How to ascertain whether trial period has expired.
We have a pricing plan that allows the user to try out a product for 1 day (Free trial - no payment required). The pricing plan is set up properly where we delay the billing by one day. I thought that the status would change from "Active" to something else when the trial period ends. However, this is not the case. The subscription status continues to be "Active". Is that the expected behavior?
If that is the case, how to figure out (via your API) whether customer's trial period has ended and therefore needs to enter the payment information.
Thanks
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1 Posted by Drew Songer on 21 Mar, 2016 07:31 PM
Hi Harry,
You can only have a free trial for a paid plan. It doesn't make sense to have a trial for a service that a customer isn't going to pay for. All of your paid plans are configured to bill immediately upon signup. To create a free trial, delay the bill date of the paid plans. Customers will be able to sign up for these without a payment method. If they fail to enter CC information before the trial ends, their subscription will be canceled. In order to reactivate their account they will be required to enter a valid payment method.
Best,
Drew
Drew Songer closed this discussion on 21 Mar, 2016 07:31 PM.
Harry Shaw re-opened this discussion on 21 Mar, 2016 09:02 PM
2 Posted by Harry Shaw on 21 Mar, 2016 09:02 PM
I think you misunderstood my question. I think the statement "(Free trial - no cc required)" may have confused you. What I meant was no cc required at the time of signup.
I want to make it clear that it is a paid plan with free trial for a fixed period. But the bigger question I have is how to determine if the free trial period has ended when the user logs in?
Is there a way to determine this via your API? Will the subscriber status change from "Active" to something else? If not, is there any other way to do this?
We can code this in our App but it would be nice to be able to do this via your API. That way we can create different pricing plans with different free trial periods easily.
3 Posted by Drew Songer on 22 Mar, 2016 02:28 PM
Ok I understand now. The status of a customer is inferred by the date rather than changing a status parameter. If a customer has a
canceledDatetime, the the customer is not active. A great example of how this authorization logic could is used is found in our PHP wrapper -> https://github.com/marcguyer/cheddargetter-client-php/blob/master/R...Does that answer your question?
4 Posted by Harry Shaw on 22 Mar, 2016 03:38 PM
Ok, I understand the status parameter now.
But, if you have a trial period, how do you determine if the trial period is over. Is there a way to do this via your API?
5 Posted by Drew Songer on 22 Mar, 2016 04:07 PM
The trial period is just the amount of time before the first invoice. The trial is over when that invoice become billable. If the customer has entered a valid payment method, they will be billed and will continue to use your service. If they have not, the subscription is canceled, and consequently the trial is ended. They can be reactivated by adding a valid payment method.
Drew Songer closed this discussion on 22 Apr, 2016 02:19 PM.