What your plan limits, and what happens when you reach a limit

What your plan limits, and what happens when you reach a limit

This article answers two questions: how much of each thing your plan gives you, and what LobbyFlight actually does when you try to go past it. The short version of the second question is that the product blocks you and says so. It does not quietly drop the extra slide or shorten your language list — if you are over a limit, you find out at the moment you try, not later on the screen in the lobby.

Prices below are monthly. Paid yearly, the plans cost 690 €, 1490 € and 1990 €, which works out to ten months for twelve. Every checkout starts with a seven-day free trial.

The matrix

"Unlimited" is stored as 999 in the database. It is a ceiling nobody reaches, not a promise of infinity.

Airports: one included, the rest are paid add-ons

This is the limit most people misread, so it is worth stating plainly. Every plan — Basic included — comes with exactly one airport, the *included airport*. That is the airport your screens show by default and it costs nothing beyond the subscription.

Beyond that, airports are not a plan quota, they are add-ons. On Pro and Premium you can add as many as you like, and each additional one starts a recurring charge of 99 € per month as its own item on your Stripe subscription. There is no fixed upper number. On Basic you cannot add any: the plan simply does not allow additional airports.

You manage all of this under Portal → Airports. The button that adds one is labelled *Add airport*. On Basic it is greyed out, and hovering it shows *Upgrade to add more airports*; the panel underneath explains it in full — "Basic plan includes 1 airport. Upgrade to Pro or Premium to add additional airports for 99 €/month each." On Pro and Premium the button stays active permanently, because there is no count to run out of. What stops you is the price, not the plan.

Removing an add-on airport is equally concrete: any display currently showing that airport falls back to your included airport, and the 99 €/month charge stops with a pro-rata refund. The confirmation dialog says as much before you commit.

Displays: the number of screens you can run

Basic covers one screen, Pro three, Premium effectively any number. This is the limit that used to be described here as an airport limit, which it never was.

When every slot is in use, the displays page tells you directly: "Your pro plan covers 3 display(s). All slots are in use." You cannot create a fourth on Pro without upgrading first. Nothing you already built is affected — you are simply prevented from adding one more.

Which mode and layout each screen may use is also tied to the plan. TV mode and a single-column layout are available everywhere. Touch mode and the two-column layout start at Pro. The website widget and the three-column layout are Premium only. You pick both in Displays → open the display → General, where the options above your plan are shown but not selectable.

Info slides: zero, five, or as many as you want

Slides are the things your board shows between the flight lists. Basic includes none at all, Pro includes five, Premium is unlimited.

Slides live under Portal → Slide Pool. On Pro you will see a counter such as 3/5 next to the page heading, so the limit is visible before you hit it. When the fifth slide exists, the *Add slide* button is disabled, its tooltip reads *All slots used*, and an amber note explains: "Your plan covers 5 slides and all of them are in use." followed by an *Upgrade plan* link that takes you to billing. On Basic the same button is disabled from the start, with *Not in your plan* and the note "Your plan does not include own slides."

If something tries to create a slide past the limit anyway, the API refuses with a 403 and a readable message — "You have reached your limit of 5 info slides. Upgrade your plan to add more." on Pro, and a message explaining that info slides are not part of the plan on Basic. There is no silent truncation and no hidden sixth slide waiting in the wings.

Two further parts of slide work are tied to Pro. The richer design options — backgrounds, layouts, text styles, image placement — are available from Pro upward; on Basic you only see the upgrade note. And the Content tab inside the display editor, which decides which slides a particular screen plays, is also a Pro feature. A screen does not have to play every slide in the pool.

For reference, the default timings are two minutes of flights, then ten seconds per slide, with departures and arrivals swapping every thirty seconds. Rotation between departures and arrivals is not restricted by plan — it is on by default on every plan.

Languages: one, two, or all 42

Basic runs in a single language. Pro lets you pick two of the 42 available languages. Premium unlocks all 42.

Languages are set per screen, not globally: Displays → open the display → Behavior → Display Languages. The same panel holds the *Language Switch Interval*, which controls how long the board stays in each language before switching to the next; it defaults to 60 seconds and you can change it.

Try to save three languages on Pro and the settings API answers with a 403 and the message "Your pro plan allows 2 languages. Upgrade to access more." Nothing is saved and nothing is trimmed to fit — the request is rejected as a whole.

The 42 languages are English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Slovenian, Simplified Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, Korean, Dutch, Turkish, Greek, Romanian, Ukrainian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hindi, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, Traditional Chinese, Hebrew, Persian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Filipino, Bengali and Swahili. Arabic, Hebrew and Persian render right to left.

