Subscription duration length and discount

[asigno]

It would be great if we were able to let users choose how long they want to take out a subscription for rather than just the default length.

E.g. they are able to choose either 1, 2, or 3 years etc, and for us to be able to set a discount for the various subscription durations. E.g. 5% off 2 years, 15% off three years.

[opentype]

3 minutes ago, asigno said:

It would be great if we were able to let users choose how long they want to take out a subscription for rather than just the default length.

Just click this:

[asigno]

Unfortunately that's only available on products. There's some great functionality in products such as auto emails, but not in subscriptions and vice versa. I really want to use subscriptions as the usability of the 'packages' page is far superior to the store. e.g. https://yamahaclub.com/forums/subscriptions/?register=1

[Tom S.]

I haven't looked into this yet. But I agree that for subscriptions it should be easy to offer the option of either 1 month, 6 month, 1 year, etc.

For example like it is in 4.2:

[opentype]

8 hours ago, asigno said:

Unfortunately that's only available on products. 

Weird. What happens with these options when you convert them from a “normal product subscription” to a “subscription subscription”? 

[Nebthtet]

@opentype from what I see on a test product it's converting the longest renewal time (i.e. you had a product with options 1 mo, 6 mo and 1 year renewals - then it takes the longest one).

I also think it's bad you can't do these options on "subscription" products, especially that they feel made exactly for that.

[AlexWright]

As a quick and dirty solution, just make different subscription packages of different lengths until this is resolved. It's what we've done for now. But I agree, this would be good.

[Tom S.]

A heads up from the devs that this will be addressed soon would be much appreciated. This would prevent me upgrading to 4.3 in the mean time.

[opentype]

Frankly, I am surprised about the whole concept. As I recall, admins often had trouble to set up subscriptions, because they didn’t realize they had to create that as an option of a “normal product”. So it was decided to move it out of there. Great! But I would have expected, that the old way of doing would be removed entirely and the new product type would of course have all the old features and be converted automatically during the upgrade. But now we have two subscriptions options with apparently different features. Isn’t that causing even more confusion and problems*?

 

*That’s also the reason I haven’t touched the new options myself. I don’t trust the conversion process will not cause any problems. 

[asigno]

Yeah I now have all my old subscribers on products, and new ones going forward on subscriptions.

I sent some questions to IPB, responses below in case helpful to anyone else:

Quote

 

What happens to members who signed up and purchased a product subscription prior to 4.3? 

Nothing at all. They would carry on as normal. The subscriptions area is in addition to the old areas. So you would leave the old ones as they are, and any new would use subscriptions should you choose to use those instead.

What happens when their product expires and they renew?

As above

Can we move members who purchased these products to a subscription?

There is no way in which to do this at the present time.

 

 

[Matt]

3 hours ago, asigno said:

Can we move members who purchased these products to a subscription?

There is no way in which to do this at the present time.

Apologies, this is actually incorrect. You can move a product to a subscription.

Just go to your Product list in Commerce, and choose the convert option.

[ahc]

On 4/24/2018 at 11:44 AM, AlexWright said:

As a quick and dirty solution, just make different subscription packages of different lengths until this is resolved. It's what we've done for now. But I agree, this would be good.

This is what we're doing as well.  We converted our subscription products to the manager without any issues, so I'm grateful for that, too.  If Invision is waiting on enough people to express interest to make it worth adding this option to the manager, +1 from me.

[Dominyka]

And +1 from me.

 

I would also love to have a way to create a discount coupon just for the subscritions (or only for one of the subscriptions!). That's something we use a lot and if I cannot discount the subscriptions without discounting all other products then I cannot use the new subscription set up...

[AlexJ]

The whole subscription and product is overlapping. 

I believe you guys should provide subscription as a standard feature to the suit like Xenforo does. Then you need some thing more advanced? Get commerce and use that app. Every website needs donation some kind of to keep it going. Subscription would serve the purpose nicely. 

[Tom S.]

10 hours ago, AlexJ said:

The whole subscription and product is overlapping. 

I believe you guys should provide subscription as a standard feature to the suit like Xenforo does. Then you need some thing more advanced? Get commerce and use that app. Every website needs donation some kind of to keep it going. Subscription would serve the purpose nicely. 

This is not related to this thread. Subscriptions is heavily linked to the whole Commerce app. (payments, customers, support, etc.). Commerce also includes donations. Sounds like it would be perfect for you...

You really can't afford to get Commerce? XenForo is $140 a year (joke of the day). Commerce and Forums here is $200, then $120 a year (if I'm not mistaken). Now, I suspect you also believe that IPS make a better product or why would you even be here in the first place. Is $60 really out of your reach? 

