Managing Your Subscription on the Flex Plan

Overview

For an overview on planning tests and managing usage on the Flex plan, read our "Guidance for Admins on the Flex Plan" article, and check out our Managing the Flex Plan for Admins course.

Click on the following header titles to skip to that section of the article:

• Your Subscription Page
• Managing Session Units for Workspaces
• How Disabling Flex Usage Works
• Subscription Notifications

Your Subscription Page

From your UserTesting account drop-down, select Settings.

In Settings, click the Subscription tab. 

The Subscription tab will show you information about your Flex plan subscription, such as the subscription end date and the number of days remaining in the subscription period. You also have quick visibility into the total usage testing capacity you've committed to by way of session units (SUs) and flex usage testing capacity data; click on the View usage and history link to manage your usage summary as well as to view which team members and workspaces use the subscription the most.

Managing Session Units for Workspaces

As an Admin, you may want to limit the number of Session Units (SUs) a workspace can use to better manage how team members consume SUs across your account. 

On the Subscription page, find the section titled Workspace Session Unit (SU) limits. This section shows the SUs available on your account that you can set as SU limits to your workspaces. You can also see the total SUs that have already been used in specific workspaces.

Click the Set Limit button to set an SU limit for a specific workspace.

Next, select the workspace from the drop-down menu, then enter the SU limit for that workspace. 

The dialog box will update to show how many SUs the workspace has already used.

On the Subscription page, the workspace SU limit will appear with the option to remove or edit the SU limit. You can also monitor how many SUs have been used from the limit amount in the workspace. 

If you remove the SU limit from a workspace, the workspace will still be able to launch tests by using SUs from the account pool. 

If a workspace has nearly reached its SU limit, a warning symbol appears under SU limit to inform you that the workspace needs more SUs or that you will need to remove the limit in order for team members to continue launching tests.

For workspaces, you can limit up to 100% of your available testing capacity—the amount of committed usage testing capacity you have purchased minus any SUs consumed by completed or pending sessions.

Vary the SU limits for each workspace, if you so desire. For example, if you have 100 SUs of available testing capacity, you could give Workspace A a limit of 25, give Workspace B a limit of 30, and leave workspace C without a limit.

This feature allows you to set a ceiling on the number of SUs a workspace can use. It does not guarantee that a particular workspace will be able to use all of the SUs up to the threshold.

For example, you may have some workspaces with limits and some without. If you turn off flex usage, it is possible that the workspaces without limits will consume all the SUs available on the account before the workspaces with restrictions have been able to reach their limit.

Ensuring that all workspaces within an account have limits makes it much more likely that each workspace will have access to all the SUs up to its limit.

How Disabling Flex Usage Works

Flex usage allows you to continue scheduling and launching tests after your account has consumed all SUs on your committed testing capacity. Accounts have the option to launch tests at flex usage rates, or purchase add-on usage. Any additional usage in flex will be totaled every month and billed for every quarter.

If you want to restrict your team’s ability to consume flex usage testing capacity once your committed usage testing capacity has been reached, you have the option to disable flex usage. Accounts may benefit from disabling flex if they want to ensure they stay on budget for the subscription period. Accounts may benefit from keeping flex enabled if they want to ensure that their team can continue testing even after surpassing the committed usage.

If plans change, admins can turn flex usage on and off for the account at any time during the subscription period.

Note: This feature is available only when flex has not already been disabled on the subscription. If a request has been made to disable flex at the subscription level (through UserTesting Support) then this self-service capability will not be shown. Flex usage is enabled by default on all accounts.

To disable flex, navigate to the Subscription page under Settings. Then, scroll down to the section titled Flex usage. 

Select the Do not allow flex usage radio button and click Save.

Tip: After disabling flex, we recommend that Admins track SU usage via the Usage and History Dashboard to help alleviate situations where users on the account are unable to launch tests or fill the desired number of sessions for a test.

To reenable flex usage, follow the same process and select the Allow flex usage option.

Subscription Notifications

Admins can opt in to email notifications for their subscription whenever a team member or any single test exceeds the set SUs for the month. To turn on notifications and set the threshold for SUs, navigate to the Subscription page under Settings. Then, scroll down to the section titled Subscription Notifications. 

There are a few ways UserTesting notifies team members on the account when they cannot launch tests that would go over the committed usage.

1. When a user with test-creation permissions on an account with zero SUs left signs into UserTesting, they will see a banner at the top of the Dashboard informing them of the state of the account. Users can still create test drafts and queue them up.
2. A user with test-creation permissions creates a test and edits the audience they wish to receive the test. If the user selects more contributors than the available number of SUs allow, a banner notification informs them of the state of the account and suggests reducing the number of contributors, changing the contributor network type, or contacting their admin to purchase additional testing capacity.
3. A user with test-creation permissions creates a test and selects a saved audience. Should the user select more contributors than the available number of SUs will allow, a banner notification informs them of the state of the account and advises them on how many contributors they can add to the test based on available testing capacity.
4. A user with test-creation permissions goes to add contributors to a launched test. Should the user select more contributors than the allowable number of SUs, they see a banner notification informing them of the state of the account. This banner also advises them on how many contributors they can add based on available testing capacity. 

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