Why only three plans?
Earlier ladders had six tiers with overlapping bands -- analysis paralysis without doing anyone a favor. Studio covers anyone whose recordings need to be defensible end-to-end (agencies, studios, producers, music, documentary). Premium adds chain-of-custody for regulated and evidentiary work. Dedicated is single-tenant infrastructure. Every adjacent jump is a different kind of buyer, not a different amount of the same thing.
How does the 30-day money-back guarantee work?
Cancel Studio or Premium within 30 days of your first charge for a full refund -- no questions, no clawback of exports you've already produced. After 30 days, prorated refund of the unused portion of your billing cycle on cancellation. Annual plans get the same 30-day window.
What does the monthly hour cap mean?
Hours = studio time, summed across every session you host in the billing month -- wall clock from session start to session end, recording or not. Joining someone else's session as a guest never counts. Cap resets the 1st of each month (UTC). Studio is 40h/mo, Premium is 100h/mo. Sessions in flight when you hit the cap finish naturally; new sessions get a 'limit reached' message until the next month or an upgrade.
What's a team seat?
A team seat is a person in your organization who can log in and host their own sessions -- producers, hosts, editors, admins. Studio and Premium each include 5 seats; extras are $40/mo on Studio, set per contract on Premium. Guests joining a session via invite link are NOT seats -- bring as many guests into a session as the participant cap allows, no extra charge.
Seats vs participants -- what's the difference?
Different limits. A 'seat' is a paid login on your team. A 'participant' is anyone live in a single recording session, including guests. A 5-seat Studio plan can still host an 8-person session if 3 of them are guests via invite link. Seat changes pro-rate on your next invoice.
What's Studio for?
Studio is the entry-level tier for any kind of professional capture: podcasts, voice-over, audiobook, documentary, music, even small legal interviews. Same recording engine across the board with separate stems, bit-perfect audio, take markers, and FCP XML / AAF interchange. Pick your persona at signup and the dashboard tunes its vocabulary + defaults to match -- but every persona has access at this tier.
What's Premium for?
Premium is for capture that has to survive scrutiny: BigLaw internal investigations, deposition prep, witness interviews, audiobook contracts that require chain-of-custody. Adds exhibits with timestamped on-display markers, witness consent declarations, evidence-bundle export (recording + transcript + audit log + exhibits + consent + SHA-256 manifest in one signed ZIP), and privilege-aware redaction. Sales-assisted onboarding -- public price, setup call before launch.
What's the difference between Studio and Premium?
Same recording engine. Premium adds the artifact ecosystem around the recording -- exhibits, witness consent, evidence-bundle export, hash manifest, privilege markers -- and the dedicated onboarding to wire it into your compliance workflow. If your recordings ever land in a discovery production set, in a regulator handover, or in a third-party audit, you need Premium. If they don't, Studio is enough.
What's the difference between Premium and Dedicated?
Premium is multi-tenant -- your team shares CraterSync's cloud infrastructure with other customers, isolated by tenancy controls (RLS, per-org encryption keys). Dedicated is single-tenant -- your own isolated Postgres, object storage, and KMS key, on infrastructure we operate solely for you. Pick Premium if you need chain-of-custody and team seats; pick Dedicated when your compliance team needs a custom DPA, your own audit, or an isolated stack.
What's included in Right to Review on Dedicated Pro?
Annual security review by your team or your chosen security firm. We provide system access, answer questionnaires, walk your team through our security model, and remediate critical findings. 16 hours of review support are included; additional hours bill at standard consulting rates. Enterprise tier includes extended hours.