Founding plans — hidden packages with a fixed price

Founding plans — hidden packages with a fixed price

This article is for Stayant admins. The founding-customer offer is free setup plus a price that stays the same for two years. Stayant holds that price with a hidden package: a package that customers can't see or pick themselves, that only an admin can assign, and whose price can't be changed while anyone is on it.

A hidden package bills exactly like any other package. The only differences are who can choose it and whether its price can be edited.

What "hidden" means

A package has two separate switches:

• Active or deactivated. A deactivated package is closed to everyone, admins included. Existing subscribers keep it.
• Public or hidden. A hidden package never appears in the customer's plan picker, and the app rejects any attempt by a customer to subscribe to it or start a trial on it. Admins can still assign it.

A customer on a hidden package can't move themselves to a different hidden package. They can move to a public package from Settings → Plan. Before the switch goes through, the page warns them that they'll lose the founding price and can't switch back themselves.

Creating the Founding package

1. Go to Admin → Subscriptions (/admin/subscription-settings) and open the Packages tab.
2. Click + New Package.
3. Fill in the package:
   • Package Name: Founding
   • Base Monthly Price: 10
   • Per Property (monthly): 15
   • Trial Days: 0. A package's trial days only apply when a customer starts a trial on it themselves, which they can't do on a hidden package. Editing a package keeps whatever trial days it already has.
   • Allowed Billing Cycles: whatever you've offered. Monthly alone is the simplest.
4. Untick Show in the tenant plan picker (public).
5. Set the Features the plan includes, then click Create Package.

The package list shows a Hidden badge next to the name.

Nothing is created for you. Each environment (staging, production) needs its own Founding package, made by hand as above.

Assigning it to a customer

Open the customer's page from Admin → Tenants. The Subscription card has the controls.

• The customer has no subscription (or a cancelled one): click Assign subscription.
• The customer already has a subscription, for example the free trial they got at sign-up: click Change package. The change takes effect straight away and nothing is prorated.

In either dialog, pick Founding — hidden from the Package list. A Founding price fixed until date appears, set to two years from today. Change it if you promised something different, then click Assign or Change package.

If the customer is still on their free trial, the trial carries on to its end date. Their first invoice after it is at the Founding price.

The "price fixed until" date

The date records the promise. It appears:

• on the customer's Subscription card in the admin tenant page, as Price fixed until, with an Edit date button;
• on the admin Subscriptions tab, as a Price fixed until badge on the customer's row;
• on the customer's own Settings → Plan page, next to their package.

Billing never reads the date. Nothing happens automatically when it passes: the customer stays on the Founding package at the Founding price until you move them. The date is cleared when the customer moves to another package.

Finding everyone on a founding plan

On the admin Subscriptions tab, click Founding / hidden plans only. The list then shows only customers on a hidden package, with their fixed-until dates. Click the button again to show everyone.

Why the price can't be changed

A subscription doesn't keep a copy of its price. Every renewal is charged at the package's current price. Editing a package's price therefore changes what every customer on it pays from their next renewal.

For public packages that's how price changes are rolled out. For a hidden package it would break the founding promise, so while any customer is subscribed to it (or scheduled to move onto it at renewal), Stayant rejects changes to its base price, per-property price, currency and yearly discount. You can still rename it, change its description, its features and its billing cycles.

To offer founding customers a different price later, create a second hidden package with the new price and assign that one to new customers. Existing founding customers keep theirs.