Subscriptions
Learn how to manage subscriptions.
Last updated
Commerce API references
Learn how to manage subscriptions.
Last updated
Subscriptions allow customers to make recurring payments to access a product like a video game or streaming service.
The following image shows the lifecycle of a subscription from beginning to end when a customer purchases a new subscription to a product. You receive a notification when the customer creates a new subscription. After the trial period expires, the system bills the customer, and you receive a trial to active conversion notification. As the customer continues to use the product, you receive renewal notifications at the start of every new subscription period. Finally, you receive a cancellation notice when the customer no longer needs the product and their subscription lapses.
The following image shows the lifecycle from the beginning of a free trial subscription to the end.
The following table defines the terms used in the subscription lifecycle.
Purchase Date
The date the subscription was purchased
Activation Date
The date the paid subscription was activated. If the subscription was not activated, the date appears as 01/01/9000 00:00:00.
Free Trial Activation Date
The date the free trial subscription was activated. If the subscription was not activated, the date appears as 01/01/9000 00:00:00.
Free Trial Conversion Notification Date
The date when you send the customer a free trial conversion notification for their subscription.
Free Trial Conversion Confirmation Notification Date
Purchased Duration
The selected recurrence from the product setup GUI. The amount (in days) of service purchased excluding any extensions or trials.
Purchased Duration Date
The date when the subscription ends based on the amount of service purchased.
Note: This is not the expiration date.
Renewal Notification Date
The date when you send the customer a renewal notification for their subscription.
Conversion Notification date
The date when you send a conversion notification for their free trial, informing the customer that their free trial will become a paid subscription.
Extension Period
Additional length of service given beyond the purchased duration.
Bill
The date you bill the customer. You could send a bill to remind the customer to renew their subscription on milestone dates, such as the Renewal Date, Expiration Date, and the Grace Date.
Renewal Date
The date when the customer should renew their subscription.
Expiration Date
The date when the subscription completes. This includes the amount of service purchased plus any extensions.
Total Duration
Also known as the Subscription Period. The length of time that the subscription provides services. This includes the purchased amount of service plus any extensions.
Grace Period
The length of time a subscription continues to provide the service after the expiration date.
Grace Date
The date when the grace period ends. No service is provided after this date.
Cancellation Date
The date when the subscription was cancelled. If the subscription is not cancelled, the date appears as 01/01/9999 00:00:00.
Digital River uses these invariants to define the subscription lifecycle.
Activation Date < Purchased Duration Date <= Expiration Date <= Grace Date
Activation Date < Renewal Date <= Expiration Date <= Grace Date
Activation Date < Renewal Notification Date < Renewal Date
Renewal Notification Date must be one or more days before the Renewal date
Free Trial Conversion Notification Date = Free Trial Conversion Confirmation Date − Notification Days
Free Trial Conversion Date or Trial Term End Date (for example, June 20th) = Free Trial Start Date (for example, June 10th) + Free Trial Product Term (for example, ten days)
Purchase Duration = Purchase Duration Date − Activation Date
Purchase Duration Date = Activation Date Purchase Duration
Extension Period = Activation Date + Purchased Duration + Extension Period
Expiration Date = Activation Date + Purchased Duration + Extension Period
Grace Period = Grace Date − Expiration Date
Grace Date = Expiration Date + Grace Period
A subscription can't be activated if it has been cancelled
Activation Date = 01/01/9999 00:00:00 if not activated
A subscription has a state attribute that describes the current status of the subscription. The following values enumerate the state of a Subscription: Subscribed, PendingActivation, Cancelled, PendingRenewal, and FreeTrial.
Converting a trial subscription changes the state from FreeTrial to Subscribed.
PendingRenewal is an intermediate state when a subscription is getting renewed.
The following diagram shows the subscription states.
The following scenarios show how you can integrate your sales recording tool with our billing engine to create, upgrade, downgrade, change the price, change the number of seats, and cancel a subscription.
A customer purchased a subscription product. The customer is very happy with the product they are using and in need of two more, so they call Customer Service.
The Customer Service Representative (CRS) thinks they can offer a discount to the customer with increased quantity. So after talking to the customer, the CSR builds a modified subscription offer with an increased quantity and changed price.
The CSR sends the offer to Digital River to update the customer's subscription contract. Once Digital River updates the existing subscription contract, we generate the corresponding outbound email or Subscription Service Notification (SSN).
On receiving a notification from Digital River, you send an email to the customer.
A customer purchased a subscription product. The customer is very happy with the product they are using and wants to increase its number, so they call Customer Service.
The CSR has a product upgrade with a minimal price increase, so they offer this to the customer. After talking to the customer, the CSR builds a modified subscription offer with an upgraded product and its prorated price.
The CSR sends the offer to Digital River to update the customer's subscription contract. Once Digital River updates the existing subscription contract, we generate the corresponding outbound email or SSN.
On receiving a notification from Digital River, you send an email to the customer.
The CSR calls the customer to offer a change to their product (upgrade) or increase the quantity of the existing product. So after consultation with the customer, the CSR builds a modified subscription offer with the upgraded product and/or increased quantity.
The CSR sends the offer to Digital River to update the customer's subscription contract. Once Digital River updates the existing subscription contract, we generate the corresponding outbound email or SSN.
On receiving a notification from Digital River, you send an email to the customer.
A customer purchased a subscription product. The customer found a similar product for a lower price at a different vendor and wants to cancel their current subscription, so the customer calls Customer Service.
