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Rate Plans are usage-based pricing structures that let you price your offering according to consumption or tiers. Rate plans can also serve as a licensing mechanism for limited access. Rate Plans provide you the opportunity to start customers with an inexpensive plan and upsell them as they realize the value of your offering. Rate Plans may be one of two types: License based (Seat Based) or Usage based:
  • License based model: A prepay model that lets customers purchase individual licenses, or packages of licenses, the price for which is defined by the Rate Plan. Products are priced according to Pricing Tiers, based on the number of Licenses purchased. When the subscription is first created, the number of Licenses purchased may be entered, and the first Transaction immediately processed. This allows customers to pre-pay for Entitlements granted by the Subscription.
  • Usage based model: A post-pay solution that allowing Subscribe to calculate your customer’s bill based on their usage during the Billing Period, and the defined Rate Plan. Pricing Tiers are created which calculate charges based on the number of items used. Entitlements are granted in advance of use, and customers are charged and billed according to the number of items used during the previous Billing Cycle. The Usage model requires use of the Subscribe API to report each access event to Subscribe. At the end of the Billing Cycle, both the Rate Plan’s Pricing Tier structure and the number of events logged will be used to determine the price to be billed.
Rate Plan pricing is metered in units called Rated Unit Events. Each Event may be a single user license, a minute of phone use, or a gigabyte of storage space, depending upon the Unit of measure defined for the Rate Plan. For the purposes of the Rate Plan, an Event is not a moment in time, but a reported number of Rated Units. For example, you could charge streaming by the number of movies streamed or create movies as your unit of interest. Rate Plans also allow you to define an included number of items, at no additional charge, and set minimum and maximum Billing Cycle charge limits, if you like. For example, a Rate Plan may be designed so that each Billing Cycle allows access to 50 GB of storage for 12permonth.Thefirst100GBaftertheinitial50arebilledat12 per month. The first 100 GB after the initial 50 are billed at .20/GB per month; the next 100 are billed at .15/GBpermonth;andanythingover200GBisbilledat.15/GB per month; and anything over 200 GB is billed at .10/GB per month. The Rate Plan list page displays by ID, Status, Created Date, Model, and Tiers. You can search for rate plans by any of these key words or click the Show Filters button to refine your search. To keep a list of Rate Plans, you can export the Rate Plans to a csv file. Click the Download button and select whether to download the current displayed results only (by default, 10 to a page) or the full result list. Parent topic:Catalog Related information Rate Plan Examples