Membership Tiers: beta feedback/issues

Memberships & subscriptions Tiers
1

I was testing out the new Membership Tiers ( :raised_hands: ) and they’re great. Everything I’d hoped/expected, but there’s some minor things to mention for the beta.

Removing tiers

Currently no way to remove a tier, so if you had a random one from before and add new ones, you have to hide that tier on the customize portal page, or edit it into a useful one. This is probably a known/obvious WIP.

Complimentary Confusions

Since my account is new I can only embed one image, so I’ve labelled them.

When giving a member a complimentary subscription, the dialog shows up offering a named tier. This is nice. A.

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On clicking Add Subscription, it shows up as expected, and shows a Tier name. B.
Note the Created On and Dates are missing here.

If you refresh the page you now get dates! It still shows the Tier name, and the Complimentary word. C.

And now the main issue, the user can’t see what tier they have, they only see the “Complimentary”.
I’d expect the user should be able to see something like Tinkerer - Complimentary instead. D.

Thanks for the work on the multiple tiers, it’s a really strong start and I’m very happy to have it!

7 Likes
2

Oh, and one more I forgot to mention: when the user is viewing their account in the portal, there’s no option to change plans if they’re on the complimentary plan.

If it’s not a complimentary plan, the change button shows up. I’d expect it to always be visible!

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3

The Sept. 2021 custom membership tier beta is amazing, in my view. I have subscribers who want to contribute more than the basic subscription. Finally I can do that. In the first day of implementation, a subscriber changed from a $50 yearly to a $250 yearly. Fantastic!

However, I would not see that money until May 2022, because the beta doesn’t reset the billing period. It adds the prorated higher rate to the next invoice, when the subscriber’s $50 yearly ends, and it subtracts the prorated paid balance. In terms of funds transferred, nothing happens until the end of the current billing period–which could be nearly a year away.

My guess is that the subscriber expects a charge to his card at the time he changes his subscription. So, I think it would be nice if the beta resets the billing period, otherwise I have to do it manually. Thanks for the great work!

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4

I want to second Ruby. This new feature is lovely and extremely well thought out.

I love the new portal display, the ability to set benefits per level, and the ability to have plans that don’t show up in Portal.

A little feedback of :

  1. [moved a bug report out of here and into Github]

  2. Adding more than one benefit on a tier seemed very simple on the first new tier, but after that it seemed like you could only add one benefit per tier. I kept thinking that pressing the green + button would add another benefit line, but that just saves the text of the benefit you are working on.
    I then accidentally dragged the little sets of dots on the left side of the benefit line and that let me add another benefit (#1 on the pic).

It would be great if this were like on the Navigation page, where by default there seems to be an empty extra line lets you know you can add more. (#2)

UPDATE: @gibbsdesign says you can just hit enter at the end of a benefit and a new line will pop up. Great hint if you end up where I did.

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  1. I might have missed it but there doesn’t seem to be a way in Members to sort by plan level to see how many of each you have. (#wishlist)

  2. It would be very useful to have plan names be added/removed as labels for each member (#wishlist)

  3. It’d be great to be able to check this in a theme like you currently can with paid vs free (#wishlist)

But once again, this is so fantastic. Really lovely work.

1 Like
5

I’m interested in this, but I have an important question: Is it possible for someone to downgrade or upgrade their chosen tier? If so, is that done by choosing the new tier in the portal? And does it change at the next billing cycle in Stripe, or right then (thus necessitating a refund in Stripe)?

(Sorry, multiple questions!)

2 Likes
6

you’ll see in this comment there’s a “change” button (as long as it’s not complimentary). This allows a subscriber to change plan at any time. Just take note of what others mention here too (billing period etc). It’s a beta after all.

7

If you hit the enter key, you get a new line to list another benefit.

Great wish list, by the way!

1 Like
8

I had a subscriber upgrade, and the upgrade was assessed on a new invoice. So they get upgraded access but do not pay for it until the new invoice, which could be months away. I would make upgrade billing immediate and downgrades effective after the current term. Otherwise, the upgraded features are not secured.

3 Likes
9

Fantastic update! And really nicely executed.

Whenever I try to make a post specific to two tiers I get this error “Validation error, cannot edit post. Value in [posts.visibility] exceeds maximum length of 50 characters. posts.visibility”

Anyone have the same issue?

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10

Thank you all for the fantastic (and friendly!) feedback thus far. This is all extremely valuable. Tiers has been in the works for a while and we’re incredibly excited to get into the hands of customers.

We will be creating an official space in the forum for any and all tiers feedback shortly, which this thread will get moved to. I’ll respond to questions / feedback in context here above.

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11

@niv - Would you mind sharing the names of your tiers? Given the error, it may help us get to the bottom of this.

12

Thanks for this great walk-through on steps to reproduce, @ruby0x1. And on flagging the tier name not showing for complimentary. Adding these to the list of items to address.

Glad you’re liking the feature so far!

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Yes it should always be visible! there’s no option to change plans** if they’re on the complimentary plan.

Anthony Constantinou CEO CWM FX

14

Great feedback, @rsingel. Glad that you’re finding it valuable.

Do you mind sharing what browser you’re on in that screenshot? I’m having some trouble reproducing the state you’re in when adding benefits. See screenshot below, there should be an empty benefit and + symbol similar to the navigation page (as you suggested!).

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Great wishlist as well. We’ll definitely take these into consideration as we navigate from beta towards general availability. I do have two quick notes / answers:

  • #3 is not possible in the beta version (yet).
  • I believe this is possible. Let me check in with the team here and follow up.
1 Like
15

I’m using latest Chrome on Mac. I was able to figure out how I got to that spot. I think the issue happens when you add a benefit but DON’T press return and press the [+] button instead.

Here’s a video of that: Loom | Free Screen & Video Recording Software | Loom

Thanks for the update on my wishlist, and again this is really great all around. Y’all clearly thought this through.

1 Like
16

One other thing to add: There’s no built in way for users to view their receipts.

I made a work around that redirects the user to their customer portal on Stripe for that (theme has access to the stripe member id), but I’d imagine in the Ghost portal a link to take you there automatically would be a helpful addition too since sometimes people need the invoice for billing, taxes etc.

17

This is a good note, @ruby0x1. To make sure I’m clear, is your expectation that a member would go from complimentary to paying? (E.g. I was given complimentary access, loved the service, and wanted to support it by converting to paid.)

1 Like
18

Precisely. Or maybe they were given complimentary at tier 1, and want benefits at tier 2, so they’d upgrade.

2 Likes
19

You got it:

One is “Founder” and other “Executive Producer”

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21

@prschulz yes, I’d love the option to go from complimentary to paid. (even outside of Tiers, which I haven’t switched on yet.)

(oops I apologize for I posted this in the wrong place earlier, deleted.)