Can I charge my customers a higher price for their first payment? What about a lower one?
Within Conjured Memberships, we offer a feature where the first payment of a subscription/membership can be a different price than the subsequent recurring payments. A few examples:
- $250 upfront/initial payment, then $25/month thereafter
- $10 upfront payment, then $20/month thereafter
- $0 upfront payment, then $50/month thereafter
Note that the last use case is similar to the free trial, but the member gets access to the whole first pay period rather than a limited number of days. You may use this option to offer a free trial to only one of the tiers.
This feature also enables offering a discount on the first payment without the need for a discount code. To activate it, navigate to the Pricing tab in your existing membership and edit the pricing tiers. You will find a checkbox above the pricing area that allows you to specify a different initial purchase price.
To enable this while creating a new membership, you will be presented with the same checkbox in the Pricing field.
This is how it is going to look like in your storefront:
How does this affect the free trial if I want to offer one?
It is important to note that it also works with the free trial feature; you could offer a 7-day free trial, followed by a $250 initial payment, and then $25/month afterward.
Because of Shopify's limitations, if both the free trial and a different initial payment are enabled, the checkout page in Shopify will only display $0 for the first payment and then $25/month thereafter. It does not prominently indicate that the initial charge would be $250, followed by $25 afterward. If this is your case, please get in contact with us.
If a membership lapses and is reactivated, will the charge be for the initial or monthly price?
It is just the monthly price if they reactivate. The initial price is only charged during the very first purchase when customers go through Shopify's checkout.
Do I need to create a new membership to implement this, or can I do it on my current one without charging active members an "initial price"?
You can implement it directly into your current membership. Adjusting the initial price will only impact new members.