Purchases & plans

Poker Club HQ is free to use, with paid plans that lift the player limit and add club features. This page explains how a purchase connects to your account, what happens on your other devices, and what to do if something looks missing.

The one idea worth understanding first:

Your purchase belongs to your App Store or Google Play account. Your features follow your Poker Club HQ account. Signing in is what connects the two.

Almost everything below follows from that.

The plans

Free — no account needed:

• Works offline
• 10 players per tournament
• Customizable timer screen — colors, fonts, widgets
• Custom alerts — your own audio clips and text-to-speech
• Editable event log driving stats, payouts, and chops
• A free account adds realtime sync and the QR spectator view

Home adds:

• 30 players per tournament
• Custom background and chip images
• Shared control — co-hosts can run the timer and record buy-ins and knockouts from their own devices

Club adds:

• Unlimited players
• League leaderboards for all tournaments in a folder
• Points, money, and attendance stats and charts

Commercial use adds a license for casinos, card rooms, and pub leagues, plus priority support.

Home and Club are available as a monthly subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase. Open Upgrade from the navigation drawer to see current pricing for your region.

The Upgrade screen

Upgrade in the navigation drawer opens Choose your plan — every tier, on two tabs:

• Monthly — the subscriptions, with the Free plan alongside them for comparison
• Lifetime — the one-time purchases

Every tier stays on the list whatever you already own, so the “Everything in Home” line on the Club card always has a Home card above it to refer to. What changes is the button:

• Current plan — the tier you’re on. Its card carries a highlighted border, and the screen scrolls to it when you open it, so you can see where you stand without hunting.
• Included in your plan — a tier a lifetime purchase already covers. It’s there for reference; there’s nothing to buy.
• A price — anything you could actually move to, up or down.

Buying a plan

You need to be signed in to buy. If you’re signed out, the plan buttons read Sign in to purchase and take you to sign-in first.

That’s deliberate, and it’s in your interest: it means your purchase is tied to your Poker Club HQ account from the moment you make it, so it can never end up stranded on a single device.

Your features unlock immediately after purchase — no restart needed.

Changing plans

Tap the plan you want on the Upgrade screen; the store handles the rest.

Moving up — say Home to Club — takes effect right away, and the store prorates the difference against the month you’ve already paid for.

Moving down — Club back to Home — takes effect at your next renewal. The app confirms this before it goes through, and the message afterwards says the same: your current plan keeps running until the renewal date, and you’re billed the new price from then on. Nothing is lost in the meantime.

Note

Buying a lifetime plan never cancels a monthly subscription — the store won’t do it, and the app can’t. See Managing or cancelling a subscription below.

Using your plan on your other devices

Sign in with the same Poker Club HQ account. That’s all.

Your plan follows your account, not your hardware, so it works on your phone, your tablet, and the web at the same time.

Caution

Don’t start with Restore purchases on the second device. Restoring while signed out attaches the purchase to that device instead of your account, and your other devices will show the free plan until you sign in again. Sign in first — you almost certainly won’t need Restore at all.

Restore purchases

You only need this in a few situations:

• You reinstalled the app and your purchase isn’t showing
• You upgraded from the old Poker Timer app but deleted it before installing Poker Club HQ
• You’re setting up a device where you can’t sign in yet

Sign in first, then tap Restore purchases at the bottom of the Upgrade screen. In that order nothing can be pulled away from your account.

Restore asks the store for the purchases made with your App Store or Google Play account. It doesn’t charge you anything, and it can’t create a purchase you never made.

Signing out

Signing out returns the app to the free plan on that device. Nothing is lost — your purchase stays with your account and with the store account that paid for it — and signing back in brings everything straight back.

Upgrading from the old Poker Timer app

If you bought Advanced Player and Table Management, Customization, Remote Control, or The Works in the old Poker Timer app, those purchases are still yours and the features they unlocked stay unlocked at no charge.

When you install Poker Club HQ over the old app, it recognizes them automatically — you don’t need to tap anything, and you’re not asked to pay again. The app tells you what carried over the first time you open it, and the Upgrade screen shows it too.

