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Ramp Pricing

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Ramp Pricing Feature Documentation

Ramp Pricing Overview

Ramp Pricing enables you to define price increases or decreases for a subscription across a specified cadence of billing periods.

  • Utilize Ramp Pricing to create introductory pricing as a customer acquisition tactic, where the price is low at the start of the subscription in order to attract new customers, and the price increases over time.
  • Utilize Ramp Pricing as a customer retention tactic, to reward loyal customers where the price decreases over time.
  • Create a plan and a subscription at a fixed cost, where you are able to add future price changes when desired.

Implementation Guide

Leverage the Ramp Pricing Implementation Guide as an additional resource.

Prerequisites

  • Merchants must have the following features enabled: "Only Bill What Changed" and "Credit Memos"
  • This functionality is supported through API V3, API V2, and the Recurly Admin UI.
  • Ramp Pricing is available only on specific Recurly plans. Please reach out to your Account Manager or Account Executive to learn more.

Definitions

  • Billing Period: The timeframe for which the customer is billed (e.g. monthly, quarterly, yearly)
  • Ramp: A price per billing period set to an interval (a specified duration of billing periods).

Create a Plan with Ramp Pricing

Step 1

Navigate to the Plans activity in the Recurly Admin Console. Click on “New Plan.”

Step 2

Fill out all required fields. When you arrive at the Pricing Model section, select “Ramp” from the available dropdown.

Step 3

Enter the price per billing period for your first ramp.

Step 4

To create additional ramps, click “Add another ramp.” You can add as many as 12 ramps to a plan. The duration of the last ramp row will always be set to “Ongoing.” This is the price that will carry on indefinitely once all previous ramps have occurred.

Step 5

You can view all of your plan on the plans page. Ramp Priced plans will display “Starts at” and the price of the first ramp interval.

Step 6

Editing a ramp priced plan can be completed by navigating to a plan, and selecting “Edit Plan” from the "Plan Actions" menu. You can then modify the ramp interval and pricing for that plan. Note: Your edits will be applied to new subscription signups. Existing subscriptions will use the previous ramp interval and pricing that was configured at the time of subscription signup.

A Note on Multiple Currencies

If your site has multiple currencies enabled, you can specify a price on each ramp for each currency.

Create a Subscription with Ramp Pricing

Step 1: Within the Recurly Admin Console, and on an account, click add a subscription

Step 2: Select the ramp priced plan that you would like to add to the subscription

Step 3: The subscription will by default use the ramp pricing schedule from the plan

Step 4: If you need to change the ramp pricing schedule, click the edit pricing link

Step 5: Edit options are available in a side dialog. These price changes will be unique to this subscription

Step 6: Click Apply Changes. See the updates reflected in the Pricing Schedule

Step 7: Save the Subscription Edit form for these changes to take effect

Editing a Subscription with Ramp Pricing

Step 1: Select “Edit Subscription”

Step 2: Editing the ramp pricing schedule is only available as an Immediate Change. To edit the ramp pricing schedule, click “Edit Pricing”

Step 3: You can add additional price changes or modify the price and duration of any upcoming price change. You can also edit the price of the current billing period

Step 4: Click Apply Changes to see your updates reflected in the Pricing Schedule. Please note, if you've edited the price of the current billing period, this will result in a prorated invoice

Step 5: Save the Subscription Edit form for these changes to take effect.

Changing Plans on a Subscription

You are able to change the base plan of your customers' subscriptions. You can make this change as an immediate change, change at bill date, or at renewal.

The Edit Pricing feature is disabled when changing plans on a subscription. If you need to make adjustments to the pricing schedule, you will need to save the subscription first.

Migrating Existing Subscribers

If you would like to move towards using Ramp Pricing for all of your plans and subscriptions, you may do so using the following options.

New Subscribers

  • Step 1: Create new ramp priced plans to be used for new and/or existing subscribers.
  • Step 2: Use the new ramp priced plans to offer to new subscription sign ups. This will allow your new subscribers to have the automatic price changes set on their subscription, and remove any previous workarounds that may have been in place.

Existing Subscribers:

  • Step 1: Create new ramp priced plans to be used for new and/or existing subscribers.
  • Step 2: Use the subscription change endpoint to update existing subscribers to a new ramp priced plan. The change will update the subscription to use the base ramp pricing schedule from the plan. Once the subscription is on a ramp plan, you will be able to modify the pricing schedule if needed.

