We’re excited to announce that Ongoing launched a new feature called Minimum Time Commitments.

This allows you as a merchant to state a required amount of time that the subscriber needs to stay subscribed.

A lot of merchants were worried that people would subscribe for the discount and then unsubscribe after the first shipment. Minimum time commitments would solve this.

For example let’s say I was selling a Lotion on a monthly subscription plan at 10% off. I could require customers to subscribe for a minimum of 3 months by adding a minimum time commitment to my plan.

The great thing about minimum time commitments is that the customer is agreeing to it, the pause and cancel are disabled in the customer portal if there is still a minimum time commitment remaining.

Check out our complete guide here on How to Create Minimum Time Commitments.

Subscription Minimum Time Commitment Features:

• Now merchants can add a minimum time requirement on their subscription plan.
• Now merchants can edit the minimum time commitment for existing active subscriptions.
• Merchants will now see a progress bar of how many billing cycles are remaining on the minimum time commitment and how many billing cycles have been completed.
• Customer is not able to cancel or pause the subscription if there is still a minimum time commitment remaining.
• In customer portal, the customer will see that they have a minimum time commitment remaining in their status section of their subscription details page.

Benefits:

• Peace of mind for the merchant that subscribers have agreed to commit for a certain amount of time (especially if a subscription discount is being offered)
• Minimum time commitments can increase the merchant’s subscription revenue by ensuring that the customer pledge to a certain amount of time
• It’s very common for minimum time commitments to be added to subscription plans that offer a nice subscription discount like 10% off. Offering a subscription discount on your subscription plan is a great way to reward your subscribers for committing to a certain amount of time to stay subscribed
• We’ve seen merchants getting creative and using minimum time commitments on their subscription plan as a sort of installment plan (such as pay $120 today for the product, or get billed $10 a month for 12 months )