Referrals

Every VibeHost account has a referral link at /settings/referrals. Someone who signs up through it can add a card and start Business on a workspace they own. They get one month free, then pay $20/mo. Once their first payment goes through, you get one free month of Business to claim.

How a referral is earned

Four things happen, in order:

1. The invite is accepted. Your friend opens your link, signs up (or accepts while already signed in) and the referral is recorded against their account. A person can be referred at most once, ever.
2. They start Business on a workspace they own. They add a card and the first month is free. The card is required up front and nothing is charged during that month. See Who counts as the payer for why the workspace has to be one they own.
3. The first month ends and the card is charged. The free month runs to their normal billing date and then Business continues on the card at $20/mo. It does not stop and does not need renewing. If they cancel before that date the workspace returns to Free and nothing is charged.
4. One credit is issued to you. It is worth one free month of Business, it arrives unclaimed, and you claim it yourself. Your invitee gets no credit; see below.

The free month in step 2 is what the invite gives your friend. Checkout adds it only when an owner of the workspace has an open referral. Without one, the first month of Business is charged at checkout, unless the workspace already has free time left over, such as a redeemed gift, which pushes the first charge back by that much. It is a trial on their subscription, not a credit. Your reward is step 4, which is why it waits for a real payment rather than arriving at signup.

The free month comes first on yearly billing too. An invitee who picks annual Business at checkout pays $0 that day, and the $199 for the year is charged a month later, when the free month ends. The paid year starts with that charge, so the free month does not shorten it.

There is no minimum amount and no time limit on any of these steps. A referral that has been accepted but not acted on stays open indefinitely.

The two sides, side by side

Both of you end up a month better off, but not with the same month and not at the same time.

Your invitee gets the free month in step 2, their first month, before they have paid anything. That is the whole of their side. No second free month waits for them afterwards, and they have nothing to claim. Their free month is the trial, and it applies itself. At the end of it the card is charged $20 and Business simply continues.

You get the free month in step 4, and it is a credit rather than a discount that applies itself. Three things follow from that.

• You have to claim it. It sits unclaimed on /settings/referrals until you do. Nothing happens on its own, and nothing expires while you leave it there.
• You choose which workspace gets it. It does not have to be the workspace that earned it, or any workspace your invitee can see. Any workspace where you are an owner or an admin will do.
• It lands on the workspace you choose, not theirs. On a Free workspace, claiming starts one month of Business immediately, with no card required. On a workspace already paying monthly, it discounts the next invoice instead.

Who counts as the payer

The reward is earned by the person who owns the workspace that pays.

Owner is a workspace role, above admin and member (see Workspaces & teams). You are the owner of any workspace you created yourself.

This matters more than it looks, because an owner or an admin can start Business, while the reward is matched through the owner alone. An admin who starts Business on a workspace someone else owns has done everything the checkout asks, and still no referral is earned. Their own invite gives that checkout no free month, and no credit is ever issued to you. That is why every VibeHost surface that quotes this offer says "on a workspace you own".

The same rule means your invitee can't earn the referral by joining someone else's paying workspace. Paying for Business is the owner's act, and counting a workspace that was already paying would mint rewards without any new subscription behind them.

Nothing is lost when this happens. The referral stays open, with no deadline, and is earned whenever that person later starts Business on a workspace they own.

When two invitees share a workspace

Two people who were each referred can both be owners of the same workspace. When that workspace starts Business, only one of their referrals is used, because one subscription pays for one referral. The one that has been waiting longest gives the workspace its free first month, and once the first payment goes through, that referral's inviter gets the credit.

The other person loses nothing but time. Their referral is not spent, reduced or closed by someone else's payment. It stays open exactly as it was. The next time a workspace they own starts Business, that checkout gets their free month, and their inviter's credit follows the first payment. There is nothing to re-do in the meantime: they do not re-accept the invite, and the person who invited them does not have to invite them again.

As everywhere else in the program, there is no deadline on this.

Claiming a credit

Credits are the inviter's side of the offer, so this section is about the months you earn by referring people. An invitee has nothing to claim.

An unclaimed credit waits on /settings/referrals until you claim it. Claiming asks which workspace should receive the free month. You can pick any workspace where you are an owner or an admin, not only the one that earned the credit.

Credits do not expire. Holding one costs you nothing, and there is no deadline to claim it.

Once claimed:

• If the workspace is on Free with no Stripe subscription, one month of Business starts immediately. No card is required to claim or use that month.
• If the workspace has an active monthly Business subscription, the free month is applied to its next invoice as a Stripe discount.
• If the workspace is in a VibeHost-created monthly trial, the trial is extended by one calendar month and its first charge moves with it.
• If the workspace has an active annual Business subscription, the free month is scheduled after the paid annual period rather than discounting a whole annual invoice.

If the selected workspace cannot safely receive the month, for example because its payment is unresolved or its subscription is set to cancel, the claim is refused and the credit stays available for another attempt or another workspace.

Credits stack. Every successful referral is another month.

Refunds

If the payment that earned a referral is refunded or charged back, the credit it earned is withdrawn. A month that has already been billed is not taken back retroactively, and your invitee's free first month is never clawed back, because it was the trial and not a reward.