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Optional trial period per customer?

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Frank Koehl

17 Feb, 2010 06:39 PM

So I currently have 1 subscription plan, which is available on an annual or monthly basis (https://fwdvault.com/pricing). However, I offer a 30-day free trial to users who choose the paid account when they register. Users who register a free account and then upgrade later do not get a 30 day trial. This is same policy that 37Signals uses on their services.

Currently, in order to do this in CheddarGetter, I have to create 4 plans:

1. Monthly with trial
   
2. Monthly billed immediately
   
3. Annual with trial
   
4. Annual billed immediately

Please let me know if there's a more efficient way to accomplish this setup.

Now I am going to add two more plans to the mix. Assuming I've done it right, this will bring my plans total to 12, while only presenting 3 real options to my users.

To shrink this number, what do you think of adding an API option that would allow me to specify the trial period when I add/change a subscription? I was thinking something like subscription[TrialDays] ...

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Marc Guyer on 17 Feb, 2010 07:58 PM

   

   You've hit the nose on a couple of features we'd like to implement soon.
   

   First, the ability to specify a date in the future (or immediately) when the subscription will be billed for the first time, effectively overriding the default setting for the pricing plan.

   Second, if the first bill is scheduled for the future, the period of time between signup and first bill is effectively a free trial period. In this case, payment information isn't required at signup and CG optionally sends email notification to the customer prompting them to enter payment. If they don't enter payment, the subscription is canceled.
   

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2. 2 Posted by Frank Koehl on 17 Feb, 2010 08:01 PM

   

   Nice! Now address the elephant in the room:

   What, if any, timeline are these features on?

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3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Marc Guyer on 17 Feb, 2010 08:11 PM

   

   I had a feeling you were going to ask that. Needs with relatively simple workarounds typically get a lower priority. We do, however, find them to be important to the overall CG offering. There are a few items that need to be addressed in the short term before we address these features.
   

   Specifying the first bill date is a fairly trivial improvement that also has the benefit of supporting customer migrations from other systems. If you can get by with just this feature, we could probably have that done in the short term. That would get you down to 2 plans each. Do you require a credit card for the free trial?

   The trial period handling is a little more a of a project.

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4. 4 Posted by Frank Koehl on 17 Feb, 2010 09:30 PM

   

   Well that's good news for me, at least. I am collecting CC data at signup, so all I need is to specify the first bill date, ideally in the form of a day count (e.g. 15 days, 30 days, etc).

   The "sign up for paid plan without CC data" feature, while nice, is not a major concern for me.

   My new plan offerings are going to require significant reworking to my system, and working in this (hopefully) forthcoming feature would save me a ton of development time. Put me on the ASAP list for this one.

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5. Support Staff 5 Posted by Marc Guyer on 25 Feb, 2010 10:58 PM

   

   Happy happy. We just released the feature that enables you to specify the first bill date for a new customer. Just add subscription[initialBillDate] to your post for a new customer. It should be in YYYY-MM-DD format.

   Regarding your request to make it a day count... In PHP I'd do it like this:

   echo date('Y-m-d', mktime(0,0,0,date('n'),date('j')+15));
   

   That'll make a nice date 15 days from now.

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6. Marc Guyer closed this discussion on 25 Feb, 2010 10:58 PM.

7. Frank Koehl re-opened this discussion on 01 Mar, 2010 02:54 PM

8. 6 Posted by Frank Koehl on 01 Mar, 2010 02:54 PM

   

   Simply put that's bitchin.

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9. Support Staff 7 Posted by Marc Guyer on 01 Mar, 2010 03:05 PM

   

   That might be a first for "bitchin". Glad you approve. :)

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10. 8 Posted by Frank Koehl on 01 Mar, 2010 05:59 PM

    

    Totally a deserving situation. Based on my initial description, it should be obvious how much time, effort, and code complexity this feature will save me.

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11. Marc Guyer closed this discussion on 18 May, 2010 01:48 PM.