Gift Subscriptions 

Introduction 

A great way to acquire new revenue for your business is by allowing your customers to gift subscriptions to family and friends. Gifts could be sent to recipients immediately on sign-up or scheduled for special occasions such as holidays or birthdays.

This way, new prospects are introduced to your products/services, increasing chances that they may further sign-up with you once they have experienced the gift plan.

While signing up, your customers can provide contact details of the gift recipient and a personal message to be sent to them. On the date and time chosen by the gifter, a welcome email is sent to the recipient, who may then claim the gift, activating their gift subscription.

Gift Subscription Workflow 

Let us look at a typical workflow for using gift subscriptions using Chargebee Checkout.

Once you create gift plans in Chargebee, a customer can sign-up for a gift using Checkout:

On successful immediate payment by the gifter, a purchase confirmation email is sent to them promptly. Soon after, a gift notification email is sent to the recipient of the gift at the date and time chosen by the gifter:

The email allows the gift recipient to claim the gift as shown below:

Post claim, the gift subscription gets activated and the gift recipient receives an email confirmation. The gifter is also notified that the gift has been claimed.

Gift subscriptions are non-renewing and therefore are canceled automatically at the end of their term. At this point, the gift recipient can be notified via the subscription cancellation email. Also, you can use the subscription cancellation reminder email to prompt gift recipients to sign-up for a regular subscription.

Configuring Gift Subscriptions 

Configuring gift subscription in your Chargebee site involves the following three steps:

1. Enabling the gift subscriptions feature.
2. Configuring gift subscription fields in Checkout and Portal.
3. Configuring email notifications.

Enabling the gift subscriptions feature 

To enable gift subscriptions in your Chargebee site, follow these steps:

1. Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Gift Subscription > Enable.

   

2. Automatically claim gifts: When this setting is enabled, gifts are claimed automatically on the notification date and the gift notification email is skipped. When the setting is turned off (default), gifts must be claimed by the recipients manually.

3. Allow customers to claim their gifts anytime: When this setting is enabled, gifts are valid forever. They never expire and can be claimed any time. When it is turned off (default), gifts have a period of validity within which they must be claimed, or they expire. Upon expiry, the gift subscription is canceled. You can specify this period under All gifts must be claimed within. The allowed range is 1- 365 days.

4. Click Apply and Confirm.

Configuring gift subscription fields in Checkout and Portal 

After enabling the gift subscriptions feature in your Chargebee site, configure the following Checkout and Portal settings to enable relevant fields in your hosted pages:

1. Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Checkout & Self-Serve Portal > Configuration > Gift Subscriptions.

2. Click Enable and you can configure the following fields:

   
   • Allow gifter to schedule when gifts are sent: When turned on, the setting allows gifters to select during checkout, a date and time when the gift notification email is to be sent to the recipient. When turned off, the email is sent immediately on signing-up.
   • Allow gifter to cancel gift until the recipient is notified: You can allow the gifter to cancel the gift from the Self-serve Portal. It is only allowed as long as the gift is in scheduled status.
   • Allow recipients to cancel gifts from the Self-serve Portal: Allow the recipient of the gift to log in to the Self-serve Portal and cancel the gift subscription.

3. Click Publish to save your updates.

Navigate to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Checkout & Self-Serve Portal > Configuration > Gift Subscription and configure the following:

Configuring Email Notifications 

Note: Gift subscriptions are only supported in the latest version of email notifications.

To enable the required email notifications for gift subscriptions, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Email notifications > Gift subscription emails.
2. You can configure the following emails for notifying the gifters and the gift recipients respectively:

Notifying Gifters

Notifying Gift Recipients

Creating Gift Plans 

Once you have configured gift settings in Chargebee, you can create gift plans. Gift plans are those used to create gift subscriptions.

To create a gift plan in your Chargebee site, follow these steps:

1. Cick Product Catalog > Plans > Create Plan.

2. Enter the plan details and check the box This is a gift plan.

   

3. You can also set the Claim Redirect URL for the gift plan to which the recipient will be redirected to after claiming their gift. The domain of this URL must be allow-list in Chargebee for successful redirection. To do this, go to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Checkout and Self-serve Portal > Advanced Settings > Add Domains and add the domain name.

4. Click Create.

The gift plan is successfully created. You can start defining price points for your gift plan as required.

Editing Gift Plan 

To edit an existing gift plan in your Chargebee site, follow these steps:

1. Cick Product Catalog > Plans > select the plan that you want to edit. You can edit gift plans by using the Edit Plan option on the details page of the gift plan.
2. The fields that can be edited depends on whether there are subscriptions created for the plan or not.

Gift Status 

The status of a gift subscription is affected by status changes in the corresponding gift. The following is the list of possible statuses for gifts :

Gift Subscription Operations 

You can view gift subscriptions and also change the notification date for any of them.

Viewing Gift Subscriptions 

You can view all the gift subscriptions in Chargebee by using filters on the Subscriptions page. Set the Is Gift filter to True and click on Apply Filter to list all gift subscriptions:

Claiming Gifts 

Claiming a gift  activates the associated gift subscription.

A gift can be claimed in any of the following ways:

1. By the recipient, from the gift notification email sent to them.
2. By you, using an API call.
3. Automatically via auto-claim, when enabled.

Canceling Gifts 

Gift subscriptions can be canceled in the following ways:

• If the setting allows, the gifter may cancel the gift  from the Self-serve Portal so long as the gift is in scheduled status.

• If the setting allows, the recipient can also cancel their gift subscription mid-term from the Self-serve Portal.

• A gift subscription can be canceled by you from its details page by using the Cancel Immediately button.
• Gifts can also be automatically canceled after a set number of days of remaining unclaimed.
• Finally, there is also the gift cancellation API call.

Cancellation Behavior 

The site settings for subscription cancellation are not applicable for gift subscriptions. Instead, the following rules apply when gift subscriptions are canceled:

Disabling Gift Subscriptions 

To disable the gift subscriptions feature in your Chargebee site, follow these steps:

1. Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Gift Subscription.
2. Click Disable.

Disabling this setting automatically removes the Checkout & Self-serve Portal fields and the Email notifications related to gift subscriptions.

After you have disabled gift subscription feature in your Chargebee site, customers can no longer gift subscriptions. However, the gift subscriptions given or reveived in the past will stay unaffected.

Gift API and Events 

API 

Apart from the gift API  that allows you to create, retrieve, list, claim and cancel gifts, the following is a list of other API calls/parameters that may be used to work with gifts:

• Plans/Addons/Charges

  • https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api/items#item_is_giftable 
  • https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api/items#create_an_item_is_giftable 
  • https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api/items#list_items_is_giftable 

• Invoices

  • https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api/invoices#invoice_is_gifted 

• Orders

  • https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api/orders#order_is_gifted 

• Hosted Pages

  • https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api/hosted_pages#checkout_gift_subscription 
  • https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api/hosted_pages#claim_a_gift_subscription 

• Exports

  • https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api/exports#export_plans_plan_giftable 

Events 

Your system can be notified of gift-related events  by configuring webhooks.

FAQ 

I have calendar billing enabled in Chargebee. How do gift subscriptions work with it? 

Gift subscriptions are only created on gift claim and are not affected by your calendar billing settings.