Weather: from Pro upward

The weather widget requires Pro or higher. Its toggle sits in Displays → open the display → Appearance, in the field labelled *Weather*, with the °C/°F switch beside it, so you can enable it on one screen and leave it off on another. On Basic, saving a display with weather turned on is refused with "Weather widget requires Pro plan or higher".

When it is on, the widget shows the current temperature and conditions, a three-day forecast, humidity and wind. The data comes from the OpenWeatherMap API and is refreshed every 30 minutes.

Refresh interval: set by your plan, not by you

Flight data refreshes hourly on Basic, every 30 minutes on Pro, and every five minutes on Premium. This is not a setting. The interval is derived from your subscription tier and it also determines how long flight data is cached, which is why there is no field for it anywhere in the portal. If you need faster updates, the only lever is the plan.

Analytics: Premium, and only for owners and managers

The analytics dashboard is Premium only. You reach it from the avatar menu in the top right rather than from the sidebar, and it is visible to organisation owners and managers — a concierge account does not see the entry at all. On Basic and Pro the page loads but shows an upgrade panel, and the underlying API answers with a 403.

What it measures, per display: uptime as a percentage derived from the heartbeats a screen sends, the number of views, the number of searches (which only applies to touch and website displays), the number of errors, and a day-by-day series of the same figures. The period is a free from-and-to date range with two date fields, pre-filled with the last 30 days.

White-label and API access

Premium adds two things that are best thought of as their own access level rather than a quantity. White-label removes LobbyFlight branding from the board and allows a custom domain; it has its own tab in the display editor and its own page at Portal → White-Label. API access lives at Portal → API and is available to organisation owners on Premium; on Basic and Pro that page shows only an upgrade panel.

Concierge trips are a separate allowance

If you use the concierge features, the number of trips per month is a hard limit of its own, independent of the screen and slide limits above. Premium activates the premium bundle automatically: 50 trips a month, with anything beyond that billed at 0.69 € per trip. On Basic and Pro you buy a package separately — Concierge S covers 30 trips for 39 €, M covers 100 for 89 €, and L covers 300 for 199 € per month.

Usage is visible on your dashboard as an allowance bar. It turns amber once you have used 80 % of the included trips, which is the warning; once you actually pass the included number, a separate line appears telling you how many trips are running as overage. Full detail is in Track a guest's flight.

Roles are a second kind of limit

Your plan decides what the organisation may do. Your role decides what you personally see. Analytics is open to owners and managers, while billing and the API key are restricted to the organisation owner, and a concierge account sees neither. If a colleague on Premium cannot find the analytics entry, check the role before checking the plan — see Roles and access.

What is not a plan limit

Two things that look like limits are not.

Offline detection. Every screen sends a heartbeat every five minutes, and a display is treated as offline after twelve minutes without one — two missed beats plus a little slack, which is why waiting only five minutes before worrying would produce false alarms. This works identically on every plan.

Logo and colours. Uploading a logo and setting your own colours is included in all three plans. Only the removal of LobbyFlight branding is reserved for Premium.

Downgrading

Nothing is deleted when you move to a smaller plan. A plan change writes only the limit columns on your account; your slides, language selections and displays stay exactly where they are. They are simply not all usable until you are back within the new limits, and the portal will tell you which ones when you next try to change something.

Additional airports are the exception worth planning for, because they are paid items rather than stored settings. If an add-on airport goes away, the screens that were showing it fall back to your included airport.

How the check works underneath

Access is decided by a single function that looks at your account before it looks at the feature. It first requires your subscription status to be active or trialing and the account to be active at all; only then does it evaluate the specific limit — the display count against max_displays, max_info_slides for slides, and the languages_enabled, weather_enabled, analytics_enabled and branding_level flags for the rest. Airports are handled separately through included_airport_code, can_add_airports and the add-on records. All of these columns are rewritten by the Stripe webhook when your plan changes, which is why a new limit takes effect without you doing anything.

Common questions

What happens if I exceed a limit? You are prevented from crossing it. The relevant button is disabled with an explanation, and the API returns a 403 with a readable message if something tries anyway.

Can I raise a single limit without changing plan? For airports, yes — every additional airport is an add-on at 99 €/month, available on Pro and Premium. Concierge trip packages are also bought separately. The screen, slide and language limits move only with the plan.

Are my settings deleted when I downgrade? No. They remain stored and become usable again if you upgrade later.

Is upgrading worth it? Moving from Basic to Pro costs 80 € more per month and brings the weather widget, five slides, a second language, three screens, touch mode and 30-minute refresh. Moving from Pro to Premium costs 50 € more and brings unlimited slides and screens, all 42 languages, five-minute refresh, analytics, white-label and API access.

Next steps

If a limit still does not behave the way this article describes, write to info@lobbyflight.com or call +43 650 753 1811.