed out with the reason attached. Either way, a change the payment provider says is free is not blocked at all, since no store rule asks us to stop something nobody is charging for.

The two platforms then differ the same way the upgrade does. On Android the screen offers a link to the website and sends no email, because the link is the instruction. On iOS it says only that subscription changes cannot be made in the app. It names no destination and mentions no email, because a free companion app to a paid web service is permitted only while it carries no call to action to buy elsewhere, and announcing that a message is on its way arguably is one.

Where the app has taken a form away, the email still goes, quietly, carrying the address the screen may not print. It is queued rather than fired and forgotten, so an admin who hit this in a hangar with no signal still gets it once the phone reconnects. Copy that makes no promise also cannot be made false by a send that fails. Where nothing has been taken away, as on the invitation form, no email is sent at all: you came to invite someone, and can still do that, so a message about your subscription would be unexpected.

Who this page is for

Prospects wondering “is the free tier a trap?” (it isn’t; the app is the same, and the limits are the point), and members who hit the mobile upgrade snackbar and want to understand why there isn’t an Upgrade button to tap on their phone.