All Help Topics
My Account & Billing
The following is intended to serve as a general description of our billing practices. For the official terms of your relationship with PhotoShelter, please see our Terms & Conditions of Use.
Services & Products
Any charge made to your PhotoShelter account will fall under one of the following categories:
- Subscription fee (Starter, Basic, Standard, Pro, or Multi-User), each of which has varying storage allocations and feature access. These are billed monthly or annually, depending on your preference.
- Storage add-on: supplemental storage that may be tacked onto any subscription.
- Transaction fee: a percentage (8 - 10% for paid subscribers, 30% for Starter account holders) of anything you sell through PhotoShelter's shopping cart (or instant sale).
- Bandwidth, which is only charged ($0.25 for every 1GB of overage) when you exceed your monthly allocated volume. Your monthly usage is displayed in real-time on your Image Statistics page.
- Labor: assessed only upon your formal request of a one-off PhotoShelter service, such as a hard drive upload, or data recovery.
Bill Date & Monthly Statements
Your Bill Date
PhotoShelter bills you, the account holder, monthly on your "statement day". Typically, your statement day is the day of the month that you created your account, but in cases where the account is created toward the end of the month (for example, August 31st,) we will default your future statement days to being the last day of the month (in this example, September 30th).
For subscription fees, your statement day indicates the beginning of a new term of service. For example, if your account is billed monthly and your statement day is June 15th, you are paying for service through July 14th of that year.
Your next statement date is available in your Account Info section. For annually billed accounts, we will send an email reminder 30 days in advance that your account is queued to auto-renew.
Even if you choose an annually billed subscription, we will still generate a monthly statement to outline any charges you may have accrued within that month, such as transaction fees or exceeded bandwidth. Annual subscribers will want to reference the Paid Through date in the Account Info section for the next subscription charge date.
All of your past statements are displayed on your Statements page.
Pending Charges/Credits
The Pending Charges/Credits area of your Account Info section will reference any upcoming charges or credits to be applied on your next statement date (excluding your regular subscription fee). An example of the type of charge/credit you might see in this area would be a transaction fee on a sale made during the current month, or Refer-A-Friend credit; these are amounts to be applied the next time we charge you.
Billing Expiration & Failures
The credit card you place on file in the Billing Info section of your account is the card we will charge for any and all of the possible charge types referenced in the Services & Products area above.
When this credit card is declined, your account immediately enters a lockout state, which does not affect your service but will require you to enter your card info before you may access your PhotoShelter account. After the account has been in lockout for 14 days, the following actions will be taken:
- Homepage and image display pages are temporarily disabled
- Cart checkout is disabled; no buyers will be able to purchase your images
- Any presence you may have had on the PhotoShelter homepage (e.g. featured images slideshow or "Recently Updated") is hidden
If no new billing info is entered for 2 months, your account will enter a freezing and de-privileging process that will eventually result in account termination.
When this credit card is due to expire, we will send numerous account reminders (if necessary) by email in an attempt to avoid any service interruption. Email notifications will continue throughout the lockout process in an effort to keep you abreast of any changes to your account.
When the main (Billing Info) credit card is declined, your account immediately enters a lockout state, which does not affect your service but will require you to enter your card info before you may access your PhotoShelter account. After the account has been in lockout for 14 days, the following actions will be taken:
- Homepage and image display pages are temporarily disabled
- Cart checkout is disabled; no buyers will be able to purchase your images
- Any presence you may have had on the PhotoShelter homepage (e.g. featured images slideshow or "Recently Updated") is hidden
If no new billing info is entered for 2 months, your account will enter a freezing and de-privileging process that will eventually result in account termination.
When your credit card is due to expire, we will send numerous account reminders (if necessary) by email in an attempt to avoid any service interruption. Email notifications will continue throughout the lockout process in an effort to keep you abreast of any changes to your account.
Upgrading & Adding Storage
UpgradingWhen upgrading your account or changing the billing term, credits and charges are prorated at the time of purchase. More specifically:
- When upgrading your monthly account from one tier to another (i.e. monthly Basic to monthly Standard), a prorated credit for unused time from the lower account is applied.
- When upgrading your annual account from one tier to another (i.e. annual Basic to annual Standard), a prorated credit for unused time from the lower account is applied.
- When upgrading your account tier and changing your term from monthly to annual (i.e. monthly Basic to annual Standard), you will be billed for 11 months at the new rate plus however many days are remaining before your next bill date; a credit for unused time in the original tier will also be factored into the rate.
When changing your term but keeping your subscription tier the same (i.e. monthly Standard to annual Standard), your account will convert to the new term at the end of the period for which you have already paid.
Adding StorageYou may purchase additional storage for your account as needed (Starter account holders may not take advantage of this option). All of our storage “add-on” options can be found by clicking Add Storage from your Account Info page. Storage add-ons range from an extra 10GB for $5.99/month, all the way up to 1TB for $1000/year.
If you have purchased a storage add-on, you will see it reflected in the Additional Subscriptions section on your Account Info page.
Downgrading & Canceling
DowngradingWhen downgrading your account or changing the billing term, credits and charges are prorated at the time of purchase. More specifically:
- When downgrading your monthly account from one tier to another (i.e. monthly Standard to monthly Basic), we will issue a prorated credit to your account for the unused time.
- When downgrading your annual account from one tier to another (i.e. annual Standard to annual Basic), your account will remain at the original subscription level through the duration of the paid term, at which point it will automatically downgrade to the lower tier.
- When downgrading your account tier and changing your term from annual to monthly (i.e. annual Standard to monthly Basic), your account will remain at the original subscription level through the duration of the annual term, at which point it will automatically downgrade to the selected tier, and the term will be converted to monthly.
When changing your term but keeping your subscription tier the same (i.e. monthly Standard to annual Standard), your account will convert to the new term at the end of the period for which you have already paid.
Canceling
If you choose to cancel your subscription, your account will remain fully active through the end of the paid term. There are no refunds given for unused time. When an account enters full cancellation, the following actions will take place:
- Sales settings are deactivated
- The user's PhotoShelter homepage is temporarily redirected to http://photoshelter.com but is eventually deleted in full
- All images are deleted (after a 90-day grace period)