Membership Pro shortfalls, and more

Hello,

I have a few pre-sales questions:

#1: Re. Membership Pro:

#1a: I'll need to enable customers to purchase at least two recurring subscriptions at once, means in one single transaction. Surprisingly, this seems to be impossible now, and each purchase (as well as renewal?!) must be a separate effort, payment, invoice, set of emails, etc etc -- like on your own site here? Oh my, that is SOOOO awkward, and I see I'm not the only one with this need... just look at yourself, too! 
Any plan to make this (creation and renewal of multiple plans in one single go) possible in the very (very!) near future? Seems about time...

#1b: Additionally, it shall be possible for customers to enter the price of a particular recurring subscription themselves -- similar to a donation. (No, alternatively offering multiple plans with different, increasing prices is not an acceptable solution.)
Could that be possible, eventually with some custom coding?

Please note, other extensions are able to do all of the above (e.g. HikaShop with HikaSerial Subscription), but then they have their own other key disadvantages. So, I'd really prefer your Membership Pro, but if both the above points are not possible, then that's a deal breaker.


#2: However, I see your Payment Form, where I could perhaps build one (or more?) forms letting me achieve #1a and #1b. Additional cost and effort aside, perhaps that's a workaround?

#2a: Would I be able to build a form which essentially offers more than one subscription to choose from at once, then
- making sign-up and renewal including payment a single transaction, invoice, etc?
- triggering MP to create subscription records as well as the 


#3: Purchasing from you:

I may need not only Membership Pro (plus possibly Payment Form) but also Events Booking, but eventually also some add-ons like e.g. payment methods (my client is still evaluating which ones... must offer "recurring", though). You have to admit that that'll be quite something, especially when considering that e.g. HikaShop and HikaSerial Subscription plus maybe two cheap add-ons alone can do it all, including event ticket sales and issuing... and I haven't been looking in-depth at other extensions, yet.

#3a: For a "package" such as this from you, will you offer a discount?

#3b: Again, would I need to purchase and pay maybe 6 or 7 extensions and add-ons from you in as many transactions?  Or will you have accomplished #1a in time before? 


Thanks in advance for your briefest but sufficient answers soon!
 

Hi,

I don't want you to think I'm impatient, but I guess by the time you read this reply to my own post it's 6 days ago I asked.

You're normally MUCH faster with replies. What does your radio silence in this case mean?

If your answer is "a strict no to everything", you could have told me right away.
Or are you working on it, should've been finished any minute since a while but somehow got always delayed? Yup, sounds weird to me too, haha.

Thanks for some feedback.

Sorry Thomas. I missed your post (normally, I check and reply forum topic different times every day, so it is not slow like this one, sorry). I'm checking this and will reply you shortly

Tuan

Hi Thomas

Below are my answers to your questions :

1a: Technical, it is simply impossible to support this. While it is possible to support shopping cart for one time subscription plans, it is not possible to do that for recurring subscription plans because payment gateway (such as PayPal) only allows users to subscribe for one subscription at a time, no more than one. So this is not possible to implement and could not be supported

1b. You can handle it using custom fee field. Basically, you can create a textbox custom fee field to allow users to determine the payment amount themself, see docs.joomdonation.com/membershippro/basi...ox-custom-field-type for sample setup

2a and 2b: You cannot use Payment Form to handle this as I explained in 1a. It's simply impossible

3. I think it is not needed to answer now because you do not need Membership Pro and Payment Form

Regards,

Tuan

Hi Tuan,

Thanks for your response. No worries, with the subscription thingy it's no big rush.

However... (and here comes more long blabla, haha):

#1a:
I agree with you if there were plans with different subscription durations. Of course, if recurring Plan A were for 3 months, recurring B for 6 months, and recurring (or one-time?!) C for 12 months, PayPal and equivalents cannot be expected to handle that. So, it's totally clear that such mix cannot be offered as a cart or other form of bundle.

But if Plan A, B and C (all recurring or all one-time, no mix) are all the same say 12 months duration (as in our case), the payment gateway sees only a single transaction/amount and has no trouble dealing with it in any case. Of course, a user could not opt not out of recurrence of only Plan B. It's "all or nothing".

As already mentioned, HikaShop/HikaSerial Subscription makes it possible, so does CBSubs and maybe others. So, why not offer the feature, under the condition that recurring plans on offer, or at least in the same cart, all have the same duration? You have experience with cart etc from EShop. Or, like HikaShop, enable us JD users to make MP memberships EShop products, so they can be purchased in one go and/or together with other products or services? As also noted, you and your users would benefit on your own website, too! 

One more thing: indeed, I've already thought why not set it up, so there are Plans A, B and C, and then also "AB", "AC", "BC" and "ABC" practically combing the features of the individual plans. But, obviously, it requires offering a lot more choices (too many), not intuitive but hard to explain and eventually confusing users, means much harder to sell. And if other stuff like a custom field to "enter your own amount" comes into play... oh my. So, not really a workaround unless one has no more than two plans on offer anyway.

Sorry for the long detailed wording... just want to make sure you get the whole picture.

#1b: Cool, thanks for pointing that out!

#2: Well, under the conditions of (a) all plans being same duration as under #1a and (b) MP never to get a cart added somehow, Payment Form might still be in play. IF it can be set up that way, possibly with some additional scripting added at my end. Hmm?

#3: Haha... ok ok! Think I'll go get Events Booking later today or tomorrow to get started with it. Else then later, if we can make MP work "cart-like".

Many thanks again, much appreciated!
 

ThomasM post=166031 userid=133883(...)
One more thing: indeed, I've already thought why not set it up, so there are Plans A, B and C, and then also "AB", "AC", "BC" and "ABC" practically combing the features of the individual plans. But, obviously, it requires offering a lot more choices (too many), not intuitive but hard to explain and eventually confusing users, means much harder to sell. And if other stuff like a custom field to "enter your own amount" comes into play... oh my. So, not really a workaround unless one has no more than two plans on offer anyway.
(...)

Oh, just had another idea to make it work indeed! At least I think...

1. Create all the plans (A, B, C). including those combining individual plan features (AB, AC, BC, ABC), in groups as per project requirement.
2. Create J/MP modules per group of plans, published to a non-existing position.
3. For users' plan selection, use tabs (or accordion or similar) where they first "pre-select" a small group of plans depending on the project.
4. In each tab, load the relevant J/MP module, so they get to see only say 2 plans (as per project and module settings) instead of 7 as per my example.

Result: reduced plan options presented to users, easy and nice to be laid out, intuitive and not many explanations to be made, not many choices to first study and pick from, no confusion.

Right?