Hi Idryja,
Welcome to the community! 😄
It sounds like your using PayPal's Website Payments Standard subscription buttons.
To allow changes to be made to a subscription agreement, we would recommend integrating a Modify Subscription button as part of your upgrade/downgrade process. You can learn more about these types of subscription buttons here:
Working With Modify Subscription Buttons . These buttons would make the system more automated. Otherwise, you may have the option to manually edit a subscription profile.
Another option is to use PayPal's Enhanced Recurring Payments service. This service offers options for Automatic Billing and Installment Plans along with more options for standard subscription billing. This would allow you to manually set and change the amount being charged each month. The buyer would agree to allow recurring billing up to a maximum amount and how long that agreement will last.
@ldryja wrote:
Some questions:
- If a user signed up for Basic Yearly and started paying me (i.e. is in his second month) and wants to upgrade to Pro Yearly then how do I set that up? Is there a way to specify a subscription such that there's an initial fee on upgrade so that I can pro-rate things properly?
See link to Modify Subscription buttons above. The modify subscription button would specify the new Pro pricing. Your site would be coded to know how much the initial period needs to be for pro-rating the rest of the month. This would mean that your server would need to modify the PayPal button code depending on the account and situation.
ldryja wrote:
- If a user wants to downgrade from a yearly to monthly plan then I'm assuming the best way to handle that is to have them cancel their current yearly subscription, obtain a refund, and sign up again. Is there an alternative?
The modify subscription button could be used in a way that would cancel the existing yearly subscription and create a new one with the monthly billing terms. The refund would need to be done manually or using the Refund Transaction API .
ldryja wrote:
- If I changed the yearly plans to have two trial periods (i.e. a1 and a2) then what happens if a user upgrades to another plan while they're still in a1? What about a2? For example, if I'm in a2 of a Basic Yearly plan and upgrade to a Pro Yearly plan, then when do I start the Pro Yearly plan? Do I start the Pro Yearly in a1, a2, or a3?
The modify subscription button would start a completely new agreement at the time the customer uses it. So as soon as they agree, a new a1 would be started. So this would be another situation where your site may need to dynamically adjust a1 and a2 in the button code depending on the situation.
The page with the information on modify subscriptions and editing subscriptions has a lot of other great information about subscriptions.
I hope this helps! 🙂
- Frank
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