Managoat

Managoat is the hosted Fountain. Fountain is the open-source engine, and its name is on the CLI, the API, the SDK and this manual. Everything here applies to Managoat unless a page says it is for a self-hosted server.

Start billing

This guide shows you how to start billing, and why you probably must not.

Leave it off unless you run Fountain commercially

Billing is off by default (CREDITS_ENABLED=false), and the compose file pins it off as well. On your own instance it is a meter with no till. Leave it off, unless you run Fountain commercially and you configured Stripe.

With billing off, no account has a balance and nothing burns. Fountain refuses nothing. Nothing that looks like billing appears in the UI, in the admin panel or in the API.

What billing is

Credits are the product. Each account holds a balance in cents. A new account starts with CREDIT_OPENING_CENTS ($5) for CREDIT_OPENING_DAYS (14). Each turn burns CREDIT_TURN_HOUR_CENTS an hour. A phone number and an inbox each cost a month of rent up front. A message costs its price. A tenant buys more credit in packs. There are no plans and no subscription. See Prices.

A tenant may run as many sandboxes at once as the balance funds, between SANDBOX_CAP_FLOOR and SANDBOX_CAP_CEILING, and the whole deployment stops at SANDBOX_FLEET_CEILING. Set the fleet ceiling to what your sandbox provider plan allows.

Start it

  1. Set the prices. CREDIT_TURN_HOUR_CENTS defaults to 25. Set CREDIT_NUMBER_CENTS, CREDIT_INBOX_CENTS, CREDIT_EMAIL_MESSAGE_CENTS and CREDIT_SMS_MESSAGE_CENTS if you charge for contacts. Unset, those lines cost nothing.
  2. Configure Stripe. The Stripe integration guide covers STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET and the three webhook events.
  3. Set CREDITS_ENABLED=true and deploy. The pricer looks back seven days, so it prices the turns from the last week too. Comp or credit the accounts you do not want to charge for them.

Give the accounts you already have their opening credit

An account that verified its email while billing was off holds nothing. It gets a refusal at the first spend the moment you turn billing on. Give those accounts the opening credit in the admin panel, or with the admin API:

curl -X POST "$FOUNTAIN_URL/api/admin/users/$USER_ID/credits" \

  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ADMIN_KEY" \

  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \

  -d '{"cents": 1000, "note": "opening credit, billing started"}'

Verify it worked

Sign in as an account that is not an admin. The billing page shows the balance and the packs. Start a conversation and wait for the turn to end. The balance falls at the next run of the pricer, at most ten minutes later.