One more thing, don't disrespect this company by comparing them trash tier community developers. Look at the XenForo website. They don't even take themselves seriously.

[Matt]

18 hours ago, AlexJ said:

The whole subscription and product is overlapping. 

I believe you guys should provide subscription as a standard feature to the suit like Xenforo does. Then you need some thing more advanced? Get commerce and use that app. Every website needs donation some kind of to keep it going. Subscription would serve the purpose nicely. 

The subscriptions manager is just a front end and a simplified ACP area for Commerce. We couldn't really sell it as a standalone product without duplicating:

- Shopping cart
- Invoices
- Transactions
- Payment Gateways
- Reminder Emails
.. etc

Or if we did, it'd be roughly the same price as Commerce.

[AlexJ]

10 hours ago, Tom S. said:

This is not related to this thread. Subscriptions is heavily linked to the whole Commerce app. (payments, customers, support, etc.). Commerce also includes donations. Sounds like it would be perfect for you...

You really can't afford to get Commerce? XenForo is $140 a year (joke of the day). Commerce and Forums here is $200, then $120 a year (if I'm not mistaken). Now, I suspect you also believe that IPS make a better product or why would you even be here in the first place. Is $60 really out of your reach? 

One more thing, don't disrespect this company by comparing them trash tier community developers. Look at the XenForo website. They don't even take themselves seriously.

I am not here to bash any company. I believe no company would be a joke because all do best for their employees and for themselves. So please keep me out from your bashing party.

I already have 5 IPS license and 2 with commerce and rest of the other addons. So don't judge someone too fast, next time, before you make a fool out of yourself.  I am not in competition who owns most licenses of what. Someone could own just 1 or someone could own 100, I could care less and that's none of my concern.  I believe they should be all well respected including non customers. 

You are miss informed or just posting for bashing. XF is 140$ for first time and then 40$/year renewals. IPS is 200$ for first time and then 50$/year. (No addons included) 

Back to my suggestion - Subscription does 98% same what selling through packages does. But packages do much more then subscription and hence was my initial suggestion. Provide minimal to core product and if anyone wants enhancement they can buy up the commerce. It's along the same lines of hosting options - 40, 60, 100, etc online visitors which IPS provides for cloud hosting.  Same marketing idea exist for Office 365, Office Stand alone, One drive, iCloud, etc. 

More or less above was suggestion and if IPS doesn't like it then they can leave it as is like feedback topics. 

 

[Tom S.]

4 hours ago, AlexJ said:

Back to my suggestion

Matt just outlined why your suggestion doesn’t work and you immedialty repeat yourself in the next post.

You should stop,

4 hours ago, AlexJ said:

before you make a fool out of yourself. 

P.S. You have been kicked from the bashing party.

[AlexJ]

29 minutes ago, Tom S. said:

P.S. You have been kicked from the bashing party.

I never joined one. Stop being delusional. 

[SJ77]

https://media.giphy.com/media/tFK8urY6XHj2w/giphy.gif

[Joel R]

This is a common suggestion that we often hear from XF users.  

What you won't hear is how ElasticSearch should be separate and paid.  Or how Clubs should be separate and paid.  Or how Calendar should be separate and paid.  

I think all of us would like everything to be bundled in Core for the lowest possible renewal fee, but IPS is not a one-to-one comparison with XenForo.  Just because one software company does it one way in no way impacts how another software company should do it. In XF, you follow the the forum + add-ons model, where the forum is the central base so it makes sense for them to tie as much as possible to the forum even if those features are weaker overall.  In IPS, we follow the core + apps model, where the core provides the framework but each app is standalone and more powerful.  It gives us greater flexibility in building a community that extends beyond a traditional forum.

[Unlucky]

How do we bypass the requirement for users to input their name and address on the checkout page when using subscriptions like we can do when it is a product in the store?

Thanks

[Joel R]

6 hours ago, Unlucky said:

How do we bypass the requirement for users to input their name and address on the checkout page when using subscriptions like we can do when it is a product in the store?

Thanks

Check your store settings in commerce to ask for user details when paying for a digital product.  

[Unlucky]

11 minutes ago, Joel R said:

Check your store settings in commerce to ask for user details when paying for a digital product.  

Yep it works fine for store products - it  is just this new subscription option that has the problem

[Joel R]

1 minute ago, Unlucky said:

Yep it works fine for store products - it  is just this new subscription option that has the problem

Oh I see.  You'll need to post that as a feedback ... No idea why they would ask for user address for a digital subscription.