Revise hosted pricing plans: Starter, Pro and Business priced on sends and teams, unlimited contacts #60

Background

The hosted plans on the subscriptions branch (PR #16, origin/subscriptions-using-billing) are priced against per-subscriber tools: Pro is $49/mo with 5 teams and 10,000 subscribed contacts, and Business is $199/mo with 25 teams. That contact cap contradicts the pitch we want to lead with ("pay for the emails you send, not a growing list"), and $49 sits too close to Loops Growth ($49 at 5k), Kit Creator and Beehiiv Lite to read as the cheap option. A $10 Starter plan was decided on 15 Oct.

Full research and competitor comparison: sendlit-pricing-rework.md (15 Oct 2026).

Proposed fix

Revise the hosted plan ladder so pricing is based on sends and teams, never on contacts:

Broadcasts, sequences, the transactional API, API keys, MCP and BYO ESP stay on every plan, including Free.

Code changes (in apps/api/src/billing/policies.ts and the billing catalog):

• Add a starter PlanId: teamsLimit: 1, monthlySendsLimit: 25_000, marketingBranding: true, sharedOrganizationMailbox: false.
• Pro: teamsLimit: 3, monthlySendsLimit: 125_000, marketingBranding: false, sharedOrganizationMailbox: true.
• Business: teamsLimit: 15, monthlySendsLimit: 600_000, provisioning and organizationApiKeys on.
• Free: teamsLimit: 1, monthlySendsLimit: 3_000, marketingBranding: true.
• subscribedContactsLimit: null on every plan.
• Wire overage through the extraSendBlocks and extraTeams overrides. Prices live in the Dodo product catalog, not in policies.
• Update the checkout and upgrade dialogs (see Difference in upgrade and new org checkout dialog #56) and the billing/plan pages to show the new limits.

Open decisions (please confirm before merging):

1. Pro at $29 with 125k sends, or $39 with 100k. The recommendation is $29.
2. Starter footer: fixed, or removable for +$5/mo.
3. Business at $99 with 15 teams, or $149 with 25 teams.
4. Whether existing Pro customers on the old 10k-contact plan move to the new Pro automatically. The recommendation is yes.

Acceptance criteria

• Plan policies match the table above, including the new starter plan and no contact limits on any plan.
• Send limits are enforced org-wide per month across marketing and transactional mail, with overage blocks of 50k at $10.
• The "Sent with SendLit" footer is on for Free and Starter and off for Pro and above (ties in with Add "Sent with SendLit" badge to emails sent on the Free plan #57).
• The provisioning API and org API keys are available only on Business and Enterprise.
• Monthly and annual (10 months for 12) products exist in Dodo for Starter, Pro and Business, and checkout and upgrade work for each.
• Billing, checkout and upgrade screens show the new prices and limits.
• Existing subscriptions are migrated or grandfathered according to decision 4.
• Tests cover plan limits for each plan (teams, sends, footer, provisioning).