Pricing page vs terms: six mismatches I keep finding on launch day
For the last month I've been reading the pricing pages of freshly launched products the way a person about to pay would: the plan card, the toggle, the FAQ, and then the terms and the refund policy. The most common money problem I find is not a broken checkout. It's two pages of the same site describing the same plan differently.
None of this crashes the app, so nobody reports it. A careful buyer just stops at the moment you want them to pay and wonders which line is true. And if there is ever a dispute, the line that counts is usually the one in the terms, not the friendly one on the card. Below are the six mismatches I see most, with real examples (product names removed), and a 10-minute check you can run on your own site.
1"Unlimited" and "lifetime" on the card, a limit in the terms
This is the one I meet most. The top plan lists "unlimited" something, and the terms say every plan has strict limits, with the top plan named in the same sentence. Or the FAQ promises unlimited use of a feature and the plan table caps it at 1,000 a month. Or the card says "lifetime" and the terms say updates stop after one year.
The cause is almost always timing. The terms were written once, often from a template or by an AI builder, when the product had different plans. The pricing page has been edited ten times since.
How to check
Search your pricing page and FAQ for unlimited, lifetime, forever and every plan. For each hit, search the terms for the same feature. If the terms mention a limit, a fair-use rule or an end date, either the card or the terms has to change.
2One-time on the card, auto-renew in the terms
A pass sold as "one-time, no auto-renew", and terms that say all paid tiers are billed on a recurring basis until cancelled. The founder knows the pass is one-time. The buyer who reads the terms before paying does not, and the bank that handles a chargeback reads the terms too.
How to check
List every way to pay you: monthly, yearly, one-time pass, credits, lifetime deal. Then read the billing section of your terms and ask of each one: does this sentence describe it correctly? A single added line ("the $X pass is a one-time payment and does not renew") usually fixes it.
3A refund promise that the refund policy doesn't back
Three versions of this come up. The pricing page says "7-day money back" and the refund policy says payments are non-refundable. The refund policy describes plans the site no longer sells, or a downgrade to a plan that isn't on the pricing page. Or the terms say nothing at all about cancelling and refunds, while the site takes a monthly subscription.
How to check
Search the whole site for refund, money back, cancel and guarantee. Every place that mentions them should say the same number of days and the same conditions, and the plan names in the refund policy should be the ones you sell today.
4The page's own math
Here the pricing page disagrees with itself. A yearly toggle that says "save up to 35%" while the best plan works out to 32%. "2 months free" on a yearly price that actually gives away almost four. A plan card promising 250 images next to a credit table that charges 2 credits per image, which makes it 125. The same plan shown at two different prices on two pages.
How to check
Take a calculator and redo every percentage, every "N months free" and every "about N items" on the page. Then open each page that shows a price (home, pricing, checkout, FAQ, terms) and compare the numbers and the currency. Euros on the homepage and dollars in the terms is more common than you'd think.
5Features on the plan card that say "coming soon" elsewhere
The trial promises a result "in minutes", and the feature that produces that result has a "coming soon" badge on the features page. The homepage says a database comes with every plan, and the cheapest plan in the table doesn't include one. The home page sells a service from a plan that is itself marked as not available yet.
How to check
Read your plan cards feature by feature and click through to where each feature is described. Anything with "soon", "beta" or "waitlist" next to it should not be listed as included in a plan people can pay for today, or it should carry the same label on the card.
6Speed and guarantee words
"Instant", "real-time", "the moment it happens", "guaranteed for 10 years". The headline uses them, and further down the FAQ says the check runs once every 24 hours, or the terms say there is no guarantee of availability. Good terms often admit the limit honestly. The problem is only that the headline promises more than the terms are willing to stand behind.
How to check
Find every time-and-certainty word in your hero and plan cards, and look for the real number in the FAQ, docs and terms. If the real number is "daily", say "daily" at the top, or show the faster interval on the plan that has it.
7The 10-minute check
Open four tabs: pricing page, FAQ, terms, refund policy. Read them in that order, straight after each other, as if you were about to enter a card number. For every plan, write down four things from each page: what it costs, how it renews, what it includes, and how to get money back. Where two pages give different answers, fix the one that is out of date. Then set a reminder to repeat this whenever you change a price or add a plan, because that's when the pages drift apart again.
Want a second pair of eyes on the money path?
Everything above can be read from outside, without an account. What can't: what the checkout actually charges, what the receipt and emails say, whether a cancelled plan really stops billing, and whether a refund removes access.
Run the free outside scan See what a full audit coversPricing against terms, checkout and refunds are part of the manual checks in a Pre-Launch Audit, done with real test accounts and screen recordings of every step. More guides: All guides.