Downgrades
Downgrading drops you to a lower plan without losing your account. This article covers how to downgrade and what happens to your features, limits, and in-progress cleanups.
How to downgrade
Downgrades go through Shopify's billing system:
- Inside CSVwise, click Manage subscription on the plan line at the top of the app. (On Free the same link reads Upgrade.)
- Shopify shows the plan picker with your current plan highlighted. Free, Pro, and Studio are all listed.
- Pick the lower plan (Pro → Free, Studio → Pro or Free).
- Approve the change. Moving to Free is $0, so there's nothing to pay.
The downgrade takes effect immediately. Shopify switches your subscription the moment you select the new plan (you only ever hold one subscription at a time), and CSVwise applies the new row cap and feature set right away. Billing still runs to the end of the cycle you've already paid for, so you're not charged again, but plan an in-flight bulk job around the new limits rather than expecting the old ones to last until the renewal date.
Studio → Pro
You keep:
- Unlimited cleanups.
- The store-match check against your live catalog.
You lose:
- The 50,000-row cap. Pro is capped at 5,000 rows per file.
If you regularly clean files over 5,000 rows, downgrading to Pro will start blocking those files: Stage 1 shows a warning banner with Try a different file and See upgrade options. You'd then need to keep files under the 5,000-row cap or upgrade back to Studio.
Pro → Free
You keep:
- Your account and shop record.
- Whatever Free-plan credits you had remaining when you originally upgraded (most likely zero: if you upgraded to Pro after using up your Free credits, downgrading doesn't refill them).
You lose:
- Unlimited cleanups. You're back to the 3-lifetime-credit limit. Most Pro merchants are post-Free with zero credits remaining, so usually the next cleanup attempt hits the "out of credits" panel.
- The store-match check. Free skips it.
- The 5,000-row cap. Free is capped at 1,500 rows per file.
The Pro → Free downgrade makes sense in two cases:
- You finished a one-time bulk import on Pro and don't need ongoing cleanups.
- You want to keep your account state without paying. For example, you might come back to Pro later.
Studio → Free
Same effects as Studio → Pro and Pro → Free, combined. You lose the store-match check, you lose the larger row caps, and your cleanup count drops to whatever Free credits you have left (usually zero post-upgrade).
In-progress cleanups during a downgrade
A "cleanup" is one pass through the four-stage flow. If you have a cleanup in progress when the downgrade takes effect:
- The cleanup uses the plan you started it under. CSVwise locks your plan in when you confirm Start AI column mapping?, not when you upload. Downgrading after that point doesn't change the row cap or feature set for that file.
- So a 5,000-row Pro cleanup already on the Fix issues stage can finish and download even if you switch to Free in another tab.
In practice this rarely matters, because the Fix issues stage completes in seconds, but it's the rule the system follows.
Re-upgrading
You can re-upgrade at any time:
- Inside CSVwise, click Upgrade.
- Pick the plan you want.
- Approve the recurring charge.
The new plan is active immediately. There's no "must wait X days after downgrade" cooldown.
If you re-upgrade during the same billing period you downgraded in, Shopify's billing system handles the prorating so you're not double-billed.
What downgrading does not affect
- Files you've already downloaded. Cleaned CSVs are yours. The plan you used to create them doesn't matter to Shopify's importer.
- Products you've already imported. Imports run by Shopify's built-in importer aren't affected by your CSVwise plan in any way.
- Pricing for the next billing period. Once you've downgraded, Shopify charges you the new plan's price. There's no surprise full-plan charge.