Your subscription and access

Your organisation's subscription decides whether your people can use Backed. While it is active, or on a free trial, everything works as usual. Backed support can suspend it, a free trial can end without being converted, and a subscription can end after notice. In each of those cases access stops for everyone in your organisation, and nothing in it is changed or deleted by the stop itself.

What your people see

When your organisation is not available, anyone who signs in or opens a page of it is taken to a page that says why, in one sentence:

• Suspended: "This organisation's account is suspended. Contact its administrator or Backed support."
• Free trial ended: "This organisation's free trial has ended."
• Access ended: "This organisation's access to Backed has ended."

From that page they can Choose another organisation they belong to, or Sign out. On the Choose an organisation page your organisation is shown greyed out with the same sentence and an Unavailable label, and it cannot be opened. Someone whose only organisation is unavailable cannot sign in until access comes back.

The page never shows the reason for a suspension, the dates or anything Backed support wrote.

Integrations, links and forms

While your organisation is not available:

• API credentials stop working. A request for an access token, and a request made with a token issued earlier, is refused with 401. A client that sends the correct secret, or a token that was still valid, is told the same sentence your people see.
• MCP access stops. A connected assistant's next call is refused with 401.
• Public links stop opening: shared Milestone links, referee links, survey links, Landing Pages, public template files and join links answer as if they did not exist.
• Email delivery updates still arrive, so your Email logs stay accurate.

Your free trial

A free trial runs for 30 days unless Backed support agrees another end date. While it runs:

• A Free trial banner at the top of every page tells your organisation's owners and administrators the trial's last day. It slides away after 3 seconds, or when you move off it, and returns the next time you open Backed. It stops as soon as the trial is converted to a paid subscription.
• Every owner and administrator is emailed twice: 7 days before the trial ends and the day before. Each email is sent once. If Backed support extends the trial, only the warnings still ahead of the new end date are sent; a trial that has been converted gets no warning.

On the day after the last day of the trial — by your organisation's own time zone — the trial ends by itself if it has not been converted. Access stops as described above ("This organisation's free trial has ended."), every owner and administrator is emailed to say so, and your organisation's data is scheduled for permanent deletion. Talk to Backed support before the end date if you want to keep it.

When a notice period ends

If your subscription was given notice, access continues as usual until the notice's effective date. On that date — by your organisation's own time zone — the subscription ends by itself: access ends (or, if Backed support agreed a grace period, the grace period begins) and Backed support asks whether you want your content returned or permanently deleted. Either way it is disposed of within 30 days.

A grace period after your subscription ends

When your subscription ends, Backed support can agree a grace period with you, so you can finish the work of particular Funding Rounds. Until the grace period's end date:

• A banner at the top of every page tells everyone in your organisation, applicants included, that the subscription has ended and the date the grace period runs to. It slides away after 3 seconds, or when you move off it, and returns the next time you open Backed.
• Administrators see only the Funding Rounds named for the grace period, and their Applications, Assessments, Decisions, Contracts, Milestones and Payments. Records of any other round answer as if they did not exist; lists simply leave them out.
• Nothing new can be started: creating or duplicating a Funding Round, starting an Application (by an applicant, or by an Administrator on someone's behalf) and creating an API credential are refused with "This organisation's subscription has ended, so nothing new can be started during its grace period."
• Background work that reaches outside Backed — such as emails and connected systems — runs only where it serves the named rounds; anything else waits.
• API credentials do not work during a grace period.

Backed support can extend a grace period, change its rounds or end it early (ending it early needs two members of Backed support). When the grace period ends — the day after its end date, by your organisation's own time zone — access ends as described above, without anyone acting. The date your content is disposed of moves with the grace period: 30 days after it ends.

When access comes back

When Backed support lifts a suspension, access returns at once: the next page your people open works, and API credentials, MCP access and public links work again without being reissued. Your records, settings, credentials and links are exactly as they were.

If your organisation was given notice before it was suspended, lifting the suspension returns it to that notice, with the same end date.

A free trial is converted to a paid subscription on or before its end date; once it has ended it cannot be converted. Talk to Backed support before your trial's end date.

When Backed support removes a file

Backed support never looks through your organisation's files. It opens a file only when someone reports it as unlawful, or an authority directs it, and only the file that report or direction names. If the file is unlawful, Backed support removes it.

A removed file is gone for everyone: it can no longer be viewed or downloaded, and the stored copy is deleted. Where the file was, your people see Removed by Operator support on and the date. Your organisation's audit log records the removal as File removed by Operator support, with the basis it was removed on — a report or a direction. Nothing about the report itself, or about any other organisation, is shown.

If you think a file was removed by mistake, contact Backed support.

Who to contact

If your organisation is unavailable and you think it should not be, contact your organisation's administrator first. Administrators can contact Backed support at support@backed.giving.