Troubleshooting: Billing, Sites & Top-Ups

❄️ Freezing OTTO Projects and Subscription Cancellation

🔍 Overview This article explains the relationship between freezing an OTTO SEO project and cancelling your Search Atlas subscription. Understanding this distinction helps you manage your projects and subscription with confidence. ❄️ What Does Freezing an OTTO Project Mean? Freezing a project is a project-level action that pauses OTTO's active SEO automation for a specific site. When a project is frozen: - OTTO stops making automated changes and recommendations for that site. - Your project data and settings are preserved. - The project remains visible in your dashboard in a frozen state. - You can unfreeze the project at any time while your subscription is active. To freeze a project, go to Left sidebar → OTTO SEO and use the Freeze sites option on the main OTTO SEO page. 💳 Does Freezing a Project Cancel My Subscription? No. Freezing a project does not cancel your subscription. These are two completely separate actions: - Freezing a project pauses automation for one specific site — your subscription remains active and you continue to be billed. - Cancelling your subscription ends your billing relationship with Search Atlas and affects all projects across your account. If you want to stop being charged, you must cancel your subscription directly through your account settings. Freezing a project alone will not achieve this. ⚙️ What Happens to Frozen Projects if I Cancel My Subscription? When your subscription is cancelled, all active OTTO projects are automatically moved into a deep-frozen state. Here is what that means for your data: - All OTTO project data is retained but becomes inaccessible while your account is inactive. - No further SEO automation runs on any of your sites. - You will not be able to access or edit frozen projects until you resubscribe. 🔄 What Happens When I Resubscribe? When you resubscribe to Search Atlas, your previously frozen projects are automatically unfrozen and restored to their prior state. You can then resume OTTO SEO automation without losing your previous configuration or data. ⚠️ A Note on Automated Freeze Emails Some customers have reported receiving freeze or cancellation warning emails while their subscription was still active. If you receive such an email and believe it was sent in error, please do not be alarmed — check your subscription status directly in your account settings to confirm whether your account is active. If your subscription is active but you received a freeze warning, this may be a notification error. 📋 Quick Reference: Freeze vs. Cancel - Freeze a project: Pauses automation for one site. Subscription stays active. Data is preserved. Reversible at any time. - Cancel subscription: Ends billing. All projects deep-freeze. Data retained but inaccessible until resubscription. - Resubscribe: All projects automatically unfreeze and restore to their previous state. 💬 Need More Help? If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.

🛠️ Cancel OTTO Site Top-Ups After Plan Upgrade

🔍 Overview After upgrading your Search Atlas plan, you may find that you are unable to cancel an existing OTTO site top-up. The platform may display your services incorrectly, show the top-up as still active, or return an error when you attempt to remove it. This article explains why this happens and the steps you should take to resolve it. ⚙️ Why This Happens OTTO site top-ups are billing add-ons tied to your subscription in our payment system. When you upgrade your plan, your underlying subscription record changes. In some cases, this causes a mismatch between what the platform displays and what exists in the billing system. Common symptoms include: - The cancel button for a top-up is missing or unresponsive. - A top-up still appears as active even after you attempted to remove it. - You continue to be charged for a top-up that should have been cancelled. - The platform does not reflect your current services accurately after the upgrade. 🚀 What to Try First 1. Refresh your browser and navigate back to OTTO SEO → All Sites (SEO Automation) via the left sidebar (or go to /seo-automation-v3). Sometimes a stale session causes display issues. 2. Log out and log back in to force your account data to reload with your updated plan details. 3. Revisit your billing or add-ons section and attempt the cancellation again. After a plan upgrade, it can take a few moments for the system to sync correctly. ⚠️ When Self-Service Cancellation Is Not Available If the steps above do not resolve the issue, the top-up cancellation likely requires a manual fix on the billing side. This is a known limitation that occurs when: - The top-up's internal billing reference was not carried over correctly during the plan upgrade. - The top-up is linked to a previous subscription record that no longer exists in the payment system. - A cancellation flag was set but the charge was not stopped on the payment processor's side. In these situations, you cannot complete the cancellation yourself and you will not be charged incorrectly — our team will correct the billing record and ensure no further charges are applied for the cancelled top-up. 💡 How to Get This Fixed Our support team can manually remove the top-up from your billing subscription and confirm that no further charges will be made. To get help quickly, please have the following information ready before contacting us: - The date you upgraded your plan. - The number of OTTO site top-ups you expected to cancel. - Any error message you saw when attempting to cancel. - A screenshot of your current OTTO SEO page if the services are displaying incorrectly. If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.

