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How to switch the subscription product customer is subscribed to?

What if a customer has already purchased a subscription but changed his mind and wants to switch to a different product? Well, you're able to upgrade/downgrade/switch plan for you customers from inside your Subbly admin! And your customers are able to do that themselves, all from inside their customer portal.

Switching the subscription product for the customer

You can change a subscription plan/product your customers are subscribed to without them having to unsubscribe from one and resubscribe to another product or a product plan.

For example, you can switch a customer who's on a monthly billing cadence to the same product that's on the quarterly billing or vice versa.

In order to do that, you will need to go to your Customers tab on your admin panel, enter specific customer's profile, go to Subscriptions tab and choose to change the subscription product from the contextual menu as in the image below

Can customers switch to another product themselves?

They can only switch to a different plan of the same product from the customer portal. In order to enable this option for them, you need to go here in your Admin and turn on the proper toggle:

Please note there's an important distinction between products and plans: if you're offering several pricing options for a product, then your customer can switch between them on his own, but if he wants to entirely change the product he's subscribed to, he will need to reach out to you so can follow the process explained above
An example would be if you had two subscription products offered: Product A and Product B. Let's say that you're offering both the Product A and Product B on monthly and quarterly basis (two product plans for each product). If the customer is subscribed to the Product A / monthly he/she will be able to switch to the Product A / quarterly but won't be able to make the switch onto the Product B. That is still something only the merchant can do through the admin

Some important considerations when switching the subscription product for the customer

In the specific case when you're switching the customer's subscription from one anchored to another anchored subscription product in which case both of them have different renewal dates, there is a toggle located here which you can manipulate in order to choose whether the previous product's renewal date will be retained for the customer after the switch or if the customer will inherit the new product setup and continue with that one.

Let's take an example that you've just switched the customer from the product that was being renewed on the 15th of the month to the new product that has 1st of the month as the regular renewal date. What is it that you plan to achieve with the switch? Would you want this customer to keep being renewed on the 15th of the month regardless of the new product plan setup or are you looking to switch the customer's renewal date to the 1st along with the plan switch? This is what you actually control using this toggle.

FAQ

When does the change take into effect?

Please note that changing the subscription product the customer is currently subscribed to does not interfere with your customer's billing/shipping cadence. That said, once you change it on your Subbly admin, it will retain the current billing/shipping setup, i.e., next renewal will fall on the same date as was before. 

Does changing the subscription product retains survey preferences and choices if applicable?

No! This is an important consideration so please take that into account. If you change the subscription plan the customer is currently on, survey preferences that he/she had on the previous plan will not be transferred with the change of subscription plan. 

You'll need to let the customer know that they'll need to change their preferences once again from inside the customer portal area. 

Will the commitment period apply when switching a customer to another subscription product or plan?

Yes, it requires the toggle Reset Subscription Order Count to be enabled when manually switching a customer from product A to product B within the Admin for the commitment of product B to trigger. You can learn more on how commitment periods work here.

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