API Support

Current API Support

Use the Recurly API to manage your Ramp Priced plans and subscriptions. Supported endpoints:

  • Create a plan with ramp intervals using the POST /plans endpoint
  • GET a ramp priced plan using /plans/{plan_id} or GET a site's plans using /plans
  • Edit a ramp priced plan using PUT /plans/{plan_id}
  • Create a subscription with default ramp intervals from the plan using the POST /purchases and POST /subscriptions endpoint. Pass in the "plan_code" from the ramp priced plan to create a subscription to that plan using the plan's ramp intervals.
  • POST /purchases or /subscriptions REQUEST to create subscriptions with unique ramp intervals from that of the plan. Note: do not include unit_amount as you would with a fixed price plan.
  • GET /subscriptions/{subscription_id} RESPONSE to view ramp interval schedule on a subscription Note: the first non-zero amount of elapsed_billing_cycles is the current ramp interval.
  • POST /subscription/{subscription_id}/change REQUEST to modify ramp intervals. Note: send all ramps, including ramp intervals that have passed.

Documentation

View API developer documentation on ramp pricing:
https://developers.recurly.com/api/v2021-02-25/index.html
https://developers.recurly.com/api/v2019-10-10/index.html
https://developers.recurly.com/api-v2/v2.29/index.html

Additional Notes and Considerations

Ramp Pricing works with all other Recurly Features, such as coupons, gift cards, trials, aligning renewals, pausing / unpausing a subscription, changing plans, and modifying subscriptions. Here are a few specific notes where important to be aware of:

Subscription Pause

  • Ramp priced subscriptions are able to have a scheduled pause applied and be paused.
  • When a ramp priced subscription is paused, the ramp interval schedule is also paused, and will progress through the schedule when the subscription is unpaused.
  • When modifying the pricing schedule and the subscription has a schedule pause, or is paused, will cause the scheduled pause to be cancelled, or the subscription to be unpaused. This is the same as pauses are applied to fixed price subscriptions.
  • Modifying the pricing schedule will unpause the subscription and also create an invoice for the next billing cycle.

Subscription Trials

Offering trial subscriptions is compatible with Ramp Pricing.

  • Configure the trial length.
  • When the trial expires, the customer will be charged the price of the first ramp interval.

Ramp Price Change Renewal Email Notification Template

There is an email template to notify customers of an upcoming pricing change.

  • The Ramp Price Change email template can be configured in your email configuration under the Subscription Renewal templates.
  • This template will be sent to customers when a new ramp interval is starting.
  • There are also new email params that have been added to support this email template:, {{next_ramp_interval_start_date}}, and {{next_ramp_interval_price}}.
  • The Ramp Price Change email will be sent in priority over the other renewal reminder emails when configured the same days prior as the other reminder templates.

Export Support

Exports have been added or updated to support reporting on subscriptions with ramp pricing.

  • New export: Subscriptions - Ramp Pricing Export will provide specific information regarding each ramp intervals per subscription. View the documentation.
  • Updated exports: Subscriptions, Subscription - History, and Subscriptions - Churned exports have all be updated and now include two new columns. Use these exports to retrieve the full information about each subscription, and pair the subscription_id and the current_ramp_id to the Ramp Pricing export. The two new columns in these exports are: pricing_model and current_ramp_id.

Recurly Analytics

  • View the performance of your ramp priced plans using the plan performance dashboard. The pricing column will display the "Starting at" price for ramp priced plans.

Activity Logs

  • Activity logs will display a before and after view of what changes were applied to a ramp priced subscription.
  • This allows customer service representatives to understand if a customer has already received a price change to their pricing schedule, and determine if another change should be provided.

Hosted Pages

  • Hosted Payment Pages (HPP) will display the "Starting Price" of the subscription, which is the price of the first ramp interval. Any additional pricing information will need to be displayed on your page from where the customer is directed from.
  • Hosted Account Management Page will display amount of the ramp interval cost at the next invoice date.

Salesforce

  • Ramp priced subscriptions are able to be created via Salesforce, using the default ramp intervals from the plan.

Moving From Test Mode to Production Mode

While all Recurly sites in sandbox or development mode can test Ramp Pricing, this functionality is only available in production if your Recurly site is on either our Professional or Elite plan.

When a sandbox or development site is converted to a production site on our Core plan, all Ramp Priced plans will be deleted. These deleted plans will no longer be editable and can not be re-enabled while you remain on Recurly's Core plan. Once on a Pro or Elite plan, Ramp Priced plans can be created and used for subscriptions.

General notes about Ramp Pricing

  • Ramp intervals can step up or step down.
  • Plans and subscriptions can have a max of 12 intervals.
  • Pricing for ramp intervals can be configured in all currencies configured on your site when setting up the plan.
  • In order for a subscription to have ramp intervals, it must be created from a plan that has ramp intervals.
  • Ramp intervals will continue even when the subscription term is set to expire, and/or ramp intervals extend beyond the subscription term.
  • Ramp intervals can extend beyond a subscription term when the subscription term is set to auto-renew, where the intervals will continue at the configured interval after a new subscription term begins.
  • Ramp Pricing is available on Recurly's Pro and Elite plans.

Updated 2 days ago