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Multi-plans Subscriptions

This is a BETA feature. Contact Support to enable this feature in your Test and Live sites.

Introduction

Chargebee Billing allows you to create subscriptions with multiple products, all billed in a single invoice.

If your business offers multiple products or services, you can attach multiple plans to a single subscription using multi-plan subscriptions. Multi-plan subscriptions consolidate all charges into a single invoice per billing cycle. This means your customers make just one payment, reducing transaction costs and simplifying their billing experience. Any associated addons and coupons are automatically applied to the subscriptions. Multiple subscriptions can be linked to a single customer record in Chargebee.

You can create multi-plan subscriptions in Chargebee Billing through the user interface (UI) or via the Create Subscription API.

Limitations

  • All plans within a multi-plan subscription must have the same billing frequency and currency. If you need different frequencies for items, see Multi-Frequency Billing.

Upcoming Support for Additional Features

The following features are not yet supported by multi-plan subscriptions and are on the product roadmap:

Creating a Multi-plan Subscription

You can create a multi-plan subscription in Chargebee Billing through the UI or API.

Creating Multi-plan Subscription via UI

To create a multi-plan subscription on your Chargebee Billing site, follow these steps:

  1. Click Subscriptions > Create New Subscription.

  2. In the Pick a Customer dialog, select the customer record for which you are creating this subscription. You can also create a new customer before creating this subscription.

  3. On the Create a Subscription page, the Subscription ID field is auto-generated and uniquely identifies the subscription. Fill out the details described in the upcoming steps to create a new subscription.

  4. The Subscription Info section collects information related to the plan you want to subscribe the customer to.

  5. Click the Product Family dropdown and select the product family of the plan for which you are creating this subscription.

  6. Click +Add Plan and select the plan. The Add Plan dialog displays all existing plans and addons for selection. Select the Currency and Billing frequency of the plan, and click Add. You can modify this selection by clicking the more icon next to the plan to change the plan or frequency. Any associated addons or coupons will be applied automatically.

  7. After adding the first plan, click +Add Plan to include more plans from the same or a different product family.

    Ensure all selected plans have the same billing frequency and currency.

  8. Verify the subscription details and add more details as required. Learn more.

  9. Click Create Subscription.

Your multi-plan subscription is successfully created. You can view the details of the subscription with multiple plans on the subscription details page.

You can edit the subscription record or perform other actions as required.

Note:

All plans must have the same billing frequency and currency to be included in a multi-plan subscription.

Creating a Multi-Plan Subscription via API

To create a multi-plan subscription using the API, call the Create Subscription API and specify multiple plan-item price IDs by passing them as subscription_items[item_price_id][i].

Note:

  • The plan-item prices must have the same currency_code and billing frequency (period and period_unit values).
  • When updating an active subscription using the Update Subscription API, ensure that at least one plan remains active. You cannot modify an active subscription to remove all its active plans.

Trial Periods in Multi-plan Subscriptions

Chargebee's trial period feature allows prospects to try your product or service before committing to a paid subscription. With multi-plan subscriptions, each plan can have its own trial period (different or identical), or you can set a subscription-level trial end date that overrides the individual plan trial periods.

  • A multi-plan subscription in Active status cannot be moved to Trial status unless it is being reactivated after cancellation.
  • If a subscription includes both active and trial plans, it remains active as long as at least one plan is active.
  • You cannot remove an active plan until the trial period of all trial plans in the subscription has ended. This ensures customers maintain access to at least one service while trying out trial options.
  • Plan-level trial-end actions are not applied.

Differential Pricing and Multi-plan Subscriptions

When adding multiple plans from the same product family, avoid including plans that have an associated add-on with differential pricing. The add-on price may vary depending on the order in which the plans are added. To ensure accurate pricing, you can manually set the add-on price instead.

Applicable Addons and Multi-plan Subscriptions

If multiple plans in a subscription share the same mandatory add-on, the add-on will be included only once. To avoid conflicts and ensure seamless subscription creation, we recommend creating separate applicable addons for each plan in the product catalog.

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