Overview
While creating a subscription plan, you will have the option to select from different subscription plan types in your store's merchant portal.
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Currently, Appstle offers 4 different plan types:
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1. Pay As You Go (Auto-renew)
2. Prepaid One-Time
3. Prepaid Auto-Renew

4. Pay as you go (Prepaid)
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​What is the difference between them?
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​1. Pay As You Go (Auto-renew)
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With the 'pay-as-you-go' plan, your customers will be charged at regular intervals, as per the order frequency and interval of their subscription.

For instance, if you are offering a monthly subscription option to your customers in which products are delivered every month, and you choose the 'Pay As You Go' option, your customers will be billed once a month for just the value of the order delivered that month. The customer will be automatically billed, until they, or you, the merchant, cancel the subscription.

2. Prepaid One-Time
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With the prepaid one-time plan type, you can charge your customers an upfront payment for multiple upcoming orders that are a part of the subscription.

In the image below, we see that the Billing Period is 12, and the Fulfillment Frequency is 1 month. This means that the customer will be charged for 12 months of orders upfront. They will be pre-paying for 12 deliveries in advance. The payment will automatically create an order with 12 fulfilments in your Shopify's orders section.

The prepaid plan will only charge once, after which only the fulfillments are to be completed, and then the subscription terminates.

3. Prepaid Auto-Renew
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Prepaid Auto-Renew plan is quite similar to the Prepaid One-time plan. However here, you can enable the prepaid plan to continue charging the customer upfront based on the configuration you define.

In the configuration below, the customer will be charged every 12 months for 12 months of orders, so there will be 12 fulfillments created in the order in your Shopify Admin. This subscription will not terminate after the first payment upfront, and will instead continue until canceled, like the Pay-as-you-go plan.

4. Pay as you go (Prepaid)

The "Pay-As-You-Go (Prepaid)" plan allows merchants to easily set both the Billing Frequency and the Order fulfilment frequency for a subscription contract. The system then automatically manages the repeating cycles and discounts (loyalty) for you, reducing the need for manual setup.

Let’s say you might set the delivery interval to once every month while setting the billing interval to every three months. This allows customers to receive their products monthly while being billed only once per quarter. The plan automatically manages the necessary cycles and loyalty discounts for you, ensuring a seamless subscription experience without requiring manual adjustments.

It’s important to note that free trials are not allowed for this plan type, as they could interfere with the prepaid-like functionality of the contract.

By implementing the Pay-As-You-Go (Prepaid) plan, you no longer need to manually handle complex subscription cycles or loyalty settings. Everything is integrated within the system, providing a straightforward and manageable subscription experience.

If you have any questions about Plan types, or are looking for more features, you can reach out to us at subscription-support@appstle.com. Our 24x7x365 available experts will be happy to assist you further.