Products and plans

In everyday life, when you buy a product, that's often all you get: a book is usually just a book. But sometimes there's an offer involved, a special deal, or another kind of enticement to buy. You might sign up for a streaming music service where the first month is free. Someone else might sign up to the same service, paying annually in advance at a discount rate.

Similarly, the same product might have different tiers of service at different rates: you might pay more for higher quality audio or live streams, and less if you're happy to hear some ads.

Bango Subscriptions terminology:

• The product is the physical or virtual item or service the user wants. For example, a streaming music service, a stock tips email, or a physical gaming console.
• The plan defines the terms on which the user has access to the product. Each plan is built with one or more phases. For example, "one month free then the full price paid monthly", or "a discounted price paid annually", or "one month free then three months discounted then the full price paid monthly", or "one week only at a fixed price".
• The phase defines individual periods of time that collectively creates a plan. For example, "one month free" is defined as a phase which automatically rolls onto a "full price" phase within one plan.

When creating your product catalog you must specify at least one product, which must have at least one plan under it and every plan needs at least one phase.

In the product catalog, each phase has:

• A type, one of:
• Discount - for low-cost introductory periods
• Fixed term – for subscriptions that have a defined shelf life and must be terminated at the end of the shelf life
• Evergreen – for subscriptions that continue until canceled by the user or partner
• A duration, defining the length of time the phase is active. Supported lengths are days, months, years or unlimited ("forever")
• A billing period, indicating how frequently the Bango Platform takes payments from the user while the phase is active
• A set of prices in supported currencies that apply while the phase is active

A plan doesn't need to have all four phase types.

As a consumer of the Bango Subscriptions, you have your own distinct product catalog in the Bango Platform containing all the products and plans available to you: these define the subscriptions you can offer to your users.

Plan 1

• Phase 1:
• Phase Type - DISCOUNT
• Phase Period - MONTHS
• Phase Length - 6
• Billing Period - NO_BILLING_PERIOD
• Price - 0.00
• Currency - USD
• Phase 2:
• Phase Type - EVERGREEN
• Phase Period - UNLIMITED
• Phase Length - N/A
• Billing Period - MONTHLY
• Price - 10.00
• Currency - USD

Plan 2

• Phase 1:
• Phase Type - DISCOUNT
• Phase Period - MONTHS
• Phase Length - 3
• Billing Period - NO_BILLING_PERIOD
• Price - 0
• Currency - USD
• Phase 2:
• Phase Type - DISCOUNT
• Phase Period - MONTHS
• Phase Length - 3
• Billing Period - MONTHLY
• Price - 5.00
• Currency - USD
• Phase 3:
• Phase Type - EVERGREEN
• Phase Period - UNLIMITED
• Phase Length - N/A
• Billing Period - MONTHLY
• Price - 10.00
• Currency - USD

Plan 3

• Phase 1:
• Phase Type - EVERGREEN
• Phase Period - UNLIMITED
• Phase Length - N/A
• Billing Period - MONTHLY
• Price - 10.00
• Currency - USD