Upgrading to Otto: there is no second licence key (and the stray Pearl key that landed at your other email)

Modified on Tue, 4 Aug at 1:28 PM

You paid for Otto, an email turned up with a license key and the word Pearl on it, and now you are sitting there thinking "What about an Otto license key? Is there one of those?" Or you already wrote in, got told you are on Pearl, and replied "No I already paid for Otto. That's why I'm asking" - "Because the email makes it look like I only purchased Pearl". Nothing is missing and there is nothing left to buy. This article covers the one rule that settles most of these, how to upgrade if you genuinely have not yet, and what to do about a stray key that landed at another one of your email addresses.

The rule: one account, one key, and the tier rides on the account

There is not a separate Otto key. Each account has one and only one license key. That key activates the app. Your tier, Pearl or Otto, lives on the account itself and not on a second code, so you will never be issued an Otto code to paste in anywhere.

Which answers the question people write in with: do I need a new key to upgrade? No. Upgrading to Otto happens on the account you already have. No new key, no reinstall, no re-activation. If you have been waiting for a second code to arrive, stop waiting. Nothing is coming, and nothing needs to.

How to confirm your account is already on Otto

Do this before anything else. If you upgraded at any point, you are probably chasing a problem you no longer have. Three places in the app tell you which tier you are on:

The top bar: an Otto badge sits beside the Booked Solid wordmark at the top left. On Pearl, no badge shows at all.
Settings > General: the Booth card shows the real setup steps (your Telegram bot token, then Link my phone) instead of an Upgrade to Otto button.
The Plays tab: the "Set up the Autopilot schedule" recipe shows a normal Do it for me button instead of Upgrade to schedule.

The app confirms your account with the server when it launches, and again every six hours after that. So if you upgraded a few minutes ago and the badge has not appeared, quit the app and open it again. That forces the check.

What Pearl and Otto actually mean

Pearl runs the whole booking department on command, at full power: working a lead, drafting replies, running a Play, setting up your Booking HQ. It does the lot while you are sitting in front of it.

Otto is the one step up. It lets the app run unattended on a schedule while you are away, sending the follow-ups you have approved and pinging you on your phone as it goes: the morning sweep, silence patrol, the weekly harvest, opt-in auto-send, and the Booth for approving decisions from wherever you are. That unattended, while-you-sleep piece is the bulk of what Pearl holds back.

A few heavier extras sit on the Otto tier as well, so you are not blindsided by them: the market-scanning Plays and recipes, such as School Radar, Milestone Radar, and Library Radar where your app offers it, and having the app clean up the flagged pages in your brain rather than only listing them for you. On Pearl those show an upgrade button instead of a run button. Everything else runs on Pearl at full power.

I got a Pearl key but I bought Otto

This one costs people a morning, and it is not your fault. If you used one email address for your original purchase and a different address when you upgraded, our records can read you as two separate buyers. A key for the lower tier can then be minted and emailed to that other address, sometimes months after you were already up and running on Otto. Same person, two different emails, two records, one confusing email in your inbox.

Almost everyone's first instinct is to activate that key to put things right. That is a dead end, and it makes it worse: setting up with it does not upgrade anything. It creates a second, lower-tier login with none of your work in it. Skip that step.

What to do instead:

Ignore the key in that email. Do not set anything up with it.
Keep signing in with the username and password you already use. That account is the one carrying your paid tier.
If you cannot get into that account, use Forgot your password on the sign-in screen. It asks for your username, not your email, and sends a 6-digit code to the address on the account. Enter the code, set a new password, and you are back in.
If the inbox on that account is gone as well, use Need a hand? Contact the help desk at the bottom of the sign-in screen, or submit a ticket here, and a person will sort it with you.

Nothing was lost, there is nothing left to buy, and there is no new key to chase.

If we tell you that you are on the lower tier and you know you are not

Push back, and say so plainly. People write in with exactly this: "I already paid for Otto", "If I had done that I would not have the app. I made a second purchase before the deadline". They are usually right. A lookup against one email address can neither confirm nor disprove a purchase, so a reply that says "our records show Pearl" is not the last word on anything.

The help desk cannot see the Stripe or checkout records directly, so the thing that settles it fastest is your receipt. Reply with:

The date of the payment.
The amount.
The line item exactly as it reads on the receipt. It names the tier.
Every email address you may have bought under, including old ones and any address a receipt could have gone to.

All of them get searched. If the second purchase is there, your existing account moves to Otto on the key you already have: no new code, no reinstall, no extra charge, and the unattended scheduling switches on.

Where the upgrade lives

If you are on Pearl and want Otto, the upgrade page is at https://booked.kivimedia.co/upgrade. You can type that address into your browser, or press any of the upgrade buttons inside the app. They all land on the same page:

Upgrade to Otto on the Booth card (Settings > General)
Upgrade to Autopilot in the prompt that appears when you try to turn Autopilot on from a Pearl account
Upgrade to schedule on the "Set up the Autopilot schedule" recipe in the Plays tab

How to upgrade

Open https://booked.kivimedia.co/upgrade, or press any Upgrade button inside the app.
Click Get Booked Solid OS. This opens a Stripe checkout at $100/mo.
Complete the checkout. You are not waiting on a license key after this. There is no second code, nothing to paste, and nothing to activate. Your existing account is what carries the new tier.
Back in the app, your tier is picked up at the next account check. Quit and reopen the app if you want it right away, then look for the Otto badge in the top bar.

One more thing Otto needs: a Claude account on a paid plan

Claude is the AI that runs Autopilot, scheduled runs, and the Booth. Claude Pro, about $20 a month, covers most performers; if you run Autopilot hard every day, you may need Claude Max, about $100 a month. The free Claude tier does not work. You sign in to Claude once during the Get Otto ready setup in the app, with no API key needed. So plan for two subscriptions: Booked Solid OS at $100/mo plus your own Claude plan.

Prefer the lighter option

The upgrade page also links to KM Hub at $50/mo, which signs up at hub.kivimedia.co/signup. If you are weighing the two, the article "Booked Solid OS vs KM Hub: which one is for you" breaks down the choice.

Questions before you buy

The upgrade page includes a direct email link: booked@kivimedia.co. Write in with anything you want to know before checking out: pricing, what Otto does, or whether the plan fits your act.

If you have never set the app up at all

Different problem, straightforward fix. This is the one case where you do paste a code. Open the Booked Solid OS desktop app, choose First time here? Enter your license key, and paste the code from your email along with your email address and the username and password you want to use. Your machine is then signed in. The article "Buying Booked Solid OS: checkout, your license email, and activation" walks through the whole first-time flow, including what to do when the email never arrived.

If it still is not right

Write in and tell us which tier you believe you are on, what the app is showing you (badge or no badge, and what the Plays tab button says), and the receipt details above. Do not activate a stray key while you wait, because that is the one step that is genuinely hard to untangle afterwards.

Still stuck? Submit a ticket from this help center and we'll take it from there.