Hi @Sue_Brown1 , welcome to the forum!
I’ll try answer this to the best of my knowledge of the plans. But some who are more familiar with the plans might be able to correct me.
Although not mentioned specifically, I think you can count subtasks as part of the essentials:"
Status updates on project level, and ability to export projects as PDF or CSV:
It becomes available at the Starter plan:
Templates are a blueprint, which on the moment of project creation uses the template. So not having the template available doesn’t influence live projects, just your ability to create new projects from this template, as I don’t think you’ll be able to access the template in the free plan.
Screenshots taken from pricing page: