Your first week on the trial

CloudTally starts every new organisation on a 21-day Pro trial. You see everything Pro shows — full forecast, waste drilldown, rightsizing recommendations, on-demand sync. On day 21 the workspace switches to Free. Nothing breaks; some capabilities just stop showing detail.

This walkthrough gives you a concrete answer by day 7. Each day is about ten minutes. You can compress it into an afternoon if you have time, or follow it as written.

Day 1 — Connect

Get your first project visible. The whole point of CloudTally is to see what you're actually spending; everything else is downstream of that.

• Follow Connect your Hetzner project. About five minutes.
• Wait for the initial sync to finish, then open the dashboard.
• Note the This month figure. Compare it to what you'd have guessed. Most people are within 20%, but some are off by more — that's the first useful signal.

Done when: the dashboard shows real numbers and the sync status reads Synced.

Day 2 — Explore costs

Find out where the money is going.

• Open the Cost explorer.
• In Overview, look at the top drivers list. The top three usually account for more than half of spend.
• Switch to What Changed. The waterfall chart shows which resources moved between the previous and current periods. Anything unexpectedly red there is worth investigating.
• Switch to Top Drivers. Filter by Server to see which servers cost the most. Then by Volume — long-lived volumes are a common surprise.

Done when: you can name the top three cost contributors in your account without checking.

Day 3 — First budget

Make spend changes visible before they hit invoices.

• Follow Set your first budget. Budget at 80% of last month's spend, monthly period, one email recipient.
• Open the dashboard again. The Budget risk card now reflects the new budget.

Done when: there's at least one active budget and the dashboard shows its status.

Day 4 — Review waste

CloudTally flags resources that are likely unused: idle servers, unattached volumes, orphaned snapshots.

• Open Resources. The page shows your full inventory with monthly cost per resource.
• Look at the dashboard's idle indicator: on Free, you'll see the count of idle resources. On the trial (Pro), you can drill into each one with a projected monthly saving. Note which view you find more useful — this is one of the clearest Pro-vs-Free distinctions and a big factor in the day-7 decision.
• If you find an idle server right now, stop it. The savings start immediately.

Done when: you've either resolved at least one waste finding, or written down which ones you're choosing to keep and why.

Day 5 — Invite your team

CloudTally is more useful when more than one person is looking at it. Specifically:

• A finance person who can see the monthly view and answer "how much do we spend on Hetzner?" without pinging engineering.
• A second engineer who can react to budget alerts when you're on holiday.

Send invitations from Settings → Members. Pick the right role: Owner for billing access, Admin for everything except member management, Member for day-to-day use, Viewer for read-only.

Done when: at least one other person has accepted an invite.

Day 6 — Check recommendations

CloudTally generates rightsizing recommendations from observed CPU usage on your servers.

• Open Recommendations. On the trial (Pro), each recommendation includes the suggested smaller server type, the observed utilisation, and the estimated monthly saving. On Free, you'll see only the count.
• Pick the highest-saving recommendation. Read the reasoning. Decide whether to implement, snooze, or dismiss it.
• If you implement one, note the saving — that's a concrete return CloudTally generated this week.

Done when: you've reviewed every open recommendation at least once.

Day 7 — The decision

You now have a week of CloudTally data and a working sense of every capability. Make the Pro-vs-Free call.

Pro is usually worth it if you said yes to any of these:

• The smart forecast or projected month-end told you something you didn't already know.
• The waste drilldown surfaced savings worth more than the monthly Pro fee.
• A rightsizing recommendation saved you money.
• On-demand sync (refresh on click rather than waiting for the hourly sync) saved you time during an incident.
• More than 62 days of cost history would have helped you compare against quarters or years.

If none of those landed, Free is the right call. You keep one connection, the dashboard, 62 days of history, and the count-only views. The trial automatically switches the workspace to Free on day 21 — you don't have to do anything to opt out.

See the Plans and pricing reference for the full Free vs Pro comparison, and What happens when the 21-day trial ends for the mechanics of the transition.

What to do next

If you upgrade to Pro now, the trial countdown stops and Pro features stay on permanently. Open Settings → Billing to upgrade.

If you stay on Free, you don't need to do anything — the transition happens automatically. Read What happens when the 21-day trial ends so there are no surprises.

If you're undecided, the most useful next page is Investigate a cost spike — the one workflow that's hardest to do without CloudTally.