So Let's Talk About Paid User Upgrades...

[JulianD]

Really nice suggestions. In my opinion, paid subscriptions are one of the weakest points of XenForo. Even vBulletin 3.x had a better approach at this and now that bigger forums are migrating to XenForo, improving paid subs is a must!

 

[billybatz9]

I just read a few posts on aMember and supposedly the integration can't be done (successfully or cleanly) unless you only have one upgrade, or something of that nature. I forget all the details. But overall, it won't be the way you want it.

 

[billybatz9]

Really nice suggestions. In my opinion, paid subscriptions are one of the weakest points of XenForo. Even vBulletin 3.x had a better approach at this and now that bigger forums are migrating to XenForo, improving paid subs is a must!

Im not a xenforo owner yet, but I agree... Paid subs is a must. A couple of features that would be really nice to see that will really push me into getting xenforo (which many members have agreed on) would be...

1) More payment gateways (some people don't have PayPal) and maybe those people can be paid customers if using a credit card was available.

2) Email notifications along with Alerts telling the user their subscription is about to expire, is expired, and option to renew after clicking on the alert or email. Renewed subscriptions should automatically be paid. No emails or alerts to the members. More revenue for us lol

3) I believe @digitalpoint said it was hard to search for paid users, so a better search would be nice for that part.

4) Discount codes for subscriptions (if there isn't one yet) for first month, first two months, year, and etc..

5) User being able to see their subscription info on their control panel would be cool. Being able to upgrade, downgrade, and etc.... When they do upgrade or downgrade, they are automatically billed for the next upgrade or downgrade while being automatically upgraded or downgraded.

6) If xenforos subscriptions would be able to keep up with a site like digital point without giving issues, I can assure you that xenforo would surely be #1 as a forum. (Not saying it isn't) I'm just saying it would make xenforo so much better.

Honestly the only reason why I was ever considering IPB is because of their subscriptions app. It has tons of features. But again, the forum is nowhere near the niceness, cleanness, and funnes(not a word) as xenforo. I have to admit, xenforo forums are fun to use. Lol

Which is why people will pay for more functionality of it. We need an awesome subscription re-make LOL

Please don't give me any grief because I haven't boughten it yet
Decisions are hard for me

Feel free to add, re-duce, or delete my post, as I am not a member and I do not know all the details. Some things may have already been added while others aren't. I am just giving my two cents based on the demo that I have been using along with others remarks

 

[JulianD]

Great post @billybatz9 +1

 

[sub_ubi]

I just read a few posts on aMember and supposedly the integration can't be done (successfully or cleanly) unless you only have one upgrade, or something of that nature. I forget all the details. But overall, it won't be the way you want it.

What do you mean? I'm running vBulletin (will switch to XF soon) but aMember allows me to do any number of products/forum upgrades, I'm totally happy with it. It can do everything you listed here:

1) More payment gateways (some people don't have PayPal) and maybe those people can be paid customers if using a credit card was available.

2) Email notifications along with Alerts telling the user their subscription is about to expire, is expired, and option to renew after clicking on the alert or email. Renewed subscriptions should automatically be paid. No emails or alerts to the members. More revenue for us lol

3) I believe @digitalpoint said it was hard to search for paid users, so a better search would be nice for that part.

4) Discount codes for subscriptions (if there isn't one yet) for first month, first two months, year, and etc..

5) User being able to see their subscription info on their control panel would be cool. Being able to upgrade, downgrade, and etc.... When they do upgrade or downgrade, they are automatically billed for the next upgrade or downgrade while being automatically upgraded or downgraded.

with zero problems. Example:

$x the first month, $x every month after.
Recurring subs.
Numerous email alerts you can send (or not).
Discount codes for a certain month, or for all.
Pretty much every payment system known to man, I think even bitpay now.
Upgrades and products only certain members can purchase.
Everything is handled via usergroups, so you can set any benefit xenforo allows.

The big negative is that it takes over your registration (which is sad because XF's registration is beautiful, but I guess you could code something similar for amember) and all of your users have to change their passwords. Painful, but worth it. I also like the ability to give my users access to any other software I'm running - xenforo, drupal, vbulletin, wordpress, etc. while keeping their login/pass the same. It makes a nice bridge.

 

[kontrabass]

Ugh. I just spent a few days fooling around with aMember and have concluded that I cannot trust our site's core functionality to a 3rd party product. It seems support takes several days for a reply sometimes, and I'd hate to imagine what happens when a software upgrade breaks functionality between aMember and XF. Plus there seems to be some functionality missing (like adding secondary usergroups upon user upgrade?).

