Search as a service: Ability to renew a subscription before the old one expires

[m-i-l]

At the moment, you have to wait for a paid listing (Verified Add in current terminology) to revert to the free listing (Quick Add in current terminology) in order to renew your paid listing for another year, which isn't a great user experience. Users should be able renew their listing for another year before the current listing expires.

Unfortunately the database schema only supports one paid listing per domain at a time, so it'll need a schema redesign to support. That would provide a good opportunity to introduce #65 "Search as a service: Free trial mode", and of course #3 "Indexing: Automate site expiry".

I think a much better flow would be:

• Users get one email reminder, e.g. 2 weeks before expiry, and can login to Manage Site and click a Renew button to renew, without having to go through the whole relisting process.
• If they don't renew, it drops to a new Free Trial tier for a month. During that time they can still login to Manage Site and click Renew.
• If they take no action, it drops to the Basic listing with no access to Manage Site, so if they want to renew they have to relist from the start again.

BTW, I know almost all software as a service partially addresses this by having automated monthly/annual renewals. However, personally, I don't like these, because of the increasing number of regular automated subscriptions I seem to be building up, and the fear that with the increasing number I'm building up and the difficulty in tracking all of these I'll end up paying for something I no longer use - I'd much rather pay for a period, and re-pay at the end of that period if I want to reuse it, and let it lapse if I don't.

[m-i-l]

Now implemented. There's a new tab on Manage Site called Subscriptions which shows the current tier and the current subscriptions (if there are any - Free Trial won't have any). Below the current subscriptions list there's a Purchase button - this is used to renew a subscription (for current Full listings) or upgrade from Free Trial to Full.

There's nothing to stop someone stacking up a new subscription (or even multiple subscriptions) in advance if they want to, but assuming they don't the expiry workflow is now:

1. User is sent an email saying the site has expired, as per Indexing: Automate site expiry #3 , and the site moves to a Free Tier listing for 1 month (details of Free Trial at Search as a service: Free trial mode #65 ).
2. While it is a Free Tier their API will work so nothing should be broken, and they can simply log in as normal to press the Purchase button to upgrade from Free Trial back to Full.
3. If no action is taken, 1 month after moving to Free Trial it will move to Basic. If they want to renew then, they will need to go through Add Site again, although some of the previous validation information will be retained.