Adding a free month to first subscription

I know this sounds a bit like the trial offer, but I’m having trouble figuring out the best way to approach this with S2MemberPro.

When a member first signs up, we want to offer them 12 paid months + 1 month free. The offer is only good for fully-paid subscription. Think of it more as a discount than as a trial offer.

When the subscription renews however, it should only renew for 12 months, rather than 13.

Any advice on how to get started with this – even if it requires custom programming?

Hello Kinga.

Yeah, the trial period would work well, if you are willing to give the free month at the beginning.

If you meant giving the free month after the first year, then that’s not really possible. :/

And you can’t even give the initial term as 13 months at the price of 12, because initial terms are paid as a single term, they aren’t recurring terms, only the regular ones recur, the initial term is just one.

Hi Cristián,

Thanks for your reply!

So understanding that I need to do this, even though it will require custom programming, can you suggest any path forward?

What would be the possibility of manually moving the user to a 1 month, free plan then programming something that would automatically move them to the 12 month (annual) plan when it expires?

Put yourself in my shoes. If you were to implement something like this, where would you begin?

The way I’d probably do it, knowing the limitations of PayPal, would be to create a regular subscription and when the 13th month gets charged, I’d refund it and email the member about it, thanking him for having stuck with the membership that far and that I look forward to have him another year as a member.

Hi Cristián,

Thanks for the reply. The problem with this approach is that the subscription is on an annual basis. As such, PayPal is going to bill for a full year on the recurring schedule. Let me talk with my client about this issue a bit further and perhaps I can bring some additional clarity to the issue.

I’m trying to work through this a bit more. What would happen if I performed the following?

1) Set the trial offer to 13 months at the annual rate (let’s say $100),
2) Set the recurring offer to 1 year at the annual rate ($100.00)

Would the trial set up a recurring profile with Paypal based on 13 months at $100 ($1,300 total) or would it bill all 13 months at once (total charge of $100)?

Additionally, I need a bit of information on Promo Codes and how they interact with recurring billing. When I set a promo code and apply it to the regular amount, will the customer always renew at this rate? Would they still renew at this rate if I set the coupon code to expire before their renewal?

Sorry to beat this one to death, but what would be the feasibility of modifying the S2 Member setting in the user panel for Automatic EOT time once the initial annual charge has been made via PayPal? After 1 year, would the user still receive a recurring charge or would the charge happen based on the EOT setting in S2 Member?

Thanks for the heads up on this thread.
~ I’m reviewing this now.

Thanks for your patience.

I’m trying to work through this a bit more. What would happen if I performed the following?

1) Set the trial offer to 13 months at the annual rate (let’s say $100),
2) Set the recurring offer to 1 year at the annual rate ($100.00)

Would the trial set up a recurring profile with Paypal based on 13 months at $100 ($1,300 total) or would it bill all 13 months at once (total charge of $100)?

Additionally, I need a bit of information on Promo Codes and how they interact with recurring billing. When I set a promo code and apply it to the regular amount, will the customer always renew at this rate? Would they still renew at this rate if I set the coupon code to expire before their renewal?

Would the trial set up a recurring profile with Paypal based on 13 months at $100 ($1,300 total) or would it bill all 13 months at once (total charge of $100)?

This should work nicely for you. PayPal will charge the customer all at once for the Initial/Trial period of 13 months, because this period does NOT recur under any circumstance. So to answer your question, the charge would be $100 for 13 months of access, then it would recur at the rate of $100/year.

Additionally, I need a bit of information on Promo Codes and how they interact with recurring billing. When I set a promo code and apply it to the regular amount, will the customer always renew at this rate? Would they still renew at this rate if I set the coupon code to expire before their renewal?

Yes, the customer will ALWAYS renew at that rate, even if you expire the coupon code. The coupon code expiration prevents it from being used to create any new recurring profiles, but it does not affect any existing billing profiles that were already created in conjunction with the coupon code in the past.

Sorry to beat this one to death, but what would be the feasibility of modifying the S2 Member setting in the user panel for Automatic EOT time once the initial annual charge has been made via PayPal? After 1 year, would the user still receive a recurring charge or would the charge happen based on the EOT setting in S2 Member?

The EOT Time in your Dashboard, only controls access to the site. Billing is handled by your payment gateway. s2Member configures the Recurring Profile for billing, according to your Pro Form Shortcode configuration, and then it hands all billing routines over to your payment gateway.

After that, s2Member will listen via IPN (Instant Payment Notification service) for any future payments that are processed, possible refunds, cancellations, chargebacks, and other related events. An EOT Time will be set automatically by s2Member whenever access to the site should be denied for one of many different reasons.

See Also: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› Automatic EOT Behavior

Please let me know if problems persist :-) Thanks!

Kinga, sorry I had not understood you’d get paid in a yearly basis, I thought they were monthly payments which you wanted to have change after a year.

If the whole first year will be paid in one go, then you can use the initial term to give 13 months instead of a year, like Jason explained. You can edit your shortcode manually for this: [hilite mono]tp="13" tt="M"[/hilite].
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member -› PayPal Buttons -› Shortcode Attributes[/hilite]

About the coupon, if applied to the regular payments, they’ll remain at the discounted amount. You can, though, apply the discount to the initial term only using ta-only in your code. But that’ll only change the amount, not the length, so it wouldn’t change the initial term from 12 to 13 months, just the price paid for it.
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Pro Coupon Codes -› Coupon Code Configuration File[/hilite]

That will be improved in the coming major release, though, with much more control possible for coupons.

I hope that helps. :)