Understanding how seats (licenses) work

A seat is a license that you purchase to assign to your Otter Business users. One seat is used by one user. When you sign up for Otter Business, you specify the number of seats to purchase, and those seats are added to your Otter Business account. When a user is invited and joins the account, they are counted against the available seats.

Purchasing additional seats

If all available seats are in use, we made it as easy as possible to add more users―admins and members can simply invite a team member to the account. Once they sign up and join, we'll automatically charge you the prorated amount for the time remaining in your billing period. If you have credits in your Otter Business account, they will be applied.

Learn more about purchasing additional seats.

Deactivating or deleting a user

If a user is deactivated or deleted from the account, they will no longer count towards a seat and will free up a seat. However, if the Otter Business account exceeded the initial number of seats and a user is deactivated or deleted, we'll add prorated credits to their account. The credit will be applied when purchasing additional seats or on their renewal date. These credits have no currency or exchange value, are non-transferable and non-refundable, and will expire following the termination of your paid services plan with Otter.

Example (the number of seats never exceeded the initial seats purchased):

Acme, Inc. purchased the Otter Business plan for 10 seats. They invite 10 team members and therefore, all seats are counted for and in use.

An admin deactivates 1 user. A seat is now available within the account. No credits will be added to the account.

Example (the number of seats exceeded the initial seats purchased):

Hooli Corp purchased the Otter Business plan for 20 seats. They invite 20 team members and therefore, all seats are in use. An admin invites 1 additional team member and is charged a prorated amount. Their seat minimum is adjusted to 21 seats.

An admin deactivates 1 user. A prorated credit is added to the account and the seat minimum is adjusted to 20 seats.

How a prorated credit is calculated

We calculate the prorated credit by dividing the cost per seat by the total number of days in the billing period and multiplying by the number of days remaining in your billing period.

Example:

Your account is on the Otter Business plan and you're paying yearly. You deactivate a user 180 days into your billing period and there are 185 days remaining in the billing period.

We calculate the prorated credit amount by dividing the cost per seat by the number of days in the year (365) and multiplying by the number of days remaining (185). This gives us the prorated credit amount for the remainder of the billing period.

($ amount / 365) x 185 = prorated credit

Renewing your Otter Business subscription

Here’s what happens at the end of your subscription:

• If you don’t do anything, your subscription automatically renews on the same term (one month or year) for the initial seat commitment.
• If you chose the option not to renew by canceling your subscription, your service will be suspended. You can lift the suspension and renew your subscription by reactivating your plan on the Account Settings page. If you need assistance, contact support.

We recommend you make sure your billing account is up to date so your service won’t be interrupted when it’s time to renew. If you don’t do anything, your initial seat commitment will automatically continue on your next renewal date.