We changed how TrueCore signups work today. The short version: new accounts now start with a £1 / 14-day trial, instead of the previous "sign up, pay the full plan price, and get a 14-day refund window" model.
This post is the longer version. Existing customers keep the original promise — the new policy applies only to new signups — but if you've been reading our pricing page and our legal page and finding them say slightly different things about refunds, this is why.
The old model had three problems
We launched with a "14-day refund if it's not right" promise. It read well on the homepage and matched what most budget hosts offer. It also created three quiet headaches:
It was wrong about UK law. The UK Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give consumers a statutory 14-day cancellation right on distance contracts — but only until they expressly request the service to start. We were starting provisioning the moment Stripe confirmed the payment, which technically required a statutory waiver from the customer. The "14-day refund" wording we used didn't satisfy that requirement; it was a contractual refund offer on top of an unclear statutory situation. Workable, but not clean.
It bundled "evaluation" with "card validation". When a customer signs up, two things need to happen: we have to know their card is good, and they have to decide whether the platform suits them. The old model conflated those into one £10-£80 charge with a refund attached. That meant we kept the customer's money for ~14 days in a Stripe pending-refund state — fine for cash flow, less fine for the customer who's trying to decide whether to stay.
It created refund-policy theatre. Every "no quibble 14-day refund" promise is followed in practice by a quibble. We don't want to be in the business of deciding whether someone's reason for cancelling counts as "it didn't meet your expectations" — and customers don't want to negotiate it either.
What we replaced it with
Day 0: £1. That's a one-time charge. It validates the card and acts as a small, honest performance charge for the next 14 days of service. The £1 isn't refunded if you walk away during the trial — it's the price of the trial itself.
Day 14: prorated remainder of the month. If your trial ends on the 29th of a 31-day month, you're charged 2/31 of the plan price. If it ends on the 11th of a 30-day month, you're charged 20/30. Stripe handles the math; we show you the exact amount and date at signup.
Day 15+: 1st-of-month billing. From the first of the following calendar month onwards, you're charged the full plan price on the 1st of each month. Fleet-wide, batched. Easier to reconcile than scattered renewals.
You see all three dates and amounts at signup — and again in the Billing tab of your portal. No surprises buried in the small print.
What happens if a payment fails
We made the failed-payment timeline visible too:
- Day 0 to 7: Stripe retries automatically. Your site stays up. You get emails from us and from Stripe.
- Day 7: retries exhausted. Your site shows a "temporarily unavailable" page. Your portal stays open so you can update your card in one click.
- Day 21: your domain's DNS is taken down (NXDOMAIN). Your data and backups stay intact; portal still open.
- Day 44: final 7-day warning email goes out.
- Day 51: account and final backup snapshot permanently deleted. No undo.
A successful payment at any point before day 51 restores everything immediately — site, DNS, the lot. We'd much rather you fix the card than lose the account, and we built the timeline to make that the obvious choice.
What this means for you
If you're an existing customer who signed up before today: nothing changes. Your original 14-day refund promise is honoured indefinitely on a per-account basis — the flag is set in your customer config and refunds go through manual review.
If you're considering signing up: the price is the same as before, just with a £1 try-before-you-commit door at the front. The £1 is a real charge, not a hold; if you walk away on day 13 that's the only money you've spent. We'd rather you decide during the trial than during a refund negotiation.
The new policy is documented in full on the legal page and answered in the FAQ. The signup form carries the exact CCR 2013 waiver text in the tickbox. If anything still looks unclear, email hello@truecorehosting.com — we'll fix the copy if it's our wording, and answer the question if it's not.