Billing & Plans
Cancelling Your Plan
You can cancel any Kapsule subscription yourself from KPanel, and by default your services keep running until the end of the billing period you have already paid for.
Cancelling is a billing action, not a delete button. Nothing is wiped the moment you confirm. This guide covers where the cancel controls live, the difference between cancelling at period end and cancelling immediately, what happens to your websites, domains and mailboxes, how to undo a cancellation, and how to pause instead if you only need a break.
Before You Cancel
Cancellation is scheduled instantly, so do the export work first while every service is still running.
Take copies of anything you want to keep BEFORE the paid period runs out. Once a subscription ends, the sites and mailboxes on it stop serving, and getting data back becomes a support request rather than a self-service download.
Work through this list:
- Site files and databases. Open the site, go to Backups, take a fresh manual backup, then use Browse files to pull down what you need. See Taking a Backup.
- Email. Open Email in the sidebar, click the mailbox, and use Export Mailbox to download every message as a single
.mboxfile. Thunderbird, Apple Mail and most desktop clients open that format directly. Exports are capped at 5,000 messages each, so run it across date ranges if your mailbox is larger. - Domains. Domain registrations are billed separately and are NOT cancelled with a hosting plan. If you want a domain to live at another registrar, start that move while your account is still active: see Transferring Your Domain to Another Registrar.
Who Can Cancel
Cancelling requires the Owner, Admin or Billing role on the account. Anyone else sees the cancel controls disabled with a "Requires Owner, Admin or Billing" tooltip.
If your account is managed by a reseller, cancellation is handled by them and not by Kapsule directly. KPanel says so plainly: "Managed accounts must cancel through their reseller."
Where to Cancel in KPanel
Cancellation is per subscription, so you start from the subscription you want to end:
- Sign in to KPanel.
- Click Billing in the left sidebar. The Plans tab lists every active subscription.
- Click Manage on the subscription you want to cancel. That opens its detail page at
/billing/subscriptions/<id>. - Scroll to the Actions panel. The hint under it reads: "Cancel before renewal at any time. Your plan stays active until {date}."
- Click Cancel Subscription.
Each subscription is cancelled independently. If you hold several plans, cancelling one leaves the others untouched.
Confirming the Cancellation
The confirmation dialog states exactly when service ends: "Your plan stays active until {periodEnd}. No further charges after that." Pick a reason from the list, then click Confirm cancellation.
The reasons offered are: too expensive, not using the features, switching to another provider, just testing or a temporary project, missing a feature I need, and other.
What Happens After You Confirm
Your subscription does not end on the spot. It is flagged to stop at the end of the current billing period:
- The subscription page shows a Cancellation Scheduled banner: "This subscription ends on {date}. Changed your mind?"
- The status tile switches from "Renewing as scheduled" to an Ends On date.
- No further renewal charge is taken.
- Every service on that subscription keeps running normally until the date shown.
When the paid period finally runs out, KPanel is explicit about the consequences:
| What you have | What happens at period end |
|---|---|
| Websites on the plan | Every site on this plan stops serving |
| Domains | Registrations are not cancelled, but DNS and connected services stop |
| Mailboxes | Email on this plan stops sending and receiving |
Your domain registration survives a plan cancellation, but the services it points at do not. If a domain uses Kapsule nameservers and you cancel everything, the domain stays yours and keeps renewing while nothing it points at answers. Move the DNS, or the domain itself, before the period ends.
Changing Your Mind
A scheduled cancellation is reversible right up to the period end date. While the Cancellation Scheduled banner is showing, the Actions panel offers Keep my subscription. Click it and the subscription goes back to renewing normally, with no gap in service and nothing to re-provision.
After the end date has passed there is nothing left to reactivate: you would be buying the plan again. See Upgrading Your Plan for how plan selection works.
Cancelling With a Refund Instead
If you are still inside the 30-day money-back window, you do not have to wait out the period. There is a path that ends service immediately and returns your payment in full. It is a different flow with different consequences, and it is covered in The 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee.
A cancel-and-refund ends service the same day, not at period end. Your sites stop serving and your mailboxes stop delivering as soon as it completes. Only take that path once your exports are done.
Pausing Instead of Cancelling
If you are stopping for a season, a holiday, or a paused client project, pausing is usually the better move. It keeps everything provisioned and configured while the meter stops.
- Open the subscription's detail page as above.
- In the Actions panel, click Pause Subscription.
- Choose 1 month, 2 months or 3 months.
- Confirm with Pause for {duration}.
KPanel describes it as: "Your services stay active during the pause. No invoices are generated. Billing resumes automatically on the date you choose."
A pause pushes your next billing date forward by the pause length rather than skipping a payment. Your data stays put, your sites keep serving, and billing restarts by itself, so there is nothing to remember to switch back on. You can end a pause early with Resume now.
While paused, the subscription shows a Subscription Paused banner reading "Billing resumes automatically on {date}. Your services are running and your data is safe."
Cancelling Because a Payment Failed
If you are cancelling because a card is not going through, cancel is the wrong tool. A failed charge has its own retry and grace ladder, and updating the card resolves it without losing anything. See What Happens When a Payment Fails and Adding or Changing Your Payment Method.
Troubleshooting
The Cancel Subscription button is greyed out. You are signed in with a role below Billing. Ask an account Owner or Admin to cancel, or to raise your role under Settings.
"Subscription not found or already scheduled for cancellation". This subscription is already flagged to end. Reload the detail page and look for the Cancellation Scheduled banner and its end date.
"Managed accounts must cancel through their reseller." Your account was created under a reseller who owns the billing relationship. Contact them.
I cancelled the wrong subscription. As long as the end date has not passed, click Keep my subscription on that subscription's page. Nothing has been torn down.
I want the whole account closed, not just a plan. Cancelling every subscription stops all billing. Closing an account entirely is handled deliberately rather than with a button: cancel your subscriptions first, then open a support ticket asking for closure.
If anything about a cancellation looks wrong on your invoices, check Billing and Invoices, then contact us at support@kapsulehost.com with the subscription name and the date you cancelled.