 

[Alpha1]

Not handling overlapping subscription periods. For example say a user has a month subscription to something, and in the middle of that month, they upgrade to an annual plan. The annual plan starts then, not at the end of the existing one. In addition, I think the system might (not 100% sure on this) cancel the user upgrade when the MONTHLY one expires, basically making the user not get the annual one.

Have you reported this as a bug? Clearly if someone pays for a subscription for a certain period the system should not cancel the subscription earlier than the end of the subscription time. Otherwise its deceptive and the customer has a right to file a complaint to paypal. If you are handling a lot of subscription payments then those complaints will pile up and may cause trouble at some point.

If you look at a user record in the AdminCP, there is no indicator that have an active user upgrade.

You also can't search if the user has a user upgrade. If you have 100 pages of user upgrades, the only way you can find it to know if the user has one or to manually downgrade it is to page through 100 pages and look for that username.

How on earth do you manage this then?

Ugh. I just spent a few days fooling around with aMember and have concluded that I cannot trust our site's core functionality to a 3rd party product.

I came to the same conclusion with them many years ago. Your website income and your members financial transactions are too important to be completely dependent upon a third party.

 

[digitalpoint]

Have you reported this as a bug? Clearly if someone pays for a subscription for a certain period the system should not cancel the subscription earlier than the end of the subscription time. Otherwise its deceptive and the customer has a right to file a complaint to paypal. If you are handling a lot of subscription payments then those complaints will pile up and may cause trouble at some point.

Not that huge of a deal since you can use the "Disabled User Upgrades" option to disallow a user from subscribing to the same thing with a different length of time until their existing one actually ends.

How on earth do you manage this then?

Well, I don't really manually downgrade anyone... if they pay for something, they keep it regardless. As far as knowing when a user's premium ends, I added something custom to show their premium membership end date (and ban end date) when looking at their profile.

 

[Alpha1]

Not that huge of a deal since you can use the "Disabled User Upgrades" option to disallow a user from subscribing to the same thing with a different length of time until their existing one actually ends.

True, but blocking purchases limits your income. This bug costs money.

Well, I don't really manually downgrade anyone... if they pay for something, they keep it regardless. As far as knowing when a user's premium ends, I added something custom to show their premium membership end date (and ban end date) when looking at their profile.

I search for member payments and subscriptions almost every day. There is always someone who has a question about their payment or subscription or who does not know how to cancel their subscription. To think that this means browsing hundreds of pages each time... I only have hundreds of active subscriptions while you have thousands, so you must get a lot of support questions. (your users are a little more tech savvy than mine though)

 

[digitalpoint]

True, but blocking purchases limits your income.

Maybe a few dollars, but I don't think there's a ton of users who would have upgraded to a different term of premium membership before their existing one expired vs. the ones that don't.

In fact, now that I think about it, allowing it might actually make us *lose* revenue... most people who want to change plans typically want to change to a longer-term, lower cost plan. For example maybe they pay $25/month to try it out, but want to switch to a 12 month for $125. In some cases, maybe they forget to do it, so they end up paying a few months at $25 before remembering to switch to the yearly. Obviously that's not my intent... if XF allowed users to switch plans early, I certainly would enable it... just not sure there's revenue loss by not doing it (at least not for us).

I search for member payments and subscriptions almost every day. There is always someone who has a question about their payment or subscription or who does not know how to cancel their subscription. To think that this means browsing hundreds of pages each time... I only have hundreds of active subscriptions while you have thousands, so you must get a lot of support questions. (your users are a little more tech savvy than mine though)

Truthfully, we don't get a lot of questions... canceling their subscription is done in their PayPal account (which we tell them). The IPN notices from PayPal handle the upgrade/downgrades of accounts automatically. Might be a bigger issue if we ever gave away premium membership for free or for a discount or something, but we never have... so all that stuff really is handled from PayPal IPN notices. Even if you go into PayPal and refund a subscription payment their account is instantly automatically downgraded because of the IPN notice.

 

[Alpha1]

Maybe a few dollars, but I don't think there's a ton of users who would have upgraded to a different term of premium membership before their existing one expired vs. the ones that don't.

On my site a lot of users first buy a one time short term subscription and during that subscription they decide to buy a years subscription. Some of those users loose interest during that year. So even if those members would have set up recurring subscriptions, then they would likely terminate the recurring subscription when they loose interest.
I also get a fair amount of users who just like the site enough to bump their recurring subscription with another one.
Every website is different, but I know I would be loosing money if members would not be able to add subscriptions.