I have been try to figure out how to do these sorts of payment plans in Stripe, but to no avail. Will I need to do this using the API connector or is there any plugin that can do this? Any courses or resources on Stripe that would help? I’m stuck!
Hi @jayy - generally speaking if you plan anything “unorthodox” using stripe, you can use a custom api integration (using the api connector). This way you can practically do anything stripe currently allows you to do.
Here is what I would do.
(1) check out the stripe documentation to find out what is “possible”. How products and prices work | Stripe Documentation
(2) Figure out what what you plan would mean in “stripe - language” (How would they call it). This makes it easier to have conversations about it.
(3) Draft your solution
(4) Post your solution and get feedback from the community.
(5) Implement yourself or find an expert here in the forum
*there are multiple plugins which could probably work - but you should get (2) right to make an assessment about if/which one to use
Hope this helps!
What you want to do is possible via API. If interested in learning about how Stripe API works and how Bubble API connector works you can check out my course.
Thank you! Looks just like what I need!
I’m a big believer in connecting with Stripe directly via the API connector - I think it’s way easier than navigating the plugins and way easier to troubleshoot.
But I’m not sure it matters too much in this case. I think it’s key how you set up the products themselves in Stripe, and from the top of my head you can configure products to work in these ways without too much trouble.
Then from the Bubble end (whether via a plugin or directly through the API connector) all you’re telling Stripe to bill the customer for those specific products that you’ve created. Like the Bubble end is identical to a vanilla one-off payment or one-off subscription?
Unless I’m missing something, I can only set up plain vanilla subscriptions and one-off products in Stripe. There’s no option for a paid trial period or a discounted first month.
Sorry, I sent this pre-dinner and hungry, misread and confused everything. Ignore what I said previously
Stripe does allow you to create a free trial period on a product as a legacy option if you unhide a few hidden things, meaning that whenever that product is sold the free trial period would apply, vs. needing to apply this at the time of transaction. The only caveat is as long as you don’t use their hosted checkout. But you want a discounted paid trial which isn’t the same thing.
The simple way to get around this would just be to do two separate transactions on the one workflow. So set a free trial on the product so the paid subscription starts when the full price applies and just do a separate one-off payment for the first month. It’ll work but it’s a bit clunky and there is a ‘proper’ way to do it
1. 7-day trial for $1, then $20/month
So I’m not sure about the plugins, but with the Stripe API there is an optional parameter ‘add_invoice_items’ which basically allows you to do what I described above but in one transaction.
So you still set the free trial period using the ‘trial_period_days’ parameter, and add on the $1 one-off charge which gets charged immediately. Same outcome, it’s just happening all together so it’s a bit cleaner
2. 7-day trial for $1, then $50 (one-time)
So you’re doing 2x one-off payments with one of those payments happening at a future date. Obviously the first charge is easy, but what about the one in 7 days? Well you could trigger this with Bubble and a backend workflow but I’d rather tell Stripe to do it.
What I would do is the exact same thing as with #1 and create a subscription but pass ‘cancel_at_period_end’ parameter in the call. So you’ll end up with a $1 one-off payment, and then a subscription that’ll kick off after the free trial period and charge the customer, but then expire after the first month. Essentially the same outcome as 2x one-off payments but you leave it with Stripe to trigger the $50 payment at the correct time.
3. 50% off for the first month ($10/month), then $20/month
This works exactly as described in #1
Hopefully that gives you something solid to work off in terms of how. All this is explained in the Stripe API Docs but I get that doesn’t make sense to a lot of people.
If you need some help putting it into practice, then book some time with me and we can do it together on a zoom call, and you should be right to go after that. While I get the API connector is intimidating, all APIs aren’t created equally and Stripe are the masters at making things as easy as possible, so it’s actually really quick to set up.
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Thanks so much for the detailed explanation! I’ll need some time to digest this 
Will let you know if I need help, thanks!
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