Upgrading opens a new tab on Stripe, which is where the card details are entered. Everything below is about that handover, which is where it goes wrong.
When it will not let you pay for the Pro plan
Make sure you are signed in. Checkout refuses to open for a signed-out visitor, because the payment has to attach to an account. If you arrived from a pricing link in a new browser, sign in first and then upgrade.
Let the tab through. The new tab is opened the moment you click, which is the only way a browser allows it. A blocker that catches it will usually show a small icon in the address bar; allow popups for this site and try again. On a phone, and inside the browser built into an app like Instagram or TikTok, the tab is usually blocked outright and the page redirects in place instead, so the payment page replaces the app rather than opening beside it. That is expected.
Open it in a real browser. If you started inside an in-app browser and the payment page will not load at all, open the site in Safari or Chrome and upgrade from there.
“Payment setup error. Please try again.”
This one is us, not your card. Nothing has been charged. Try once more, and if it says the same thing, tell support: see below for what to include. We can tell from our side whether checkout is answering, and that message is the one that says it is not.
The card is refused
Refusals happen at the bank, so the reason shown on the Stripe page is the real one. The usual causes are an expired card, a card that blocks recurring payments, or a bank asking for a confirmation in its own app that is still sitting there unconfirmed.
If your bank app is asking you to approve the payment, approve it and the page finishes on its own. Do not start checkout again while that is pending, because you can end up approving two.
You paid and nothing changed
Pro is granted when the payment confirmation reaches us, which is normally seconds. If it has been longer, that is its own article: see You paid but are still on Free.
What to send support
Four things, which are all we need to find it:
- The email address on the account you were trying to upgrade.
- Roughly when you tried, with your timezone.
- Whether the payment tab opened at all, and what it said if it did.
- Monthly or annual, and whether you were using a promo or student code.
Leave your card details out of it. We never need them, and no part of this product asks you for them outside the Stripe page.