Free Trial Registration

Part of the reason that I upgraded to Pro was to offer my customers a no strings attached free trial. I could not do that with the basic version. After I upgraded I have searched videos and docs to show me how to do that. I do not have PayPal Pro…but the product page says that I can use Pro Forms to do this with the paid version.

I want to offer a 1 week free trial, without them having to sign up for paypal! Can someone tell me how to do that??

Thanks for your inquiry.

To properly answer this question, I will need one more piece of information please.

Do you want to collect payment information when they register for the free trial? Or are you trying to give them a TRUE free trial, where you simply allow them to register free, and submit payment information only IF they decide to hang around?

In other words, is this a 1 week free trial, where the customer submits payment information and billing begins automatically if they don’t cancel within the first week?

I want it to be a completely free trial. Having to create a Paypal acct for a free trial will turn some away. After the one week free trial, then they can decided if they want to become a monthly subscriber and then go through the payment stuff. I can’t subscribe to Paypal Pro right now, but hope to in the future.

I would also like to have a page for ONLY those whose free trial has expired, that they are redirected to when they login in. They would be demoted to a level 0 member after their trial is over.

Thanks for the follow-up :-)

I want it to be a completely free trial. Having to create a Paypal acct for a free trial will turn some away. After the one week free trial, then they can decided if they want to become a monthly subscriber and then go through the payment stuff. I can’t subscribe to Paypal Pro right now, but hope to in the future.

I would suggest that you use s2Member’s Pro Forms for this. Specifically, the Free Registration Pro Form. You’ve probably seen this already. You can generate a Free Registration Pro Form from your Dashboard here.

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Free Registration Forms

What you might NOT realize, is that a Free Registration Pro Form can be configured to terminate access automatically, after X number of days, weeks, months, years. Please take a look here in your Dashboard, at the Shortcode Attributes that are available to use.

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Shortcode Attributes (Explained)

For example, in your case, you need a Free Registration Form that allows people to come in at a Membership Level of (let’s say Level #1) but only for 1 week. If they decide to purchase in that week, they will get bumped up to Level #2, and the automatic expiration will be nullified, because they’ve paid you now. If they don’t, they will simply lose Membership access, and be demoted automatically back down to a Free Subscriber at Level #0.

So, the outline I’m suggesting is as follows…

• Level #1 will represent your free trial Members. Anyone at this Level is in their trial period. They ARE a Member, but only for a short time (1 week).
• Level #2 will represent your paid Members. These are members who upgraded during their trial, or after their trial expired. They’ve now moved up to Level #2, a full Member now.
• Level #0 will represent your Free Subscribers. These are people who have been demoted back down to Level #0, after having completed their trial period; and perhaps they’ve not paid for additional access yet.

Here is your Free Registration Form Shortcode that allows 1 week at Level #1.

[s2Member-Pro-PayPal-Form register="1" level="1" ccaps="" desc="Signup now, it's Free!" custom="www.example.com" tp="1" tt="W" captcha="clean" /]

Be sure to change custom="www.example.com" to your own domain name.

You can create a Pro Form for Membership Level #2 Access here, and charge whatever you like.
Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Membership Level # Forms

I would also like to have a page for ONLY those whose free trial has expired, that they are redirected to when they login in. They would be demoted to a level 0 member after their trial is over.

If you need to display certain messages, or certain types of forms, or change prices, perform redirections, etc. depending on what Level a Member is currently at, please use Conditionals for this. s2Member supports both Simple Shortcode Conditionals, and it also supports Advanced PHP Conditionals.

Once you understand how Conditionals work, you can setup a redirection for Members that login and hit your Login Welcome Page (as configured with s2Member). Upon landing on your Login Welcome Page, you can have a Conditional that detects they’re at Level #0 and redirect them to a page of your choosing. Or, perhaps you could just show them something different on the Login Welcome Page. That would be easier it seems to me.

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Simple/Shortcode Conditionals
See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Advanced PHP Conditionals

Please let me know if you have any other questions/concerns.

Oh, I was under the impression that PayPal Pro Forms only worked if you had PayPal Pro.

Now I see part of the problem…I don’t have a Pro Forms option. You have my login information from a private message to confirm this. That is why I thought it was only for PayPal Pro members. Where is it, or did it go?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 12 months ago by  Rena Hearn.

