docs: clarify how free credits are structured in special terms

[minekansu]

Changes

Clarifies the Startup plan discounts section of the contract rules handbook page, which previously conflated the two different ways free credits get structured. It now spells out both explicitly, since they're added at different times and treated differently at contract start:

1. Fixed amount included in the 12-month term — added alongside the prepaid credits at contract start.
2. Coverage for a specific number of months (startup roll-off case) — added now to cover the promised period, topped up if needed, with any remaining balance removed once the prepaid credits go in at contract start.

Also adds guidance to default to option 2 when the Special Terms wording is ambiguous.

Why

A recent renewal surfaced that the existing wording ("either applied before the contract term or included in the 12 month credit amount") wasn't clear enough about which structure applies or how each behaves at contract start, so account owners were unsure how to handle free credits. This makes the distinction explicit.

Checklist

• I've read the docs and/or content style guides.
• Words are spelled using American English
• Use relative URLs for internal links
• I've checked the pages added or changed in the Vercel preview build
• If I moved a page, I added a redirect in vercel.json

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Created with PostHog from a Slack thread

[github-actions]

Deploy preview

Status	Details	Updated (UTC)
🟢 Ready	View preview	Jul 15, 2026 10:11PM

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Vale prose linter → found 13 errors, 16 warnings, 0 suggestions in your markdown

Full report → Copy the linter results into an LLM to batch-fix issues.

Linter being weird? Update the rules!

contents/handbook/growth/sales/contract-rules.md — 13 errors, 16 warnings, 0 suggestions

Line	Severity	Message	Rule
7:219	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
18:46	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
19:46	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
20:46	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
21:54	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
23:123	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
31:56	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
54:27	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
58:206	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
69:182	warning	'TAEs' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
69:259	warning	'CSMs' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
101:27	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
124:82	warning	Use 'X' instead of 'x'.	Vale.Terms
152:274	warning	'CSMs' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
168:44	warning	'timeframe' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
168:155	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
186:4	warning	'Uptime SLA' heading should be in sentence case, and product names should be capitalized.	PostHogBase.SentenceCase
193:201	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
204:17	warning	'automations' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
228:97	warning	'ie' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
229:52	warning	'ie' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
234:36	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	PostHogBase.EnDash
298:97	warning	'sigificant' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
302:5	warning	'Varying terms for trials and proofs of concept (POCs) for prospective customers' heading should be in sentence case, and product names should be capitalized.	PostHogBase.SentenceCase
302:53	warning	'POCs' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
304:75	warning	'POCs' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
308:41	warning	'POCs' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
320:48	warning	'NDAs' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling
320:128	warning	'NDAs' is a possible misspelling.	PostHogBase.Spelling

[github-actions]

Bundle report

Total JS (gzip)

6.31 MiB (+0.2 KiB / +0.0%)

Eager graph (modules shipped in each entrypoint's initial chunks)

Entrypoint	Eager size	Budget	Modules
✅ app	15.60 MiB (+2.0 KiB / +0.0%)	report-only	1945

Largest modules in the app closure

Module	Size
css ./node_modules/.pnpm/css-loader@5.2.7_webpack@5.101.3/node_modules/css-loader/dist/cjs.js??ruleSet[1].rules[8].oneOf[1].use[1]!./node_modules/.pnpm/postcss-loader@4.3.0_postcss@8.5.6_webpack@5.101.3/node_modules/postcss-loader/dist/cjs.js??ruleSet[1].rules[8].oneOf[1].use[2]!./src/styles/global.css	711.1 KiB
./src/components/Stickers/Stickers.tsx	696.4 KiB
./.cache/caches/gatsby-plugin-mdx/mdx-scopes-dir/31a094f140f119e73085d847ae81b99b.js + 2 modules	629.3 KiB
./node_modules/.pnpm/@radix-ui+react-icons@1.3.2_react@18.3.1/node_modules/@radix-ui/react-icons/dist/react-icons.esm.js	481.4 KiB
./node_modules/.pnpm/rehype-raw@7.0.0/node_modules/rehype-raw/lib/index.js + 29 modules	395.1 KiB
./node_modules/.pnpm/@posthog+icons@0.36.6_react-dom@18.3.1_react@18.3.1__react@18.3.1/node_modules/@posthog/icons/dist/posthog-icons.cjs.js	364.8 KiB
./src/hooks/useCustomers.tsx + 54 modules	355.1 KiB
./node_modules/.pnpm/@posthog+icons@0.36.6_react-dom@18.3.1_react@18.3.1__react@18.3.1/node_modules/@posthog/icons/dist/posthog-icons.es.js	354.8 KiB
./node_modules/.pnpm/react-markdown@8.0.7_@types+react@16.14.66_react@18.3.1/node_modules/react-markdown/lib/react-markdown.js + 88 modules	351.4 KiB
./node_modules/.pnpm/cloudinary-core@2.14.0_lodash@4.17.21/node_modules/cloudinary-core/cloudinary-core.js	281.9 KiB
./src/components/ProductComparisonTable/index.tsx + 120 modules	278.5 KiB
./node_modules/.pnpm/d3@7.9.0/node_modules/d3/src/index.js + 208 modules	247.4 KiB
./src/components/Pricing/PricingSlider/Slider.tsx + 87 modules	239.9 KiB
./gatsby-browser.tsx + 41 modules	239.8 KiB
./src/components/SearchUI/index.tsx + 73 modules	223.4 KiB

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Eager-graph budgets are report-only until a baseline is established. Sizes are gzip of public/**/*.js; eager size is webpack module source bytes for the modules actually shipped in the entrypoint's initial chunks (post-tree-shake).