Two things to know:

• Sign in to use those features on your other devices and on the web. Without an account they stay on the one device.
• If you deleted the old app before installing Poker Club HQ, there was nothing left for us to find. Tap Restore purchases on the Upgrade screen and they’ll come back.

Owners of the old app’s purchases also get reduced pricing on Home and Club. You’ll see it applied automatically on the Upgrade screen.

For everything else about the switch, including how to import a tournament from the old app at any time, see Coming from the old app.

If you bought Poker Timer Pro

Poker Timer Pro was a separate app, so its purchase sits in its own App Store receipt — Poker Club HQ can’t see it the way it sees purchases made in the old free app. One step connects them:

Open Poker Timer Pro and sign in, or create an account if you don’t have one. The app offers to do this when you open it. That attaches your Pro features to your Poker Club HQ account, and from then on they travel with the account — Poker Club HQ on any device, and the web.

You only need to do it once. Poker Timer Pro keeps working exactly as it always has, whether you sign in or not.

Managing or cancelling a subscription

Subscriptions are managed by whoever you bought them from, not inside Poker Club HQ:

• Apple — Settings → your name → Subscriptions
• Google Play — Play Store → Payments & subscriptions
• Web — the billing portal linked from the Upgrade screen

The Upgrade screen has a Manage subscription link that takes you to the right place.

Caution

Deleting the app does not cancel a subscription, and neither does deleting your Poker Club HQ account. Cancel through the store, or billing continues.

If you buy a lifetime plan while a monthly subscription is running, the store won’t cancel the subscription for you. The app spots this and shows a notice with a link to cancel it — worth acting on, or you’ll pay for both.

One case deserves a second look: if the running subscription is for a higher tier than the lifetime plan you’re buying — a Club subscription and a Home lifetime, say — the app warns you before the purchase. Cancelling that subscription gives up the extra features it includes, and the lifetime plan won’t replace them.

If a payment fails

When a renewal payment doesn’t go through, the store doesn’t cut you off immediately — it keeps your plan running and retries for a few days. That’s a window where nothing looks wrong but something needs fixing, so the app says so in three places:

• A Payment problem notice at the top of the Upgrade screen, naming the date access ends if the retries run out
• A Payment problem tile in the navigation drawer, with the menu icon turning red so you notice it from anywhere
• A dialog when you open the app, which stays quiet for three days if you dismiss it

All three link straight to your store’s subscription management page, which is where a card is updated. Once the payment goes through, the warnings clear themselves the next time you switch back to the app — there’s nothing to tap.

A subscription you cancelled yourself isn’t a payment problem, so it doesn’t trigger any of this.

Things that surprise people

“I already paid in the old app — why does it show plans?” It’s showing what you could add, not asking you to pay again. The message at the top of the Upgrade screen confirms what you already own, and those features stay unlocked.

“I bought on my iPhone. Why does my iPad show Free?” Sign in on the iPad with the same Poker Club HQ account.

“I bought on iPhone. Can I restore it on Android?” No. Apple and Google can’t see each other’s purchases. Sign in with the same Poker Club HQ account instead — your plan follows the account across platforms, which is exactly what accounts are for.

“Can I buy without an account?” No, and that’s a feature: a purchase tied to an account can be recovered. One tied only to a device can’t.

“I can’t add more than 10 players.” That’s the free plan’s limit. Home allows 30 and Club is unlimited, and the alert points at whichever one covers the number you’re actually trying to seat — buying in forty people takes you straight to Club rather than to a Home plan that would block you again. If you’re helping run someone else’s tournament, the limit is theirs, not yours — they’d need to upgrade.

What counts toward the limit is the players who have entered this tournament, still in or already out — not how many names your Player Directory holds. Someone who rebuys or reenters was already counted and isn’t counted twice. And a tournament using basic (EZ) player data, where you track a headcount instead of a player list, isn’t limited at all, on any plan.

“I was charged but nothing unlocked.” Make sure you’re signed in to the account you bought with, then tap Restore purchases. If it still doesn’t appear, get in touch with the email address on your Poker Club HQ account and we’ll sort it out.