Thanks for the follow-up :-)

I never did gain access to your Dashboard. The login credentials that I have for your hosting account function properly, and I was able to assist you with only that before. However, the Dashboard credentials that I have are still not working properly. If you’d like to check those again and send us another private email, please do.

That being said, this is pretty simple to accomplish..

With s2Member Pro installed, go to s2Member -> Other Gateways, and activate PayPal Pro. Refresh the page and you’ll have a PayPal Pro Forms option in the s2Member menu on the left side.

It’s fine if you don’t have a PayPal Pro account yet, because Free Registration Forms work regardless. You’re not actually selling anything with a Free Registration Form, so no payment gateway needs to be integrated for that to work properly.

Now I see it! Thanks!!

So will the Pro Forms work even if I dont have Paypal Pro….I mean for my other levels. I only have Paypal standard.

So will the Pro Forms work even if I dont have Paypal Pro….I mean for my other levels. I only have Paypal standard.

That is correct. Free Registration Forms will work regardless.

However, the use of PayPal Pro Forms to charge customers for paid access, does require that you have a PayPal Pro account, in order to facilitate on-site credit card processing through a Pro Form. So if you’re planning to charge for access to Level #2, you will need to use a PayPal “Button” instead of a Pro Form. Or, you can read over this article about how to get Pro Forms working without a PayPal Pro account, via Express Checkout (free).

See: http://www.s2member.com/faqs/#s2-faqs-paypal-pro-not-required

AWESOME! THANK YOU!

Another question. How do I prevent them for signing up for a free trial more than once. I know it tracks IP address. If a customer tries to use a different email address, will the system recognize the ip address?

Unfortunately I do have that problem. :(

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR HELPING ME!!

Thanks for the follow-up :-)

Another question. How do I prevent them for signing up for a free trial more than once. I know it tracks IP address. If a customer tries to use a different email address, will the system recognize the ip address?

s2Member’s Unique IP Restrictions work very well for Users/Members and various other access points that a registered User/Member might be using on your site. It does NOT however, offer any protection against repeated registrations on your site. If the customer chooses to register under multiple email addresses and usernames, s2Member won’t do anything to stop that.

If you wanted that type of protection, unfortunately, you would need to custom code that portion. I see this being difficult though, because IP Restrictions are really something that have to be monitored over a long term, just because many people access things from multiple computers, or from mobile devices with dynamic IPs. Preventing repeated registrations is rather difficult to accomplish in my opinion.

I have an awesome programmer by the way. He has written a plugin that works with s2m and MC. He could possibly write a plugin for this.

But, only I can delete Users, so…if they tried to get another free week, I could redirect them to a special upgrade page. ??

I have an awesome programmer by the way. He has written a plugin that works with s2m and MC. He could possibly write a plugin for this.

That’s awesome! Tell him to use our Customer Support Forums and Codex if he needs assistance with something related to s2Member’s source code. We’re happy to help.

But, only I can delete Users, so…if they tried to get another free week, I could redirect them to a special upgrade page. ??

Sorry, I’m not sure I understand completely. But if you have a systematic way of approaching this, and you catch someone doing this, I don’t see why not. This would most likely need to be coded into the custom code that you write to handle this scenario. Catch them, and then redirect them to a Post/Page which contains an s2Member payment Button (or Pro Form) where they can “pay” instead of getting in free.

Me again…sorry!

I got everything changed and setup. I am testing the free trial. I set one up, made sure I logged in, etc. I then went in and changed the EOT being sure to keep the same format and setting it back to 8:00am. I know that UTC is 6 hrs AHEAD of me.

I logged out and then back in a the test acct. The system didn’t demote to Level 0. Is there a certain time of the day that happens or am I missing something?

BTW I am SOOO excited to get s2Mpro running. It is going to make my life much, much easier!!

PS the S2m EOT in Paypal settings is set to on!

Thanks for the follow-up :-)

I logged out and then back in a the test acct. The system didn’t demote to Level 0. Is there a certain time of the day that happens or am I missing something?

Once the EOT Time has been set, give it 30 minutes or so please. s2Member’s Auto EOT System needs to be enabled for this to work, and it will process any EOTs that exist, based on these EOT Times, every 15 minutes. This is powered by WP Cron, by default.

Please see: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› Automatic EOT Behavior

Please let us know if problems persist :-)