Commerce Feedback

[Bluedrake42]

Hi, after about a year of using IPS for commercial purposes I want to post all the feedback I have for it.
Granted some of these issues might be user-side issues, and if that is the case please tell me.

1. "Allow users to purchase more than one" doesn't work correctly with recurring subscriptions. If someone purchases a recurring subscription, and that subscription expires (or is cancelled) they are never allowed to re-purchase or re-subscribe to that item again. Kindof defeats the purpose... and I'm somewhat sure this is a bug.
2. Renewal agreements are not mandatory if purchasing a recurring subscription with a credit card. If a user purchases a recurring purchase using Paypal, creating a billing agreement is mandatory... and they are automatically re-billed unless they cancel their subscription. However when purchasing with a credit card... the user is not required to have a billing agreement, which often means the renewals fail. I currently have all credit card transactions set to manual approval specifically so I can ensure each Stripe customer has their billing information properly entered to renewals... but having this work automatically would be ideal.
3. You cannot in a single glance... see how much account credit you owe to your userbase. This just makes it hard to plan my finances around. If I have 1000$ owed to my recruiters for referrals... but I can't easily see that without looking at each of their individual profiles, it just makes it harder to plan financially.

[Aaron M]

16 minutes ago, Bluedrake42 said:

Hi, after about a year of using IPS for commercial purposes I want to post all the feedback I have for it.
Granted some of these issues might be user-side issues, and if that is the case please tell me.

1. "Allow users to purchase more than one" doesn't work correctly with recurring subscriptions. If someone purchases a recurring subscription, and that subscription expires (or is cancelled) they are never allowed to re-purchase or re-subscribe to that item again. Kindof defeats the purpose... and I'm somewhat sure this is a bug.
2. Renewal agreements are not mandatory if purchasing a recurring subscription with a credit card. If a user purchases a recurring purchase using Paypal, creating a billing agreement is mandatory... and they are automatically re-billed unless they cancel their subscription. However when purchasing with a credit card... the user is not required to have a billing agreement, which often means the renewals fail. I currently have all credit card transactions set to manual approval specifically so I can ensure each Stripe customer has their billing information properly entered to renewals... but having this work automatically would be ideal.
3. You cannot in a single glance... see how much account credit you owe to your userbase. This just makes it hard to plan my finances around. If I have 1000$ owed to my recruiters for referrals... but I can't easily see that without looking at each of their individual profiles, it just makes it harder to plan financially.

We've used IPS extensively with the Commerce platform:

1. This works fine for me? We have users with over 15 subscription products who are able to purchase more. This sounds like it might be some kind of caching issue on your end.

2. Yes PayPal uses "billing agreements" but this is a configurable option - You can either make PP BA's mandatory for all PP purchases, optional (the other choice being invoice based) for the user, or no BA's at all. I did speak to @Mark about Stripe's inbuilt renewal functionality that's somewhat similar (since BA's are a PayPal construct) but the method IPS uses is more advanced and allows for greater flexibility. I've attached his response to a ticket I made a while back below:

I've not noticed us having any issues with renewals though, there are some that decide to remove their CC information so naturally the product expires, but that's the nature of the beast. I'm not sure what billing information you're having customers enter that's making renewals fail?

That said, IPS 4.2 will pass more information to Stripe which might resolve whatever trouble you're getting.

3. This is a valid point; I think the UX could be improved on this. It's probably too late for 4.2's launch now, but it could be added in later.

In any case, have you tried putting a ticket in for these things, and/or ran the support tool in the ACP to check for any problems?

[SJ77]

#3 I would love a fix for number 3 

its so hard to know what is owed. I can't manage anything correctly if I don't know what is owed.

[Bluedrake42]

1 hour ago, Aaron M said:

2. Yes PayPal uses "billing agreements" but this is a configurable option - You can either make PP BA's mandatory for all PP purchases, optional (the other choice being invoice based) for the user, or no BA's at all. I did speak to @Mark about Stripe's inbuilt renewal functionality that's somewhat similar (since BA's are a PayPal construct) but the method IPS uses is more advanced and allows for greater flexibility. I've attached his response to a ticket I made a while back below:

I used Stripe's built in subscription management system for about a year before switching to IPS, and I have to say I prefer it considerably over IPS commerce's credit card solution. We had considerably higher conversion and retention rates, as well as less micromanagement and better control.

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I've not noticed us having any issues with renewals though, there are some that decide to remove their CC information so naturally the product expires, but that's the nature of the beast. I'm not sure what billing information you're having customers enter that's making renewals fail?

We have to ensure they save their credit card information. Stripe automatically saves credit card information for renewing purchases, however with IPS the customer has the option to not save their credit card information for renewals, which... just makes it a standard purchase. Stripe's system however deals with subscriptions as subscriptions, and rebills to the same card the subscription was purchased with.