[Commerce] Subscriptions vs Product With Renewal

[Foxtrek_64]

I'm trying to figure out the difference between a Subscription and a Product with automatic renewal. The differences I see between them seem to be very slight, such as showing up under Subscriptions rather than Store and products generally having a lot more in the way of configuration.

In my case, I want to offer subscription packages for my game server, with each package providing in-game and on-forum benefits. Functionally, I plan to use the webhooks API to be able to publish purchase events to my game server, which will then handle providing the perks to the player. Would subscriptions or products with automatic renewal be better for me in this situation?

[Marc Stridgen]

You can do a little more with products such as limit to certain groups, associate with other purchases, add various renewal options, feature, do licence key integration and a fair bit more. Subscriptions was built to simplify this process, and just offer a subscription model of subscribe/upgrade/downgrade and add to user groups when this happens. They are also presented on their own subscriptions page, which is more built for purpose.

Generally, most customers will find subscriptions will suit their purposes better than products. As a general rule, I would say unless there is something specific you cannot do as a subscription, then It's a subscription you would be using.

[David..]

@Marc Stridgen Is there a way to automatically stack product purchases that are being sold as subscriptions?

[Jim M]

29 minutes ago, David.. said:

@Marc Stridgen Is there a way to automatically stack product purchases that are being sold as subscriptions?

By "subscriptions", do you mean renewable products or are you using the Subscriptions functionality? Products can be grouped together (including renewables). Subscriptions, you can only "own" 1 at a time.