Refund Policy

1. The short version

• You can cancel at any time, from your billing page or the Stripe portal.
• When you cancel, access continues to the end of the period you have already paid for, then stops. Nothing is cut off early.
• Within 14 days of your first purchase, ask us and we will refund it in full.
• After that, subscription payments are not refundable, and we do not refund part-periods.
• None of this affects your legal rights if the product is faulty or not as described.

The rest of this page is the detail. This policy forms part of our Terms of Service.

2. Try it before you pay

Alhora is free to download, and free to use for importing, formatting and previewing your whole book. You can see exactly how your book will look before you spend anything. A paid plan unlocks export. We would much rather you tested the app properly than paid and then asked for your money back — so no payment is needed to find out whether Alhora suits you.

3. Cancelling a subscription

Cancel whenever you like, from Account → Billing or the Stripe customer portal. There is no cancellation fee, no notice period, and no need to email anyone or explain yourself.

When you cancel:

• You keep full access until the end of the period you have already paid for. If you cancel a monthly plan on day 2, you have the remaining 28 days.
• No further payments are taken.
• At the end of that period, export and any paid add-ons stop working.
• Your projects stay on your computer. They are not deleted and they are still yours — but you will need an active plan to export them again.
• We do not refund the unused part of the period you are in. You are paying for that period, and you keep it.

Cancelling a subscription does not delete your Alhora account. Deleting your account does not cancel a Stripe subscription — if you want both, cancel the subscription first.

4. Your 14-day cancellation right

UK consumers have a statutory right to cancel most things bought online within 14 days. Because Alhora is digital, the way that right works is slightly unusual, so here it is plainly.

What the law says

Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, you have 14 days from the day the contract is made to cancel a purchase of digital content. However, that right ends once supply begins, if you asked for it to begin straight away and acknowledged that starting would end the right. When you buy a plan and immediately start exporting, that is exactly what has happened: you asked for immediate access, and you got it. Strictly speaking, the statutory right has then been used up.

What we actually do

We do not stand on that. If you ask within 14 days of your first purchase, we will refund it in full — whether or not you have exported anything, and whether or not the statutory right technically still applies. This is a policy we offer on top of the law, and it applies to your first purchase of a plan.

Two limits, so this is not misleading. It applies to your first purchase, not to every renewal — renewals are covered by section 5. And if an account is used to export a large number of finished books and is then refunded, repeatedly or across several accounts, we will treat that as abuse and decline.

How to ask

Email [email protected] from the address on your account and tell us you want a refund. You do not need to give a reason. We will confirm within 5 working days and process the refund to your original payment method; how quickly it appears is then up to your bank, but Stripe refunds typically land within 5–10 working days.

5. After 14 days: subscriptions

Monthly and annual subscription payments are not refundable after the 14-day window described above, and renewal payments are not refundable. We do not give partial or pro-rata refunds when you cancel mid-period — you keep the access you paid for instead.

Renewals do not arrive as a surprise: an annual plan is a yearly charge on a date you can see on your billing page, and you can cancel at any point before it. If a renewal genuinely caught you out — you cancelled and it charged anyway, or you have not used the app at all since it renewed — write to us. We would rather sort it out than be right about it.

6. Lifetime licences

The Lifetime licence is a one-off payment, so it is worth being exact about where it stands.

• The 14-day refund in section 4 applies in full to a Lifetime purchase. Ask within 14 days of buying it and you get all of your money back.
• After 14 days, a Lifetime licence is not refundable. There is no recurring payment to cancel and no unused period to return — you have bought permanent access, and you have it.
• A Lifetime licence does not expire and does not renew. You will not be charged again.
• It covers the Alhora application and all future updates to it. It does not include the AI or Publisher add-ons, which are separate subscriptions with their own billing.
• If you upgrade to Lifetime from an active Monthly or Annual plan, we credit the unused portion of that plan against the Lifetime price rather than refunding it separately.

Being straight about the one risk you are taking: "lifetime" means for as long as Alhora is offered as a product. Export is verified against our servers, so a Lifetime licence depends on Alhora continuing to operate. We are not planning to stop, and section 6 of the Terms sets out what we would do if that ever changed.

7. AI credits and top-ups

AI checks are an optional add-on, bought inside the desktop app.

• AI subscription tiers follow the same rules as any other subscription: cancel any time, keep the credits and access you have paid for until the period ends, no refund for a part-period.
• Credit top-ups are one-off purchases and are not refundable once the credits are added to your balance, except under the 14-day right in section 4 where none of them have been spent. Top-up credits never expire, so there is no deadline to use them.
• Credits have no cash value. They cannot be transferred between accounts or exchanged for money, and an unused balance is not paid out when you cancel.
• Failed checks cost nothing. If an AI check fails, times out, or is cut short, the credit is returned to your balance automatically. You do not need to ask. If you see a credit missing after a failure, tell us and we will put it back.
• If we ever withdrew AI features permanently while you were holding a paid balance, we would refund that balance.

8. Publisher plans

Publisher plans are subscriptions billed to the organisation's owner and follow section 3 and section 5: cancel any time, seats stay live to the end of the paid period, no refund for a part-period. Removing a member part-way through a month does not generate a refund or a credit, and adding one does not change the price until the next billing period.

9. If something is wrong with the product

Everything above is about changing your mind. This section is about us not delivering, and it works differently.

Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, digital content you pay for must be of satisfactory quality, fit for the purpose you made known, and as described. If Alhora is not, you are entitled to have it repaired or replaced, and if that is not possible or we do not do it within a reasonable time, to a price reduction — which can be up to the full amount you paid. If our software damages your device or files through our lack of reasonable care, you may be entitled to compensation for that too.

These rights are yours by law. Nothing on this page, in our Terms, or in anything we say to you can reduce them, and the 14-day window does not limit them. If Alhora is not doing what we said it does, tell us at [email protected] — describing the problem is enough, and we will fix it or refund you.

10. Duplicate charges and other billing errors

If you were charged twice, charged after cancelling, or charged an amount that does not match the plan you chose, that is our problem to fix. Email [email protected] with the date and amount and we will refund the error in full. No time limit applies to correcting a mistake we made.

11. Before you raise a chargeback

Please contact us first. A chargeback takes weeks, costs us a fee, and usually ends with the same refund we would have given you the same day. If you have a problem with a charge, [email protected] is faster. We may suspend an account with an unresolved chargeback until the dispute is settled.

12. Contact

For refunds, cancellations and anything about a charge:

• Email: [email protected]
• Legal and data protection: [email protected]

See also our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and the current pricing page.