Free or Studio Plan: what actually changes

A free page is a real page. It is indexed by Google, it can be found and it can be written to. Nothing about it is a trial. So the question is not whether the free version works, it is whether the extra features are worth nine dollars a month to you. This chapter lays both versions out side by side, including the part most people want to know and do not ask: what happens to your page if you stop paying.

1. What you get for free, permanently

• Your name, a portrait photo and a short bio
• Your discipline and medium
• Up to eight works in your gallery
• Your city and neighborhood, without the exact address
• One external link, usually a website or Instagram
• A contact button, so any collector can message you
• A page that Google indexes on its own, separate from everyone else’s

That last point is the one people underestimate. Your page is not a card buried inside a list. It is its own address that can rank on your name and your medium.

2. What the Studio Plan adds

Nine dollars a month. Everything above, plus:

Open studio days

You set the dates you are open and visitors see them on your page. This is the feature the whole plan hangs on. A collector who is browsing on a Tuesday and can see that you are open on Saturday behaves completely differently from one who has to ask.

Your exact address and a map

Free pages show the neighborhood. Paid pages show the door. Someone planning an afternoon of visits needs to know whether two studios are ten minutes apart or an hour.

Participation in HEYATELIER Weekends

When a group of studios in your city opens on the same weekend, paid pages are the ones in it.

Unlimited works

The eight slot limit disappears. Useful if you work in series, or if the eight best pieces do not show the range.

All your links

Website, Instagram, your shop, wherever else you sell.

A long statement and cv

Exhibitions, education, residencies, publications. Not everyone needs it, but if you have a record it belongs on the page.

Visitor and message statistics

How many people looked, how many wrote. This is how you find out whether the photo on top is doing its job.

A higher position in browse results

Paid pages sort above free pages within the same city and neighborhood.

3. How to upgrade

1. Log in and open your dashboard.
2. Go to your account settings and choose the Studio Plan.
3. Pay through Stripe. Card details go to Stripe, never to us.
4. The extra fields appear on your edit screen straight away. Nothing is applied for you, so go and fill them in.

You are billed monthly and you can cancel from the same screen. There is no minimum term and no cancellation fee.

4. What happens if you stop paying

This is the part worth reading twice, because it is the reason most people hesitate. Nothing is deleted.

• Your open studio dates disappear from the public page and sit in your own account as unpublished.
• Works above the free limit of eight go to unpublished as well, newest first. They stay in your account exactly as they were.
• Your exact address, your extra links, your long statement and your cv come off the public page and stay saved.
• Your page itself stays online, at the same address, with your bio and your first eight works.

If you subscribe again later, everything comes back as it was. You do not rebuild anything.

5. When it is worth it, and when it is not

Stay free if you are not planning to let anyone into your studio this year, you have fewer than eight works you are happy with, or you simply want to exist somewhere findable while you make more work. That is a completely reasonable use of this platform and we would rather have you here for free than not at all.

Upgrade if you are willing to open your door, even once a season. The plan is built around visits. Every feature in it exists to get a real person standing in your studio, and that is where the sales happen.

One honest note on the maths. At nine dollars a month you spend a hundred and eight dollars a year. A single small work sold in your studio covers several years of it. But if you never open the door, none of the paid features do anything for you, and you should not pay for them.