Using Zen Cart to sell subscriptions to an online service

[ChocolateSales]

Hi,

I know you've answered to this kind of questions already previously, but I didn't find all the information I was looking for in the message forum.

I've looking for a product that could be used for selling immaterial items, in practice subscriptions to our online-service. We'd initially have three subscriptions, 1 moth, 3 months and 6 months.

The idea would be that we'd have two separate systems, our own system for which the subscriptions would be sold for and Zen Cart.

Compared to standard physical sales there are at least the following differences:

1) No shipping is needed. This can be done with Zen Cart, as far as I've understood, just disable the shipping of certain products or something similar.

2) Post-processing of orders. Do you think it would make sense that we'd just sell the subscriptions with Zen Cart and then look at the information about sold items in the Zen Cart database and export that to our system? Or would there be another method for automatic exporting of orders to externals systems from Zen Cart?

3) User accounts. How could we map from the user accounts in Zen Cart to our existing users, i.e. when a user buys a subscription how could we identify which Zen Cart user corresponds to which user in our system. One idea that come to my mind is to use email-address for the identifications. If the user has the same email address in our system and in Zen Cart, the user would be considered the same user. What do you think?

4) Any other issues?

Also, if you have knowledge of somebody else doing similar integration with Zen Cart, I'd appreciate the information.

J

[kuroi]

1) Correct.

2) How you export them really depends upon the volume that you receive. For a small number a manual process may be sufficient. For larger volumes, a more formal export and import to your subscriptions systems may be better, in which case this mod might help.

3) email address would certainly be the best from a Zen Cart perspective as is both required and unique for each customer. Can't comment on your subscriptions package.

4) Handling renewals.

[ChocolateSales]

4) Handling renewals.

Thanks for the quick answers. What do you mean with 'renewals'?

J

[kuroi]

Do these subscriptions continue indefinitely, or do they need to be renewed periodically?

[ChocolateSales]

Do these subscriptions continue indefinitely, or do they need to be renewed periodically?

Ah yes, not I understand. I think we can handle the renewals of subscriptions inside our application. We can just keep track on how 1) when a user has bought a subscription(s) and 2) how long the subscriptions are. From those facts we can see whether the subscription is valid. And when the user's subscription is reaching it's end date, we suggest him to buy a new one.

Of course it'd be nice to show in Zen Cart page when the user's subscription is ending or does he even have one. But I'd say these are nice-to-have features.

So, not much need for integration with Zen Cart.