Trail period for products

[dsfsfg]

Greetings 

I want to to provide my customers with a trial period on products or services before they purchase it, that is, the customer uses the product for -let's say- 7 days and after the 7 days it automatically activates for him/her if he purchases it or it get suspended if he didn't. How i can do that if it's possible? 

[inteldigital]

Hi dsfdfg,

To create trial products, simply create a product that expires after 7 days by going to Setup --> Products & Services --> Products & Services and editing or creating the package you want setting the "Auto Terminate/Fixed Term" option to however many days you require, for example 7. See below:

 

 

[dsfsfg]

1 hour ago, inteldigital said:

Hi dsfdfg,

To create trial products, simply create a product that expires after 7 days by going to Setup --> Products & Services --> Products & Services and editing or creating the package you want setting the "Auto Terminate/Fixed Term" option to however many days you require, for example 7. See below:

 

 

but is there a way to suspend rather than terminate? because i want the product to reactivate after paying for the service and continue using it for the rest 23 days ( 30 days minus 7 days or used )

[inteldigital]

Hi @dsfsfg (you should really change that username ),

I will quote you a post from @brian! in relation to this query, I think it will help:

Quote

you're falling between two features here - the usual two solutions would be...

 

1. setup a trial product that terminates after x (e.g 15) days and allow them to upgrade to the monthly paid product... you can use WHMCS to send them emails before and after the termination to encourage them to upgrade.

2. you could setup the monthly product as normal, but discount the first month using a promotion code... it would then be effectively free for 30 days... anything less than a month would require custom coding or an addon.

 

[malfunction]

from the related feature request:  "Once the trial period if the customer does not pay for the service, the account will be suspended."

WHMCS response:  "I'm pleased to be able to advise this is possible using the Auto Terminate/Fixed Term option under the product Pricing tab."

 

Actually I don't believe this is is possible, SUSPEND being the operative word.  Whatever the product is, if the trial customer has spent a bunch of time building/configuring/whatever with his trial product, he's not going to be real impressed if his work gets deleted on termination.  

 

Much better to be a bit softer, suspend for a period in the hope he will convert to paid once he sees the product is deactivated, then terminate later if he doesn't.  Just trashing it at the first opportunity because he wasn't quick enough to make the first payment is not the way to begin a profitable relationship.  Auto deletion of accounts without some sort of grace period is ALWAYS a mistake.

[brian!]

1 hour ago, malfunction said:

Auto deletion of accounts without some sort of grace period is ALWAYS a mistake.

I don't think it's always a mistake - it depends upon the nature of the trial, but generally yes it's better to try and keep them onboard.

[malfunction]

OK, well maybe not always a mistake, but in my experience it's generally better to hide something for a while and see if they will pay, rather than just deleting everything at the first possible opportunity.  The latter makes for fed up customers and extra support workload 

So, just another WHMCS disappointment, I guess.  You think you have some useful product trial functionality but when you go to actually implement it  you discover that it's just half baked and not properly thought out.

 

[brian!]

2 hours ago, malfunction said:

You think you have some useful product trial functionality but when you go to actually implement it  you discover that it's just half baked and not properly thought out.

sadly, that's often a recurring theme with WHMCS development.... many features have potential, but then just get developed just to a stage where WHMCS seem to think "that's good enough for now", release it... and then move onto the next feature... never to return to really improve the original feature.. I could give so many examples of that occurring, I wouldn't know where to start.