XF 2.0 User Upgrades & Monetization

[Peter Cox]

User Upgrades gives users the ability to upgrade their accounts and enhance their privileges. Could I please ask…

1) We offer tiered upgrades (e.g. “basic level”, “enhanced level”, “VIP level” etc). If a user first upgrades to basic, then decides to move up to enhanced, will their basic level upgrade (and associated recurring payments) be automatically cancelled when they upgrade, assuming the other levels have been selected under “Disabled user upgrades” in the admin cp?

2) If not, would we need to instruct them to cancel the former upgrade (e.g. basic level) before they can purchase an enhanced level? How would a user cancel this onsite?

I expect members will want to upgrade and downgrade quite frequently so it would be reassuring to know that this could be done automatically.

In the XF2 manual, it says “user upgrades are one of the monetization options included in XenForo”. I’ve searched for other monetization options but don't see them – are there any?

Many thanks.

 

[Paul B]

will their basic level upgrade (and associated recurring payments) be automatically cancelled when they upgrade

No. They will need to cancel the recurring subscription in PayPal.

The XF2 manual is still being written - the monetization section is part of that.

 

[Peter Cox]

Thanks for swift response.

This isn't ideal. We can tell members to cancel via their Paypal account, but it would be better to give them the option to do this onsite. We also use Stripe - and cancelling a recurring payment made this way is going to be very messy - unless I've misunderstood, they will have to get in touch with their credit card provider...?

 

[indepth]

I think the first part has more to do with paypal than XF. They used to have an option to "update" simple recurring subscription payments, and that has since been taken out as far as I know. At least, it is now very obviously missing from their support documentation and the rep I spoke to on the phone said he didn't believe they offered that option. So, with paypal you have to cancel and start a new subscription. We allow our users to email us for a refund if any of their lower level membership is "unused" when they upgrade.

I don't know anything about stripe, so I can't help you there. But if it is simply a payment processor, you might be able to simply apply a credit to their account as opposed to downgrade/upgrade. Either way, I wouldn't see why they would need to contact their cc provider. That would only be to initiate a chargeback against you, and that would never be part of the plan.

 

[Peter Cox]

Thx Indepth. There's an option to "Downgrade" a user in the Admin CP / User Upgrades. It would be very helpful to give this option to users themselves, too.

 

[indepth]

Thx Indepth. There's an option to "Downgrade" a user in the Admin CP / User Upgrades. It would be very helpful to give this option to users themselves, too.

I'd be curious to know, does the user "downgrade" in the Admin CP actually do anything with the payment processors you mentioned? Or does it just adjust the user's settings?

We do our subscriber management outside of XF, so I don't actually use that feature.

 

[Peter Cox]

Not sure. I assume it reverses the changes made when the upgrade is applied, including cancelling recurring payments.

Allowing members to upgrade/downgrade their own memberships would be extremely useful.

Be interested to know what subscriber management system you use outside of XF, and how well it interfaces...?

 

[indepth]

Unfortunately we had to build our own membership management system from scratch since most of our content is outside of XF. And now we're a bit stuck since the interface (Xen SDK) will have to be rewritten for XF 2.0, and that's what we used for the account setups, upgrades, and downgrades inside Xenforo.

That said though, it does work extremely well for us as is (for the time being).

 

[Peter Cox]

XF is an interesting blend of evolved features and unfulfilled promise, membership & payments belonging to the latter.

3rd party developers appear reluctant to touch the payments system, since any slight change to the processors’ API could break it, necessitating frequent updates etc.

XF know their customers, so this probably isn’t a priority for them at the moment, sadly.

 

[Mouth]

3rd party developers appear reluctant to touch the payments system, since any slight change to the processors’ API could break it, necessitating frequent updates etc.

I'm not sure it's that? Most API changes are for new features and backwards compatible. Sunsetting comes occasionally, but generally with long lead times.

 

[viktor_kovtun]

Hi,

Is it possible to get payment page url with given id of 'user', 'user upgrade', 'payment profile'

so if there is one payment profile called 'paypal' and one 'user upgrade' called 'Pro User'.

then I want to get payment page url programmatically, which is the same when you click this button on Account uprades page.


Can someone kindly help me?