Managing subscription upgrades

Offering customers the flexibility to switch between subscription plans and enhance their subscription capabilities is a strategic approach that can boost your revenue growth and drive your customer lifetime value (CLV).

How the upgrade can be managed

The best way to upgrade a subscription, is the use of Upgrade Quotes available only in the Subscription Management 2.0.

It is also possible to use Subscription API. You can also switch the tab for legacy methods available for Subscription Management 1.0

Subscription Management 2.0

Using upgrade quotes

Upgrade quotes are used to facilitate midterm changes to a customer's active subscription. They allow you to offer adjustments such as increasing product quantity, switching to a higher-tier product, or applying custom pricing and scheduling—all before the current term ends. This way, upgrade quotes can be scheduled for future dates and support dynamic configurations, offering a more flexible and controlled upgrade experience.

Create an upgrade quote

Upgrade quotes are available through the Subscription Quotes API.

View upgrade quotes in Subscription Management Portal

If an upgrade quote has been issued, the customer can access it in the Documents tab of their active subscription or in an email.

Each quote displays:

• Quote type
• Creation date
• Quoted total price
• Affected product(s)

Customers can click Place order to accept the offer.

Confirmation screen will come up. When accepting an upgrade quote, the customer is shown a summary of the upgrade price, the effective date, and the updated recurring renewal amount. The prorated charge for the remaining term is clearly indicated. This transparency ensures the customer understands both the immediate upgrade cost and the new monthly price going forward.

As soon as the customer has accepted the quote, the process continues with invoicing and fulfilment.

Subscription Management 1.0

Using the Cancellation product list (1.0)

The Cancellation product list option when setting up your products on our platform, which:

• showcases limited flexibility, as it applies to the purchase of all products in the cancellation product list

• lacks precision, as it applies to all items in a subscription

• all checkout steps must be completed, resulting in higher potential for abandonment

• is difficult to track, as each upgrade transaction is associated with its individual subscription ID

• is limited in scope, as it applies to one subscription item at a time and to immediate upgrades only

  note

  Subscription products set up for the cancellation product list are considered to be substitutes for each other. When a customer purchases a particular subscription product, the products set up in the cancellation product list are canceled.

For additional information, guidance, and a personalized recommendation, contact Client Experience.

Using Subscription API

The Subscription API:

• is applied selectively to each subscription purchase

• is applicable to one or more items within a subscription

• enables "one-click" upgrades, minimizing abandonment

• is easily trackable under an unchanged subscription ID

• is versatile, supporting functionalities such as usage billing, quantity changes, and changes to the next billing date

  note

  You are legally required to have the consent of the customer when an upgrade is done using the Subscription API. This can be done on the same client-hosted page that displays the pro-rated price for the upgrade.

Notifications

Any renewal activity triggers relevant Cleverbridge notifications. For a complete list of event types and their payloads, see Keep track of subscription-related actions.

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