> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.hexclave.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Customer Types

> Bill users, teams, and custom external customers

A **customer** is whoever owns a purchase. Hexclave supports three types:

* **Users** - Individual user accounts. Users can manage their own purchases, billing, and invoices from the client SDK.
* **Teams** - Team or organization accounts. Team admins can create checkouts, switch plans, and cancel subscriptions for their team.
* **Custom customers** - External entities identified by an arbitrary string ID. Useful for integrations with external systems. They do not support billing, invoices, or plan switching; checkout and grants go through the server SDK or the dashboard.

## Where each method lives

The full billing surface - [`createCheckoutUrl`](./checkout), [`useProducts`](./checkout#checking-what-a-customer-owns), [`useItem`](./items-and-entitlements), [`switchSubscription`](./subscriptions), [`useBilling` and `useInvoices`](./billing-and-invoices) - is available on both **user** and **team** objects.

For **custom customers**, use the top-level `hexclaveServerApp` methods with `customCustomerId` (for example [`createCheckoutUrl`](./checkout), [`grantProduct`](./granting-products), `getItem`, and `listProducts`). Billing, invoices, payment methods, and subscription switching are not available for custom customers.

Every product declares a **customer type** when you [define it](./products-and-pricing#defining-products), which determines who can purchase it.

From the dashboard, **Payments -> Customers** lists users, teams, and custom customers (custom IDs appear after they have transactions). You can adjust item balances and [create a checkout URL](./checkout#creating-a-checkout-url-from-the-dashboard) for any of them. Granting a product without checkout is [SDK/API only](./granting-products).