Expired Membership ; Members still active

Hi Kyle,

The main reason I want the members moved to the free plan is so that if they log back after their paid membership has expired, they do not need to renew the plan to gain at least the limited member access.    The free plan offers limited registered access, such as the ability to book auditions, see free member courses and complete forms.

If someone wants to audition (it's a theatre group), they are not required to be paid members, unless they get cast.   Only then would they need to upgrade to a paid plan. 

The issue I am running into is that some members whose plan expired want to audition and are being forced to renew to access the audition bookings and other content.   While the short-term solution is to make the booking public, it exposes us to spams plus limits what we can do when members are in certain user groups.   I also have some forms that need to be completed that have uneditable fields that automatically populate with their name and email - Something I cannot do unless they are a registered user.

I have set up the free plan with certain access, mostly controlled by the usergroup access.     

From what I can see, members who started on the free plan, later upgraded and then had their paid plan expire go back to the free plan and have no issues accessing booking, forms and courses.    

Most of the setup is fine, except for members whose paid plan expired and who never started the free plan.  So my idea was to have anyone whose paid plans expire move to the free plan, whether or not they were ever on that free plan.   Upon expiration, the paid member is not only moved to the free plan, and as a result a different usergroup but they are also moved to a different email list (AcyMailing).   

From what you mention in your reply, yes, in essence, the renewal part gets disrupted unless the member is on a recurring subscription with Stripe, so I may need to think about the effects of this.   

What do you suggest as a way to address this last missing piece of the workflow?

Thanks!

 

When they login and are expired there's no reason they can't just upgrade into the free plan unless you've configured your free plan to not allow that. Example as follows for what they should see.

 

This is done with the following configuration.

CBSubs > Settings > Global
Show subscription plans at registration: Yes
Allow Free Registered Users (without subscriptions): No
Create Subscriptions also for free lifetime plans: Yes

CBSubs > Plans > Paid Plan
Exclusive plan: Yes
Allow registration: Yes
Propose plan for upgrades only if it is more expensive: No
Propose spontaneously plan for upgrades: Yes
Visible for Group (and above this group): Public

CBSubs > Plans > Free Plan
Exclusive plan: Yes
Allow registration: Yes
Propose plan for upgrades only if it is more expensive: No
Propose spontaneously plan for upgrades: Yes
Visible for Access Level: Public
Visible for Group (and above this group): Public

This should let them freely switch from paid to free or free to paid without issue. If you've other conditions in place be sure to be mindful of those. If they're not seeing the free plan on login as shown in my screenshot above then the free plan isn't accessible to them.

I thought about this approach, but I have a question about it.   

If I enable what is effectively a "downgrade,"  will it only be visible AFTER the paid membership has expired?    I do not want to provide people the option to downgrade mid-term (it's an annual term) and possibly trigger some kind of partial refunding inside Stripe.   

If they can downgrade mid-term and it does not affect the annual payment made (it's non-refundable), that could work

Thanks!

If I enable what is effectively a "downgrade," will it only be visible AFTER the paid membership has expired?

It can be with the following conditions.

Propose plan for upgrades only if it is more expensive: No
First static condition: This condition must be NOT be met to allow upgrades:
Any of the following plans subscriptions: PAID_PLAN_HERE
Must be in state: Active

This should prevent upgrading into Free while Paid is Active. Additionally downgrading does not trigger refunds.

