You want to sell subscriptions on your website. One option you have within WordPress is to do this via Gravity Forms. Gravity Forms is one of the most popular (premium) form plugins for WordPress. For several years, the Pronamic Pay plugin has made it possible to receive recurring payments through these forms. In January 2023, the ability to set up a trial period was added. This way, you can let users try your product commitment-free. In this article, we’ll explain in detail how you can arrange this.
Subscriptions with Gravity Forms
With Gravity Forms, you can create all sorts of forms. From simple contact forms and newsletter sign-ups to complete ‘configurators’ or registration forms for trips. You can also use it to sell products or receive donations. This is because Gravity Forms has various add-ons that, among other things, add payment options to the forms. Since the launch of Pronamic Pay, you’ve been able to receive payments with Gravity Forms via Mollie. A few years ago, support for recurring payments was added to this. With recurring payments, you can receive periodic donations as well as sell subscriptions.
Through our plugin, receiving recurring payments via Gravity Forms is only possible with Mollie. Mollie Recurring is used for this. Recurring payments can be initiated with a credit card, or by a Direct Debit payment for which a mandate is issued via iDEAL, Bancontact, or Sofort. For these recurring payments, subscriptions are created within the Pronamic Pay plugin.
In the form settings, you can specify when a subscription should start. Under the ‘Subscription’ tab, you can specify the conditions – for example, a fixed period, or based on a form field.
Did you know…
…Pronamic Pay is the only plugin that enables you to offer subscriptions via Gravity Forms and Mollie? Other plugins only offer one-time payments.
Trial Period for Subscriptions: Examples
Support for trial periods is new since January 2023. This allows you to give visitors the opportunity to try your service or product first before an actual subscription is started. Here are a few examples:
Free Trial Period
If you want to entice users to sign up for a subscription, one option is to offer a free trial period. For example, you offer a monthly subscription of €99.00. That’s quite an amount, so it can be a significant barrier for users to sign up. By offering a 7-day free trial period, you can let a visitor get acquainted with your content.
Please note: for a mandate via iDEAL, Bancontact, or Sofort, a small payment must still take place.
Trial Period with a discount
If you don’t want to give away your content for free, you can also choose to offer a trial period with a discount. For example, the first month at a 50% discount. This way, you offer visitors to your website a nice promotion and still earn something during the initial promotional period of your subscriptions.
Special Offer Periods, such as ‘Buy One, Get One Free’
A slightly different approach is to offer an ‘extra something’ with an initial purchase. For example, receive two months of access for the price of one month. This gives the visitor a little something extra, which cultivates goodwill.
How Do You Set Up a Trial Period?
To set up a trial period for a subscription, you check ‘trial period’ within the subscription settings. There, you specify how long this trial period should last. After the trial period expires, the subscription will automatically start. To read step-by-step how to set up trial periods, you can consult our guide ‘Recurring Payments with Gravity Forms‘.
Start with Gravity Forms & Mollie
To use Mollie with Gravity Forms, download our free plugin ‘Pronamic Pay for Mollie with Gravity Forms‘.
