Limited subscriptions (aka "payment plans) are subscriptions that end after a specified number of billing cycles (ex: 3 payments of $50). Subscriptions can be billed monthly, yearly, quarterly, or even according to a custom schedule of your choosing. They can be created with free trials, or paid trial periods. SamCart gives you the flexibility to sell however you see fit.
Create Your Limited Subscription Product
Start by navigating to your Products (1) tab and clicking + New Product (2).
You will define your product’s pricing structure in the popup that appears. Let’s take a look at each of the options:
- Product Name: This is the product name that will appear in your customer’s receipts and emails.
- Product Type: Select if your product will be Digital or Physical subscription.
- Subscription Type: You will then need to select either Recurring or Limited. To create a limited subscription, select Limited. Limited subscriptions bill at regular intervals until a designated number of payments are completed. If you would like to create a subscription with no end date, check out our Recurring Subscriptions article.
- Frequency: This is how often your subscription will bill - weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or custom days.
- Number of charges: Enter the total number of rebills for your limited subscription (not including the initial charge). For example, if you are creating a payment plan that is 4 total payments, you would want to enter '3' here.
- Pay What You Want: Toggle this "On" this if you would like your product to be a Pay What You Want product. If this is toggled on, the Subscription Price field will change to Minimum Contribution, and the Offer a Trial settings will disappear.
- Subscription Price: The limited subscription price.
- Collect Taxes: Check this box if you would like to collect taxes for this product.
- Offer A Trial: Check this box if you would like your subscription to include a trial period
- Selecting Free Trial will allow you to give customers a free trial, and you can select the Number of Days you would like the trial period to last.
- Selecting Paid Trial will allow you to give your customers a trial for a fee, and you can select the Number of Days and the Initial Price (trial fee) for the trial period.
When you're done filling out all the information about your product, click the blue Create Product button at the bottom. And you're done! You have now created a limited subscription product.
Subscription Examples
Below are a few examples of different types of limited subscriptions, and the settings you would enter to make them happen in SamCart.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can I change the recurring price for an existing product?
A: Any subscription-based product that has (or had) active subscribers cannot have its pricing structure changed. If you want to update the price, we suggest creating a duplicate product at the appropriate price and setting up a checkout redirect that points to the newly remade product.
Q: Can I create a limited subscription with a single payment (Number of Charges = 1)?
A: You cannot create a limited subscription with a single payment. Instead, try creating a one-time payment product!
If you create a limited subscription with a single payment (Number of Charges = 1) there will be 2 total charges, the initial charge and 1 rebill charge. You can also make total Number of Charges 1 if there is a free or paid trial, for example an initial charge of $100 and then 1 payment of $50 30 days later.
Q: What happens to my Limited subscriptions when I close my SamCart account?
A: Any active limited subscriptions, such as payment plans that will end after a set number of payments, are stopped immediately and will not continue to bill. This is due to the fact that they are directly managed by SamCart itself, not your connected processor(s).
Q: Can I pay off a subscription without charging the customer anything?
A: Yes you can! When you click the button to pay off a subscription, the popup will have a Give a Discount toggle. If you toggle this on, you will have the option to discount the payoff by a percentage or fixed amount. Click here to learn more about paying off limited subscriptions! 