pay what you want for subscriptions

[earnest prawn]

I'm trying to figure out how to enable the pay-what-you-want feature for subscriptions. If a product costs min. 5 USD per period, it seems that the PHP sdk does not allow for the "RecurringPrice" to have this feature. Is it only for single payments or do i need to activate anything in the business settings?

[outer steeple]

The "Pay What You Want" (PWYW) feature is currently available only for one-time payment products and not for subscription products. This means that you cannot enable PWYW for subscriptions using the PHP SDK or any other settings in the business dashboard【4:0†source】.

If you are looking to implement a flexible pricing model for subscriptions, you may need to consider setting different subscription tiers manually, or potentially using other strategies like offering discounts or promotions. Unfortunately, the PWYW model is not directly supported for recurring payments at this time.

For more detailed guidance or to explore potential workarounds, you might want to contact Dodo Payments support directly.

Helpful Links:

• Dodo Payments Pricing Documentation
• Dodo Payments PHP SDK on GitHub
• Dodo Payments Support

[earnest prawn]

how do i go about adding tiers? i see that the documentation has a small section for it but api-wise and product-price-model wise i cant find any fields for that. Are Products basically Tiers?

[gentle stone]

What you can do is create a separate product for each tier that you want to provide.

[earnest prawn]

yea thats what i was thinking of, but if custom amounts can be anything between 1 USD and 10000 USD that is potentially a lot of products to create

[gentle stone]

You can use usage-based billing in that case

https://docs.dodopayments.com/features/usage-based-billing

[earnest prawn]

hm that sounds a bit out of whack

its not really based on usage its like "oh this 5 dollar tier looks cool but i'd be happy to chip in 2 usd more than what it costs because i want to support the creator beyond what they request"

[gentle stone]

You can handle the amount you want to charge the user. If they want to give extra money to support the creator, add it the the subscription cost and charge them every month, year, etc. based on whatever your pricing model is.

With this system, it will be your work to enumerate all the users and charge them unlike the subscription feature where it will automatically charge the user based on the specified time,

It's like subscription but manual mode

[earnest prawn]

thats what i'm doing, i create the product based on the amount the creator set as minimum and when i create the checkout session, i supply the price the customer wants to pay. the way i understand the api reference is that this will be ignored unless pay_what_you_want is active

        $productCart = [
            (new ProductCart())
                ->withProductID($dodoProductId)
                ->withAmount((int) $subscription->getMoney()->getAmount())
                ->withQuantity(1)
        ];

where $subscription->getMoney() can be higher than the Product that was created. would that already work?

[gentle stone]

Just a moment, I'll try doing it myself

[gentle stone]

This reply of mine doesn't seem fully accurate

Sorry for it

[earnest prawn]

i'm basing my information on this part of the docs: https://docs.dodopayments.com/api-reference/checkout-sessions/create#body-product-cart-amount

[gentle stone]

So I built a test instance of usage-based billing and it seems like you only add the extra units only if customers want to pay in your case. You can set the base price of the subscription for the usage based billing in the dashboard which is the price that will charged every month regardless of whether the person wants to pay extra to the creator or not. If the person want to add extra money to support the creator, you will have to manually add it via the API.

[earnest prawn]

would addons work for that?

[gentle stone]

Addon of a custom price you mean?

[gentle stone]

As in pay what you want

as an addon?

[earnest prawn]

if Addons work as sort of sub-line-items i see 3 ways with that:
for any creator that can set up any amount of tiers with a min-amount, each creator has one product with a base price of 0$ and each tier is added via an addon specifying its min-amount plus another addon for "leftover" money

second i could have each creator-tier be its own product and if and only if the amount is higher than the product price, add the leftover money as an addon

third i could just have any final amount be its own product which could potentially create a high amount of products

in stripe we solved that by having the creator map to a product and each checkout price creates its own final price in the currency provided if it doesnt already exist. i'm trying to map that concept to dodo

[gentle stone]

@torn inlet Can you please help here?

Would this work better for you @earnest prawn?
https://docs.dodopayments.com/developer-resources/ondemand-subscriptions

[earnest prawn]

well, we dont charge variable amounts, the amount is finalized during checkout and then never changes. the concept you linked me are usage-based and thus it feels like i would not use it for its intended purpose. also it seems that usage-based subscriptions require us to continuously update the usage meters

also, us handling our own charges is what i wanted to avoid, i'd rather just tell dodo "charge this every month and tell me when it was paid via webhook so i can extend the subscription"

[gentle stone]

I think @torn inlet will handle this query better

[earnest prawn]

ok i'll wait. thank you for your assistance 🙏

[torn inlet]

Hey @earnest prawn what you are looking for is on-demand subscription.
It would solve your use case. Please check the docs and let me know if you have any doubts.
https://docs.dodopayments.com/developer-resources/ondemand-subscriptions

[earnest prawn]

if i chose on-demand subscriptions, will they renew automatically each month or do i have to manually create charges myself?

[torn inlet]

You have the option to charge whenever you want @earnest prawn

[earnest prawn]

i understand that. but my question is towards the automatic charges or manual charges

if they are manual with this method, then the implementation complexity goes up

[torn inlet]

Its not automatic @earnest prawn

[torn inlet]

would love to know more on this.
why do you think like that?

[earnest prawn]

well, if i create a regular subscription once and then each month the webhook events come in as the subscription is continuously renewed, that is less complex for me to handle compared to having to maintain a cronjob and billing-system to detect when to make the next charge manually

[torn inlet]

imo, i understand this would take some time to implement but this is not complex.
many merchants prefer on-demand subscriptions because of the flexibility it provides.

to achieve your use case on-demand subscription is the best possible way rn.

[earnest prawn]

the only flexibility i require is to initially set a custom price that is equal or above a minimum subscription price that afterwards never changes. its not like the subscription prices are dynamic

for my first implementation i'll try out the addons for the surplus value.
if a creator offers a tier at 3$ and the customer decides to spent 5$ i'll set the product at 3$ and generate a 2$ addon, that feels more intuitive for me right now

[torn inlet]

Sure. You can try that if you are okay with it.
Pl let me know if you face any issues in this.