Subscription: Free trail without cc needed; ask for creditcard/paypal when free trail ends, not upfront

I’m using WooCommerce and Subscriptions to sell access to premium content. Currently its configured with a 30-day free trial. So users sign up, enter their credit card, and as long as they don’t cancel before the end of the trial, we ping them.

I’d like to move the credit card entry to the end of the free trial. In other words, people would sign up, have access for 30 days, then have to enter their card to continue getting access. Is this an easy thing to do in WooCommerce, or do I need to do some work outside of WooCommerce on membership/reg? Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated. (kudos to tragicallyhip, see http://wordpress.org/support/topic/virtual-subscription-trials-credit-card-at-trial-end?replies=3

Author

Current Status

Closed

Last updated: August 15, 2022

35 comments

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  1. poggollc says:

    This feature is already there in WooCommerce since Ver 2.5, the website says: ” One of our most highly requested features on the ideas board has been to allow customers to bypass this step and in 2.5, this is now possible.

    Store managers can enable this feature by changing a new setting. Enabling this feature will allow customers to check out without the need to enter their payment details when signing up to subscriptions that don’t need an initial payment.”

    To enable this feature:

    1) Go to the WooCommerce > Settings > Subscriptions screen.
    2) Scroll down to the Miscellaneous section.
    3) Check the option to Allow $0 initial checkout without a payment method

  2. tamfit says:

    Is there an update on this? I see the status says ‘closed’ but there are many votes for this feature.

  3. Poppy Beck says:

    Thanks for sharing this topic it is very important that free trial without credit card because so many times this happened with us we don’t know when our subscription ends so we can use fake credit card detail for trial purposes.
    https://www.debitcardgenerator.com

  4. Anonymous says:

    I hope this feature remains optional. We use this to sell simple products in combination with subscriptions. We definitely need to have the CC information at the time of payment so we can charge at the renewal date.

  5. mark says:

    I can’t believe this feature is not supported…

  6. leeo says:

    free trial w/o cc has become the new normal for saas apps. please add this feature soon.

  7. Anonymous says:

    This is a critical flaw please fix!

  8. Marco says:

    This function is very important, also for subscriptions insert by store manager

  9. anonymous says:

    I not only want this, I need it. I can’t tell you how much I hate using WooCommerce. We have used them for over 3 years now, and they NEVER help when you have a problem. They force you into interacting with them in thier very particular methods (because they’re the young hip know-it-all leftists who are here to set the world straight on how things need to be done, not help customers), and then it takes days for them to get back to you… Again they know best though, everything is on thier terms… then when they get back, they have never helped us solve anything, ever… This feature should have been implemented years ago, but they won’t do it…. Because they suck!

  10. Dhaval Parekh says:

    Hey Team,

    Any news about this ?

    I do have slimier type of case, Like in same case but if product have sign up than option to charge signup fee after free trial period not before that.

    Any suggestion also appreciate.

    Thanks.

  11. anonymous says:

    Hi
    any news on this.
    Solving this is a very clunky way by end of trial, I force end the subscription and as the customer to upgrade to a different subscription, with the switch subscription function. 5 click process for the customers. Wondering how many will ever figure this out.

    I need this function thanks.
    br
    Robert

  12. Anonymous says:

    This would be a great addition to our business! We get tons of complaints about this.

  13. Elliot says:

    Great idea – I’m tempted to build a custom user registration page and then set a 30day timer to change user_role to trial_over – then I can push everyone with that user_role to a page to checkout for access. Ideally, this would be core.

    Anyone from the previous comments want to share how they approached this? Cheers

  14. Elliot says:

    We’ve got a work-around to this and I’ve written how we did it and posted our code. Hope it is useful: https://raison.co/woocommerce-subscriptions-free-trial-without-credit-card/

  15. Sebastien Dumont says:

    I think this would better if a custom registration form would apply the free trail without the need of WooCommerce at all.

    So you would have a page where the customer signs up, preferably with a new user role so it’s not confusing between your current customers and then apply the amount of days that customer can try your product/service and when the trail is over, send them an email that provides a link to add the product/service to the cart automatically and redirect straight to checkout page where they can fill out their card details and pay.

    Once that user has paid, their user role changes to customer.

    Could be done as a mini extension. What do you think?

  16. Elliot says:

    Seb: Look at my post just before yours. It’s how we did it…

  17. Johan says:

    When is dev starting?

  18. Alasdair Page says:

    ‘As if we need another reason to require this, I’ve just looked at using Braintree instead of Stripe for a few reasons: 1. it’s pretty much identical in service, 2. the pricing is the same, but 3. they offer $50k/£30k free transactions before they charge, and 4. it integrates PayPal payments at the same time with all the features of Reference Transactions without having to enable it (apparently).

    Unfortunately, one of Braintree’s requirements for accepting recurring payments is as follows (received via email after signing up):

    “Note that we are unable to support the practice of accepting card information prior to providing a user with a free trial. In order to proceed we would need you to remove the free trials completely, or to agree to only accept card information from the customer after the 14 day trial is complete.”

    @Elliot – I’m going to look into your solution, thank you. It would be great if this were just an on/off option built into core Subscriptions though.

  19. Zach says:

    ‘Has there been any update to this??? To date, this has cost us potentially 80 sales. As a startup, this would have definitely give us the boost to our business that we need. Seems people are more hesitant to hand over credit card info to a startup in order to have access the free trial. So requiring the credit card on the back end should really help us. Thanks.

    -Zach

  20. Anonymous says:

    I can’t understand why this isn’t made yet

  21. Sebastien Dumont says:

    I’m experimenting on this. If it works I will let you guys know.

  22. john asbury says:

    This really should be an option!

  23. David Shepherd says:

    I’m thinking of creating two nearly identical products-1 a trial w a free “simple” product. This does not require a credit card. Then using a series of automated follow up emails I’ll try and convert them to the paid subscription product that will begin billing immediately and offer greater access. May take some manual monitoring, but could work.

  24. daniele.distanio says:

    Hi, any news about this? Thank you.

  25. Anonymous says:

    I agree, want this for sure!