🔍 Overview
After upgrading to the Agency plan, some customers find their account still shows a lower-tier plan (such as PRO), or that charges appear on an old duplicate account. This article explains why this happens and the steps to take to get your plan and billing corrected quickly.
⚠️ Common Causes of a Billing Mismatch
- Duplicate accounts: You may have signed up more than once using different email addresses or login methods (e.g., Google sign-in vs. email/password). Payment can be applied to the older account instead of your active one.
- Upgrade not linked to the correct account: If you completed checkout while logged into a different account than the one you use day-to-day, the Agency plan is provisioned to that secondary account.
- Legacy add-on charges not removed: Some accounts upgraded to Agency from PRO + Google Ads add-on and continued to be billed separately for the add-on, even though the Agency plan includes it at no extra cost.
- Incorrect proration after upgrade: In some cases, an upgrade retains the wrong billing date, causing the next invoice to reflect an inaccurate prorated amount.
🛠️ Steps to Identify Which Account Was Charged
- Check the email address on the payment receipt you received after upgrading. This confirms which account was billed.
- Log in to Search Atlas using that email address and verify the plan shown on your account dashboard.
- If the plan still reads PRO or another lower tier, your payment was likely applied to a duplicate or inactive account.
- Note both email addresses — the one that was charged and the one you actively use — before contacting support.
✅ What Our Team Will Do to Fix It
Once you reach our support team, we can take the following corrective actions on your behalf:
- Merge or deactivate duplicate accounts so your active account reflects the correct Agency plan.
- Manually provision the Agency plan to your correct account if the upgrade was applied to the wrong one.
- Remove incorrect add-on charges — the Google Ads add-on is included free with the Agency plan, so any separate charge for it will be zeroed out.
- Correct your billing date and proration so your next invoice accurately reflects when your Agency plan started.
🔎 How to Check Your Current Plan in Search Atlas
- Log in to Search Atlas with your primary email address.
- Click your account avatar or name in the top-right corner of the platform.
- Select Billing or Subscription from the dropdown menu.
- Confirm the plan name shown. It should read Agency if your upgrade was successful.
- Review the listed add-ons to ensure you are not being billed separately for features already included in the Agency plan.
🛡️ How to Prevent This in the Future
- Always ensure you are logged into your primary account before starting a plan upgrade or checkout.
- Use a single login method consistently — either your email/password or a social login (such as Google) — to avoid creating duplicate accounts.
- Save your payment confirmation email and verify that the email address on the receipt matches your active Search Atlas account.
- If you are managing multiple users under an agency, use the team member invitation feature inside the platform rather than creating separate individual accounts.
💬 Still Seeing the Wrong Plan or Charges?
If your account still shows the incorrect plan after following the steps above, or if you notice unexpected charges on your invoice, our team can investigate and correct the issue immediately. 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.