Can I sell 1-year memberships?

[diptimoy]

Can zencart be Used as membership site , which will expire after an year . If so , which plugins can help me?

[dbltoe]

Google Zen Cart Subscriptions and there will be several options.

[diptimoy]

Google Zen Cart Subscriptions and there will be several options.

Thanks . I did before posting here , didn't find available module as such . If you know some , kindly forward the links

[dbltoe]

I see at least five on the first page. However, all are commercial.

[DrByte]

Can zencart be Used as membership site , which will expire after an year . If so , which plugins can help me?

It's complicated to give you any useful technical response as there's a lot of detail missing from your post.

Zen Cart doesn't directly handle subscriptions.

A couple key things you would need to consider:
- what are people subscribing TO? What does the membership give them access TO?
- if Zen Cart is ONLY collecting payment, then you could work on a payment module transaction that creates a recurring subscription payment at your payment-provider service and let it just keep rebilling until the customer changes the plan
- but if you ALSO want Zen Cart to ENFORCE controls around access related to the membership (ie: some particular content on your site), then you'll need to build the logic to check for a valid subscription and only grant access accordingly.

There are dozens of considerations. These are just a few that expose the need for more information before exploring particular directions.

That said, @carlwhat is currently supporting an authorizenet card-on-file payment module that may be one starting point for the payment subscription piece. I don't recall it having full-on subscription management in it, but you could expand it into more features. Many payment providers offer recurring billing features, but payment is only one piece of the puzzle. The repeat payments are another, as is enforcing control over what the payments grant access to.

[carlwhat]

That said, @carlwhat is currently supporting an authorizenet card-on-file payment module that may be one starting point for the payment subscription piece. I don't recall it having full-on subscription management in it, but you could expand it into more features. Many payment providers offer recurring billing features, but payment is only one piece of the puzzle. The repeat payments are another, as is enforcing control over what the payments grant access to.

change to that module to support subscriptions is certainly a possibility if there is a demand for it.

best.

[diptimoy]

It's complicated to give you any useful technical response as there's a lot of detail missing from your post.

Zen Cart doesn't directly handle subscriptions.

A couple key things you would need to consider:
- what are people subscribing TO? What does the membership give them access TO?
- if Zen Cart is ONLY collecting payment, then you could work on a payment module transaction that creates a recurring subscription payment at your payment-provider service and let it just keep rebilling until the customer changes the plan
- but if you ALSO want Zen Cart to ENFORCE controls around access related to the membership (ie: some particular content on your site), then you'll need to build the logic to check for a valid subscription and only grant access accordingly.

There are dozens of considerations. These are just a few that expose the need for more information before exploring particular directions.

That said, @carlwhat is currently supporting an authorizenet card-on-file payment module that may be one starting point for the payment subscription piece. I don't recall it having full-on subscription management in it, but you could expand it into more features. Many payment providers offer recurring billing features, but payment is only one piece of the puzzle. The repeat payments are another, as is enforcing control over what the payments grant access to.

The requirement is the customers can buy membership for 6 month , 9 month 12 months . The membership will have parameters , discount on discount , free shipping , either or both disocunt and free shipping . A month before memnership ends a mail will go to customers as reminder for renewal . If not renewed the membership will ne autocut and avaialble facilities will stop , etc. payment will be one time via zencart

[DrByte]

The requirement is the customers can buy membership for 6 month , 9 month 12 months . The membership will have parameters , discount on discount , free shipping , either or both disocunt and free shipping . A month before memnership ends a mail will go to customers as reminder for renewal . If not renewed the membership will ne autocut and avaialble facilities will stop , etc. payment will be one time via zencart

Thanks for the additional detail. That's a huge help for setting context.

There are low-tech, mid-tech, and hi-tech ways to approach this.

At the simplest level, you could just create virtual products for each subscription level, and sell them.
Then manually manage a list (a spreadsheet on your PC maybe?) of renewal-reminder email dates for those customers,
and manually grant them their discount levels (group-pricing perhaps?, in the short-term maybe a custom coupon code for free-shipping).
And manually remove those groups and expire the coupon if they don't renew.

And then you could start automating some of the privilege granting upon order-completion using a custom Observer class.
Maybe then also have the Observer put the user onto a mailing list for current subscribers.
Maybe also update a custom db table that says when the customer's access expires, instead of managing a spreadsheet.
Consult that table for manually sending expiry notices by hand.
Maybe custom code a feature for free-shipping for those with active subscriptions.

Then set up a cron job or something to automatically handle expirations via code, both sending reminders and also cutting access if not renewed.
And ensure in the Observer that if people renew then any previously-stored expiry dates are updated with the new expiry date based on whatever they bought.

Fortunately none of this needs "recurring billing", so that's one problem you don't need to try to solve.

All of this custom flexibility is one benefit of having full control over the site's software. Granted, it requires writing the code to do what's needed.

[diptimoy]

Thanks for the additional detail. That's a huge help for setting context.

There are low-tech, mid-tech, and hi-tech ways to approach this.

At the simplest level, you could just create virtual products for each subscription level, and sell them.
Then manually manage a list (a spreadsheet on your PC maybe?) of renewal-reminder email dates for those customers,
and manually grant them their discount levels (group-pricing perhaps?, in the short-term maybe a custom coupon code for free-shipping).
And manually remove those groups and expire the coupon if they don't renew.

And then you could start automating some of the privilege granting upon order-completion using a custom Observer class.
Maybe then also have the Observer put the user onto a mailing list for current subscribers.
Maybe also update a custom db table that says when the customer's access expires, instead of managing a spreadsheet.
Consult that table for manually sending expiry notices by hand.
Maybe custom code a feature for free-shipping for those with active subscriptions.

Then set up a cron job or something to automatically handle expirations via code, both sending reminders and also cutting access if not renewed.
And ensure in the Observer that if people renew then any previously-stored expiry dates are updated with the new expiry date based on whatever they bought.

Fortunately none of this needs "recurring billing", so that's one problem you don't need to try to solve.

All of this custom flexibility is one benefit of having full control over the site's software. Granted, it requires writing the code to do what's needed.

Thanks. Thanks a lot .

[royaldave]

Just an idea, but you could perhaps hijack the Order Delivery Date module - https://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=683.

Rather than allowing the user to pick their delivery date - you set it on the checkout page to be the expiration date of the subscription. A few tweaks to the language files and you've got a pretty good start on your concept.