Two plans
Every account is on a plan. A plan is two things: how many reels you may make in a month, and which of the playground's capabilities you may use.
| Free | Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Reels a month | 5 | 50 |
| Capabilities, of 90 | 40 — everything the playground shipped with | All 90 |
| Pieces | Circles, connections, panels, steps, words, callouts, recap, payoff | + figures, meters, bar charts, line charts, timelines |
| Colour | Five accents and the backdrop shelf | + any exact colour, hand-picked grounds |
| Frame | 9:16 | + square and landscape |
| Brand | Carries the Made with Diffreel mark | No mark, your own typeface, a kit and a library |
| Earlier versions of a reel | — | The last twenty |
The full row-by-row comparison, with the current price, is on /pricing. Which plan you are on is at the top of your account.
What counts against your month
One thing only: making a new reel. That is the first save of a reel that did not exist before.
| Action | Costs a reel? |
|---|---|
| Saving a new reel for the first time | Yes — one. |
| Editing a reel and saving again | No. Ever, any number of times. |
| Renaming a reel | No. |
| Downloading a reel, or saving its cover | No. |
| Drawing without saving | No — a draft costs nothing. |
| Deleting your account | No, and it gives nothing back. |
The month is a calendar month in UTC, and it resets on the first. There is no rollover: two reels made in a five-reel month do not make the next month seven.
What happens at the limit
The counter in the playground's top bar reads 5/5 this month and turns red once there is nothing left. Save reel is then refused with a message saying so — and the reel you are drawing is not lost: it stays as a draft in the browser, and you can download it.
You are emailed once, the first time it happens in a month — once per month, not once per attempt.
Hitting the monthly limit
- What changes
- New reels are refused until the month turns over or the plan changes. Everything you already have stays fully editable.
- Who sees it
- Only you.
- When to do it
- Not something you do — but it is worth knowing that a draft survives it, so there is no reason to rush a save.
- How to undo it
- Wait for the month, or move to a plan with a bigger allowance. Raising a limit applies to your very next save, including mid-month.
If your plan gets smaller
This is the rule worth reading before you buy anything, because it decides what happens to work you have already done:
- Nothing is deleted, ever. A plan change touches no reel.
- Deleting is always allowed. Any edit that reduces what a reel uses will save, whatever plan you are on.
- A new reel starts from the plan you are on now. The grandfathering is per reel, against what that reel already contained.
- Three things go at once — the brand kit, the saved library and the list of earlier versions. They belong to the account rather than to a reel, so there is nothing in a reel to grandfather. A reel that had a kit applied keeps its own copy of the wordmark, ground and typeface.
If a save is refused because of the plan, the message names the capability and the reel it is in — not a generic refusal.