A trial lets people try a recurring offer before they pay for it. A payment plan splits a fixed total into several payments, which makes a higher price easier to accept. Both are settings of a single price on a product.
If Payments is off in your workspace, switch it on under Settings > Features. Changing prices needs Manage Catalog (Products, Prices, Coupons).
Where you set them
Open a product and go to the Prices tab, or Variants if the product has variants. Choose Add Price or edit an existing one. Under Pricing model, pick Recurring for a subscription or Payment plan for installments. Both need a Billing interval, which sets how far apart the charges are.
Adding a trial
Recurring prices and payment plans have a Trial days field. 0 = no trial, the most is 3650 days. As soon as you enter a number above zero, the switch Require credit/debit card to start the trial appears. It is on by default.
- On: the card is collected at checkout and charged automatically when the trial ends. The buyer gets access once the card is saved. If they leave the checkout before that, the unfinished trial is cancelled automatically, an hour later at the earliest.
- Off: the buyer starts without a card. memberarea does not remind them to add one; only Stripe's own trial reminder can. Without a card, the subscription cancels itself when the trial ends.
The switch only applies to card payments. PayPal always asks for a payment source when the buyer approves the subscription.
At checkout, the order details show the trial length and the button reads Start your free trial. An order bump is not offered for a recurring price with a trial.
With the switch off, a buyer who never adds a card loses the subscription when the trial ends. Keep it on if every trial should turn into a paid subscription without a further step from the buyer.
Changing a running trial
Open the subscription under Payments > Sales > Subscriptions and choose Extend trial. You can add 1 to 3650 days. This works for Stripe subscriptions and for invited trials, but a PayPal trial cannot be extended. Cancelling during a trial works like cancelling any subscription. Both actions need Update Orders / Customers. See Cancelling, pausing and resuming subscriptions.
Inviting someone to a trial
You can also give one member a trial by email. Open the member's profile, go to Payments, and in Subscriptions choose Add. Pick the product and a recurring price, choose Send trial invitation and click Send invitation. Trial days override (optional) replaces the trial length of the price for this one invitation.
The member gets an email with an activation link that is valid for 30 days. They have to sign in with the email address the invitation was sent to. Only then does the subscription start. It shows as Comp and is not connected to Stripe or PayPal, so no payment is taken. When the trial ends, the subscription ends too and the access is removed, as with any trial that has no payment method. To give more time, use Extend trial before that date. This needs Update Orders / Customers.
Setting up a payment plan
With Payment plan, the amount field becomes Total amount: what the buyer pays altogether. Number of payments takes 2 to 120. Each payment is the total divided by that number. Cents that do not divide evenly are added to the first payment, and the editor shows the split before you save. The total must be at least one cent per payment.
Upfront payment is optional for both payment plans and recurring prices. It is charged once at checkout, on top of the regular payments. Neither the upfront payment nor a trial counts as one of the payments, so the plan ends only after the last paid installment.
At checkout the buyer sees how many payments there are, how much each one is and how often they are charged.
When the plan is paid off
After the last payment the plan ends by itself and is marked as expired. The buyer keeps the access they bought, because a payment plan is a one-time price paid in parts. With PayPal, the plan is set up with exactly that number of payments, and the upfront payment plus any leftover cents are charged as a setup fee at the start.
When a payment fails
When Stripe cannot collect a payment, the subscription or plan is marked as past due. Your admins get a notification, and the buyer can get an email with a link to pay, if that email is switched on. A failed PayPal payment also marks the subscription as past due; after three failed attempts PayPal suspends it and it shows as paused. Open cases appear under Payments > Sales > Dunning notices once dunning for subscriptions is switched on under Payments > Settings > Dunning, see Dunning and overdue payments.
If a Stripe payment plan ends before the last payment, the access from the plan is removed. One-time products bought in the same order stay.
Stripe and PayPal at a glance
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The card switch for trials only works with Stripe.
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PayPal trials cannot be extended.
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A PayPal subscription covers exactly one plan, so recurring prices have to be bought one at a time and with a quantity of one.
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Order bumps are not offered with PayPal for recurring prices.