How to offer free first year hosting?

[elogichick]

I am trying to find out how I can set a product to be free for the first year and will automatically renew at the price set after the first year is up. I want the hosting to be bundled with my web development.

 

1. I looked up limited recurring promotions, is that what I would have to use? do my clients have to actually enter a promo code or can this be set up automatically to switch to the renewal price after the first year?

 

2. Can I set a web development + hosting price at checkout? and just a hosting price for future renewals? ex: $500 upon sign up, but charge them $100 when it comes time to renew?

 

3. If I have different web development businesses that all sell the same hosting, will I be able to set plans that only show on certain sites and not others? ex, I plan on using the WHMCS Bridge Wordpress plugin for clients to select hosting packages directly from my web development sites, am I able to only show plans associated with that site and hide ones associated with another site?

[brian!]

I am trying to find out how I can set a product to be free for the first year and will automatically renew at the price set after the first year is up. I want the hosting to be bundled with my web development.

1. I looked up limited recurring promotions, is that what I would have to use? do my clients have to actually enter a promo code or can this be set up automatically to switch to the renewal price after the first year?

you can add a promotion code to a link - that way the user can click on the link and the promo code will be added to the cart... if the cart contains the correct products, then the code will be validated and the price will be discounted.

 

http://docs.whmcs.com/Promotions#Promotion_Links

 

2. Can I set a web development + hosting price at checkout? and just a hosting price for future renewals? ex: $500 upon sign up, but charge them $100 when it comes time to renew?

with WHMCS, the recurring price set during the order process is also used as the future renewal price... which in some ways is obvious, but as someone pointed out to me a few months ago, is also bizarre as you could reasonably expect you could set an initial and renewal price to be different.

 

if this web design+hosting is just going to be one product, and you want to avoid promo codes, then you could use a setup fee of $400 and hosting of $100 - that way, the user will initially pay $500, then after that they'll just pay $100.

 

3. If I have different web development businesses that all sell the same hosting, will I be able to set plans that only show on certain sites and not others? ex, I plan on using the WHMCS Bridge Wordpress plugin for clients to select hosting packages directly from my web development sites, am I able to only show plans associated with that site and hide ones associated with another site?

one option would be to make all of these products hidden and then create your own links to them (as per above) - that way, you could add the links only you want to show on the specific sites... hidden products won't appear in the cart products page, but you can add them by linking to them directly.

[elogichick]

Thank you so much for all your help, I will create my products around your advice.

[ndsystems]

Brian,

 

May I ask what is the best way to give free hosting even if they ordered 1 month, 3 month or 12 month plan.

 

Thanks!!

[WHMCS ChrisD]

Hey ndsystems,

 

You could also use Promotion Codes http://docs.whmcs.com/Promotions#Promotion_Links to achieve this, are you bundling anything other than hosting at all?