The CSR understands the situation, checks for any discount they can offer to encourage the customer to continue their current subscription. After convincing the customer, The CSR builds a modified subscription offer with a discounted price.
The CSR sends the offer to Digital River to update the customer's subscription contract. Once Digital River updates the existing subscription contract, we generate the corresponding outbound email or SSN.
On receiving a notification from Digital River, you send an email to the customer.
A customer purchased 100 licenses for a subscription product. The customer no longer needs all of the licenses, so he calls Customer Service.
The CSR builds a modified subscription offer with a decreased quantity.
The CSR sends the offer to Digital River to update the customer's subscription contract. Once Digital River updates the existing subscription contract, we generate the corresponding outbound email or SSN.
On receiving a notification from Digital River, you send an email to the customer.
A customer purchased a subscription product with advanced features and now they believe they don't need the advanced features. The customer calls Customer Service to cancel the subscription.
The CSR tries to convince the customer to downgrade the product instead of cancelling it. After convincing the customer to downgrade, the CSR builds a modified subscription offer with the downgraded product (with no price change and refund).
The CSR sends the offer to Digital River to update the customer's subscription contract. Once Digital River updates the existing subscription contract, we generate the corresponding outbound email or SSN.
On receiving a notification from Digital River, you send an email to the customer.
A midterm change occurs when a customer requests a change to their subscription before their next renewal. A Call Center agent can use this opportunity to dissuade the customer from cancelling their subscription, encourage their customer to increase the quantity of their subscription, upgrade their subscription, purchase an add-on to their subscription, or sell another promotion.
The Call Center agent must identify the type of midterm change. To persuade customers not to cancel their subscription, the call center agent can offer a perpetual unit price or a one-time price override or reduce the subscription quantity.
Call Center agents can use the prorated unit price (proratedUnitPrice) to apply a midterm change with a price override to the unit price listed in the product catalog during a midterm subscription change request based on a customer's request. The customer may request an increase in the product quantity, a product upgrade, or a product add-on.
Use the Preview and Preview-cart resources to override a unit price, increase the base product quantity, upgrade the base product, increase the add-on product quantity, or add a new add-on via a midterm change. The Preview-cart resource creates a cart behind the scenes showing the customer how much the cost will change. The preview cart includes the credit, subtotal, total tax, and the total amount due to be paid if the preview changes result in an amount due. It also has a link to the cart with the rest of the payload. The Preview resource does not return the cart details if created in the response. Use the Preview resource to create a cart by subsequently calling another resource. The Preview and Preview-cart resources allow you to choose when and how to initiate a cart.
Once the shopper submits or confirms the immediate midterm change, any subsequent lifecycle operation (auto or manual renewal, product or quantity change, cancel, and so on) on the subscription will consider the changed configuration of the subscription and add-ons.
For example, a customer currently has a subscription of four and wants to increase the quantity to 10. They initially agreed to a unit price of $20.00 for $80.00. The Call Center agent offers a prorated unit price of $15.00 for an additional six subscriptions for $90.00 as an incentive for the subscription duration. The next time the customer renews their subscription, the unit price will be $20 for $200.00.
You can also use the Reduce resource to decrease the base product quantity, decrease the product add-on quantity (quantity), or remove a product add-on from a subscription. Use the Reduce resource if a Preview resource call does not create a cart that decreases a product quantity or removes a product add-on. Invoking Reduce resource will update the customer's configuration in the database tables.
For example, an agent can reduce a quantity of 10 subscriptions to 6 subscriptions at the customer's request.
If you sell identical or near-identical products to businesses through your sales teams or partners, your sales teams generally have long-term selling relationships with their clients. Your sales team will periodically upsell, downsell, or adjust the contract in some way to promote both engagement and satisfaction with the product.
These deals run off a pricing algorithm but use "set" pricing during purchase transactions across deals. Additionally, you'll find differences in the following:
The consequence for late payments
Enforcing penalties
Which payment methods to use
Whether the end consumer pays the bill (to Digital River)
How to handle upgrades, downgrades, and seat/quantity changes
The length and complexity of terms and billing and invoicing
A host of other smaller differences between the B2B and B2C software markets
You create a subscription product in Global Commerce.
You can add the add-on product when you create a subscription product in Global Commerce.
The date you send the customer notification that their free trial converted to a paid subscription. Note: only occurs for an auto subscription product. require the customer to renew the subscription manually.
changes the state from PendingActivation to Subscribed.
changes the state from Subscribed or FreeTrial to Cancelled.
Call Center agents can use the perpetual unit price (perpetualUnitPrice) attribute to add. A perpetual unit price remains the same each time the customer renews the monthly or annual subscription until they change their subscription by adding or subtracting quantity or add-ons. You essentially honor the deal until something changes. The customer can be an individual or business subscription entity.
For example, a Call Center agent . The catalog price for the subscription product is $20.00. When the agent sets the perpetual unit price to $15.00, the perpetual unit price does not change until the deal changes. When the deal changes, the price per unit can change (in this instance, it could change to $18.00).
Use the and resources to assign the perpetual price.
You can modify a subscription during a midterm change. That includes or reducing the subscription quantity.
Add-on products allow you to add paid or free options to your subscription product. Once you configure them, your customers can add them to their subscription product for an additional fee per renewal cycle. Add-ons are incremental to the main subscription product and follow the subscription renewal cycle. During the subscription, the customers can add or remove add-on products. Once added, they are renewed when the main subscription product is renewed until the customer deactivates them. For more information, see and .
