Contents
Chapter 4. Understanding PaddleSubs
The ideas PaddleSubs is built on: what you sell and how it is priced, the Access Subscription every purchase creates, how purchases grant user groups, how customers become Joomla users, and the work that happens in the background.
Products, Prices and Levels
A product is what you sell: “Gold Membership”, “Video course”, “Pro plugin”. It decides what a purchase gives: which user groups, which category it is listed in, and whether it is licensed per site.
A price is one way of paying for a product. A product can have as many as you like, for example “Monthly”, “Yearly” and “Lifetime”. Each price has an amount, and one of four billing types, which also decides how long the access it buys lasts:
- Recurring
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Paddle charges the customer every Billing Cycle (every month, every year, every two weeks…) until they cancel. Each charge buys access for one cycle. A recurring price can start with a free or paid trial (see the section called “Trials and Introductory Prices”).
- Non-Recurring
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Paid once, for access that lasts the Expiry Period, such as 30 days or 1 year. To keep access, the customer buys again.
- Lifetime
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Paid once, for access that never ends.
- Fixed Date
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Paid once, for access until the date in Expires On, whenever it is bought. Useful for a season or an event.
Paddle only knows whether a price is recurring. How long a one-time price lasts is PaddleSubs' own setting, which it also stores in the price's custom data in Paddle.
A level groups products into tiers, such as Basic, Pro and Agency. Levels are PaddleSubs' own; Paddle doesn't have them. A level can add and remove user groups for every product in it, it can be shown on your site as a group of products, and a discount can reward customers moving from one level to another. A product belongs to at most one level.
Products also belong to a Joomla category, which you manage in → → . Categories organize the product pages on your site and can nest: a “Software” category might hold “Joomla” and “WordPress”.
Tip
Use categories for what a product is (its subject or platform) and levels for how much it includes (its tier). A product can then be “Joomla, Pro”, and you can give every Pro product the same support group while each platform keeps its own download group.