Great, I will give this a try.   So to recap, I configured this as you suggested earlier:

CBSubs > Settings > Global
Show subscription plans at registration: Yes
Allow Free Registered Users (without subscriptions): No
Create Subscriptions also for free lifetime plans: Yes

CBSubs > Plans > Paid Plan
Exclusive plan: Yes
Allow registration: Yes
Propose plan for upgrades only if it is more expensive: No
Propose spontaneously plan for upgrades: Yes
Visible for Group (and above this group): Public

CBSubs > Plans > Free Plan
Exclusive plan: Yes
Allow registration: Yes
Propose plan for upgrades only if it is more expensive: No
Propose spontaneously plan for upgrades: Yes
Visible for Access Level: Public
Visible for Group (and above this group): Public

AND ADD THIS TO THE PAID PLANS

Propose plan for upgrades only if it is more expensive: No
First static condition: This condition must be NOT be met to allow upgrades:
Any of the following plans subscriptions: PAID_PLAN_HERE
Must be in state: Active

By the way, I have two paid plans, one being a family plan.   I would like to be able to allow the lower-tier Paid plan to be able to upgrade to the family plan anytime during the term.   I believe I have already set this up properly.  Will the configuration above affect this at all?   I want the Family Plan when it expires to allow members to select the Free Plan, Renew or select the lower-tier paid plan. 

I presume the users who were added to the family plan can either choose their own option upon expiration or, if the family is renewed, theirs is too.

This is the setting I have now for the Family Plan:



Lastly,   think I need to go back to review all those AutoActions I added, moving users from one usergroup another.   If a plan is set as shown below, and that plan expires, do they get kicked out of that usergroup to just "Registered"?  And when they opt to go with the Free Plan, they get added to that plan's configured user group?

 

Right now I have these AutoActions
1. Type: Usergroup. (When members upgrade, they are removed from the Free Usergroup)
2. Type: Usergroup (When members expire, they are downgraded to the Free Usergroup)

AND ADD THIS TO THE PAID PLANS

Propose plan for upgrades only if it is more expensive: No
First static condition: This condition must be NOT be met to allow upgrades:
Any of the following plans subscriptions: PAID_PLAN_HERE
Must be in state: Active

That needs to be added to the Free plan not the Paid plan as you want to prevent upgrades into the free plan from the paid plan.

By the way, I have two paid plans, one being a family plan. I would like to be able to allow the lower-tier Paid plan to be able to upgrade to the family plan anytime during the term. I believe I have already set this up properly. Will the configuration above affect this at all? I want the Family Plan when it expires to allow members to select the Free Plan, Renew or select the lower-tier paid plan.

You'd use the same condition as your Free plan, but adjusted for your paid plan.

Paid Plan A
Propose plan for upgrades only if it is more expensive: No
First static condition: This condition must be NOT be met to allow upgrades:
Any of the following plans subscriptions: PAID_PLAN_B_HERE
Must be in state: Active

This would prevent Paid Plan B from upgrading into Paid Plan A if Paid Plan B is Active. All this condition does is prevent upgrades from one plan to another if that one plan is already actively subscribed. You can apply it to anything or event select multiple plans to check. So for example your free plan should probably check active state of both of your paid plans.

I presume the users who were added to the family plan can either choose their own option upon expiration or, if the family is renewed, theirs is too.

Maybe? Family plans shared subscriptions are pseudo subscriptions. Meaning they don't actually exist in the database. They are functional subscription objects though so the conditions might still apply to them. I don't recall so I recommend checking for that.

Lastly, think I need to go back to review all those AutoActions I added, moving users from one usergroup another. If a plan is set as shown below, and that plan expires, do they get kicked out of that usergroup to just "Registered"? And when they opt to go with the Free Plan, they get added to that plan's configured user group?

That setting only manages what usergroups it's set to manage. If no plan is adding/removing Registered then they'll still have Registered. Ideally you'd have something like the below.

Default Registration Usergroup: Registered
Usergroups:
- Registered
- - Free
- - Paid

Then in your free plan configure it to give them the Free usergroup. Now in your paid plan configure it to give them the Paid usergroup. At all times they should still have Registered. Now add view access levels for Free and Paid then control your content access accordingly with those new usergroups and view access levels. I don't typically recommend removing Registered.

With this setup you shouldn't need CB Auto Actions, which is mostly ideal if you need to manage multiple usergroups during subscriptions.