🛠️ Fix Stuck OTTO Trial Activation

🔍 What causes this issue? Your OTTO trial activation can get stuck while it is setting up your OTTO project. Until that activation finishes, the OTTO connection in WordPress cannot be completed, so the plugin connection will keep failing even if you retry it. The blocker is the incomplete activation, not your WordPress setup itself. ✅ What to do first 1. Allow the OTTO trial activation for your website to finish in Search Atlas before attempting the WordPress connection. 2. Do not start multiple trial activations or projects for the same website while one is still in progress, as this can make it harder to identify the correct project later. 3. Once the trial activation has fully completed, return to the OTTO plugin in WordPress and retry the connection. ⚠️ If the activation stays stuck A trial activation that remains stuck typically needs to be investigated and completed by our team rather than resolved entirely from your side. Continuing to retry the WordPress plugin connection while the activation is incomplete will not fix it — the plugin needs a fully activated OTTO project before it can connect successfully. 💬 Information to have ready when you contact us To help us resolve a stuck activation as quickly as possible, please gather the following details before reaching out: - Your website URL and the domain used for the OTTO trial. - The exact message or behavior you see during activation, such as whether it never completes. - The date and time (including your timezone) when you started the trial activation. - Any steps you have already tried, such as retrying the WordPress connection. If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.

⏳ Paid OTTO Account Not Showing After Purchase

🔍 Overview After purchasing an additional OTTO SEO account, most customers see it provisioned within a few minutes. In some cases, however, a known billing issue can prevent the new account from appearing — even though your payment was successfully processed. This article explains what is happening and what to do next. ⚙️ What Causes This Issue? When you complete a purchase, Search Atlas triggers an automatic provisioning step that activates your new OTTO account. In certain billing configurations, this step can fail silently after payment. The result is: - Your payment is taken successfully. - Your new OTTO account is not added to your dashboard. - The issue requires a manual fix by our finance team. This is a known issue that our engineering team has resolved at the system level. However, accounts already affected still need to be individually corrected by our team. ✅ How to Check If Your Account Is Affected 1. Go to Left sidebar → OTTO SEO (URL: /seo-automation-v3). 2. Check whether your newly purchased OTTO account appears in the list. 3. If it is missing and some time has passed since your payment, your account is likely affected by this issue. 🛠️ What To Do Next Our team can resolve this quickly by either provisioning your account manually or issuing a refund, depending on your preference. To get this sorted as fast as possible: 1. Open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a support agent. 2. Share the following details so the team can act immediately: - The email address on your Search Atlas account. - The approximate time and date of your payment. - The name of the client site you need to activate OTTO for. Our team will escalate to finance, confirm the payment, and provision your account or arrange a refund without delay. 💡 Tips While You Wait - Do not attempt to repurchase the OTTO account — you may be charged twice. - Keep an eye on your email for a payment confirmation from Stripe as proof of purchase — this may be helpful when speaking with the team. 💬 Still Need Help? If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be instantly connected with a member of our team.

🛠️ Extra OTTO Account Not Showing After Payment

🔍 What This Article Covers This article explains what to do if an extra OTTO account you purchased has not appeared on your Search Atlas account after payment. ⚠️ Why This Happens In some cases, payment is completed but the extra OTTO account is not provisioned on the account. This requires manual provisioning by our support team. ✅ Confirm the Issue Check your Search Atlas account to see whether the additional OTTO account is available. If you completed payment but the extra account is still missing, contact our support team for assistance. 🚀 Contact Our Team for Manual Provisioning Our support team can review the payment and manually provision the extra OTTO account. When you contact us, please have the following ready: - The date and approximate time of your payment - The invoice number or other payment confirmation - The account email or workspace where the OTTO account should be added - Any error message or details describing what is missing If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be instantly connected with a member of our team.