# How to create a subscription plan for your customers > Package what your customers get and pay for. Create a subscription plan in the admin panel — set its price, credits, quotas, and features — and make it available to customers at signup. - Canonical URL: https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/creating-subscription-plans-for-your-customers - Author: Martin Keller, SaaS & Business Editor - Category: SaaS & Multi-tenant — White-label, subscription plans, billing, tenant management, branding - Content type: tutorial · Difficulty: intermediate - Tags: Multi Tenant - Published: 2026-05-26 · Last updated: 2026-08-15 - Reading time: 5 min - Publisher: AcelleMail Knowledge Base, https://acellesend.com/kb --- If you run the platform as a SaaS — selling email marketing to your own customers — **subscription plans** are how you package what a customer gets and what they pay. A plan sets the price on the outside and the sending limits on the inside, so a new signup is provisioned automatically the moment they choose it. This guide walks you through creating a plan from scratch in the admin panel, end to end, so a customer can sign up and start sending in minutes. **Who this is for:** platform administrators running a multi-tenant SaaS (you sell accounts to customers). You'll work entirely in the **Admin** panel. ## Before you start - **Admin access** — you'll use the admin sidebar under **Plans & Billing → Plans**. - **A currency enabled** — Admin → **Currencies**. For a paid plan, the price is charged in one of your enabled currencies. - **A payment gateway** (paid plans only) — Admin → **Payment Gateways**, so customers can actually be charged. - **A sending server** — Admin → **Sending Servers**, so the plan has delivery infrastructure to assign. ## Step 1 — Open the Plans screen In the admin sidebar, go to **Plans & Billing → Plans**. This screen lists every plan you offer with its price, its sending-credit allowance, and an active toggle. Click **Create Plan** in the top-right corner. ![The Plans screen](https://acellesend.com/plugins/acelle/landing/images/kb-bot/creating-subscription-plans-for-your-customers/step-1-plans-list.png) *The Plans screen lists every plan with its price, sending-credit allowance, and an active toggle. **Create Plan** is in the top-right corner.* ## Step 2 — Set the plan basics The **Create New Plan** window asks for the outward-facing details — the things a customer sees when they pick a plan: - **Plan Name** — what customers see (e.g. *Starter*, *Growth*, *Agency*). - **Description** — one line on who the plan is for. - **Price + Currency** — what they pay per cycle. Enter **0** for a free plan. - **Billing Cycle** — *Monthly* or *Yearly*. - **Enable free trial period** — give new customers a number of days before the first charge. - **No payment method required when free** — skip card entry at checkout when the price is $0. Fill in the name, price, and currency (the rest can stay at their defaults for now), then click **Create Plan**. ![The Create New Plan window](https://acellesend.com/plugins/acelle/landing/images/kb-bot/creating-subscription-plans-for-your-customers/step-2-create-modal.png) *The plan basics — name, description, price and currency, billing cycle, and an optional free trial. Everything else is configured after you create the plan.* > **Tip:** You can change any of these later. Creating the plan first just gives you something to configure — which is exactly what the next step does. ## Step 3 — Configure what the plan includes After you create it, you land on the plan's settings, organised into tabs down the left. This is where a plan stops being a price tag and becomes a real product tier: - **General** — the name, price, and billing cycle you just set. - **Pricing Options** — a base price plus optional paid add-ons (for example, a premium-support tier). - **Credits** — the per-cycle sending (and verification) **credits** — the headline *"20,000 emails / month"* number a customer sees. - **Quotas** — hard resource caps: how many **lists, campaigns, and subscribers** this plan allows. - **Entitlements** — on/off feature flags: may this customer use their **own sending server**, **remove your branding**, and so on. - **Rate Limits** — a throttle (for example, emails per minute) that protects your shared infrastructure from any one customer. - **Sending Servers** — which delivery infrastructure this plan's mail is sent through. Set each tab to match the tier you're selling, then click **Save Changes**. ![The plan settings tabs](https://acellesend.com/plugins/acelle/landing/images/kb-bot/creating-subscription-plans-for-your-customers/step-3-configure.png) *Credits, Quotas, Entitlements, Rate Limits, and Sending Servers each control part of what the plan includes. Set them to match the tier, then **Save Changes**.* ## Step 4 — Make the plan available Back on the **Plans** list, the toggle next to each plan controls whether it's **active and visible** to customers at signup. Flip it on. From now on, a customer who chooses this plan is automatically given exactly the credits, quotas, and features you set — no manual provisioning. ## Troubleshooting - **The plan doesn't appear at signup** → check the active/visible toggle on the Plans list. A plan that's toggled off is hidden from customers. - **A customer can't be charged** → confirm a payment gateway is set up (Admin → Payment Gateways) and that the plan's currency is one that gateway supports. - **A free plan still asks for a card** → turn on **No payment method required when free** in the plan basics (Step 2). - **A customer hits limits too soon** → revisit the plan's **Credits**, **Quotas**, and **Rate Limits** tabs — one of those caps is lower than the tier should allow. ## Recap You've created a subscription plan, set its price and billing cycle, configured its credits, quotas, features, and delivery, and made it available to customers. Every new signup on this plan is now provisioned automatically. Next, decide how to price your tiers in [Subscription plan design strategy](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/subscription-plan-design-strategy), and assign delivery infrastructure per plan in [Choosing a sending server for a plan](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/sending-server-for-plan). --- ## Related articles - [Building Your Email Marketing SaaS](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/building-your-email-marketing-saas): The technology side of an AcelleMail SaaS is solved. The hard part is the business: who you sell to, how you price, how you reach them, and how you keep them. This guide is the GTM + pricing playbook — opinionated, market-tested patterns for launching an email-marketing SaaS on the AcelleMail stack. - [Setting Up AcelleMail as a SaaS Platform](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/setting-up-acellemail-as-a-saas-platform): AcelleMail can be operated as a multi-tenant SaaS where each customer signs up, picks a plan, pays via Stripe, and gets an isolated workspace (lists, campaigns, automations, sending quotas). This guide walks the end-to-end setup: Extended License, Stripe (the only first-class subscription gateway today), plan design, customer onboarding flow, tenant isolation, and the operational realities of running this as a business. - [White-Label Customization Guide for AcelleMail](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/white-label-customization-guide): AcelleMail's Extended License allows full re-branding — every "AcelleMail" reference can be replaced with your brand name, every screen recoloured, every customer email sent from your domain. This guide walks every customisation point: branding settings, custom CSS, custom domain + TLS, transactional email templates, and the upgrade-safe pattern for layout/Blade overrides. - [Subscription Plan Design Strategy](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/subscription-plan-design-strategy): The plans you offer drive your revenue more than any other product decision. Too many plans confuse buyers; too few leave revenue on the table. This guide walks the three-tier model (Starter / Growth / Pro) that 80% of email-marketing SaaS products use, the feature-gating principles that maximize upgrade conversions without frustrating low-tier users, the annual-billing discount math, and the free-trial vs freemium decision. - [Sending Servers for a Plan: Shared Pool or Bring-Your-Own](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/sending-server-for-plan): Every plan in AcelleMail answers one question before a customer on it can send a single email: whose sending server moves the message? You — the admin — decide that on the plan's Sending Servers tab. There are exactly two answers, and a customer on a given plan only ever sees one of them in their UI. This guide walks both options end-to-end with screenshots from the admin and the customer side, so you can pick the right mode for each plan you sell and know exactly what your customer will see after they subscribe.