#nolanshah-billing-metered
meager crypt
that's not possible, when you move from free to paid it always changed the billing cycle
You're likely better off having one Price that has a free tier or with quantity: 0 I think
charred rampart
Thanks! We have API rate control based they are on the paid plan vs free plan and are distinguishing them based on the price. With so only one price consisting of the free+paid tiers, what would be the best way to distinguish them? Whether payment info is given?
meager crypt
not really, you'd know based on the quantity for example
charred rampart
Assuming we still use different prices (not ideal), we'd also still like to fix the billing cycle so that our monthly reporting aligns with customer's billing cycle. If it's not possible to do this with metered billing, is there an alternative?
meager crypt
it's not a metered billing issue at all unfortunately
you can never keep the billing cycle when you move from free to paid
the only way would be to defer the move to the new Price to the next cycle, with schedules. So they'd be on the free Price until the 5th of next month for example
charred rampart
Okay, and I'm guessing if we used trials to move the anchor there's no way to have a non-free trial?
meager crypt
there would be but you'd have to calculate that yourself
but I don't really see why you'd want a trial and how it differs from staying on the free plan
charred rampart
Just to move the billing anchor
there would be but you'd have to calculate that yourself
What do you mean?
meager crypt
You can create an invoice item for say $10 on the customer https://stripe.com/docs/api/invoiceitems/create
And then you can do something like reset the billing cycle now and start a trial on the new Price with trial_end: <5th of next month>" and have it invoice the pending invoice item I think
charred rampart
Hmm, that's an interesting solution, thanks.
Actually one last Q - would we lose anything in the invoicing/payments flow by building the subscriptions infrastructure ourselves and just using invoicing directly?
meager crypt
yes you lose a ton of value, proration, recurring attempts/retries, automated emails, support for more payment methods, etc.
I definitely would discourage you from doing this (but yes it would work)
charred rampart
recurring attempts/retries, automated emails, support for more payment methods
These are features of subscriptions and not invoicing? I'm surprised 🙂