Product subscriptions
  • 19 Jul 2022
  • 2 Minutes to read
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Product subscriptions

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Article summary

Customers subscribe to one or more commercial B2B products and optional components under a publisher account.

A product is one of our high-level service options:

  • Podcast hosting
  • Radio streaming
  • Mobile app
  • Recognition
  • Advertising

Most of these products are available in different packages, each with their own features and usage limits.

Example: Podcast hosting has "Free", "Pro", "Studio" other packages available.

Components

Each product package offers optional components to enable extended functionality.

Example: enabling the "Transcription" service on a "Pro" podcast packages to allow automated speech-to-text conversion.

Some components are only available on higher packages.

Example: the "FTP publish" component is only available for "Radio" podcast packages.

Chart of products and their components:

image.png

Limits

Some products have limits, which only allows usage up to a certain point.

Example: the "Free" podcast package has a limit of 1 admin user and up to 50 stored episodes.

For most components their usage is based on how much of that resource is currently in use.

Example: the amount of stored episodes in a podcast subscription.

Customers can view their current package limits and usage on the Billing portal.

Metered usage

A few components are metered - they reset to a count of zero with each monthly invoicing cycle, usage accrues over the month period and is invoiced in arrears on the next invoice:

  • Podcast hosting / Publish episode limit - each podcast package has a limit of how many episodes may be published in a month period.
  • Podcast hosting / Transcripion minutes - when the transcription service is enabled, customers pay for the amount of minutes transcribed during the month period.
  • Radio streaming / Peak concurrent users - radio streaming packages measure the peak concurrent users connected to the stream in a month period. This value is updated daily, and at the end of the month customers pay usage fees if they exceeded the generous free limit.

For details on the billing cycle, payment and invoicing of product subscriptions, see the Payments & invoicing article.

Upgrade or downgrade subscriptions

Upgrading a product package or enabling an optional component is effective immediately and customers are invoiced a pro-rata amount for the additional service cost up to the next billing period. This allows customers to immediately start using the upgraded package features and limits.

Downgrading a package or disabling a component is also effective immediately. Unfortunately we do not issue refunds for downgrades, customers that wish to continue using the package or component are advised to downgrade just before the renewal date.

Downgrades will not be allowed while a current usage amount exceeds the limits of the lower package.

Example: a customer on a "Starter" podcast package who has 80 stored podcast episodes would need to delete 30 episodes before they can downgrade back to the "Free" package.

Cancelling subscriptions

Downgrading product's components is effective immediately, but when cancelling a whole product subscription, the product will remain available for use until the next monthly renewal cycle, at which point it is deleted. Any time during this period customers can reverse the cancellation.

Example: a "Commercial" stream package can be cancelled on 10 April but will remain available until 30 April.

The next invoice (if any) will not contain the cancelled product, however any outstanding metered charges will still be invoiced.

Example: a "Pro" podcast package is cancelled, but still has 20 minutes of transcription that have not been invoiced.