Trials Provisioning: Current State & Planned Work
Current State
Trials allow current or potential customers to preview a certain plan prior to purchasing. They are also currently used to cover the gap between an expiring subscription past its grace period and a pending renewal purchase.
Trials can be started in the following ways:
- Any user can fill out the trial request form. Once the form is filled out, TBD how provisioned.
- Initiated by L&R Support from a ZenDesk ticket to cover an ending grace period of a subscription pending renewal, trial license key is sent to the customer via ZenDesk ticket.
This issue is a WIP to be further informed by https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/fulfillment-meta/-/issues/793+
Info can also be found in: gitlab-org&5431 (closed)
Relevant Customer Personas:
- Potential Customer: User who is not currently a paid user of GitLab testing out a paid subscription via trial.
- Potential Upgrade: Existing paid Premium customer testing out Ultimate via trial.
- Temporary Extension: Existing customer using a trial license of the same type of plan in order to cover the gap between the grace period of their expired license and a pending subscription renewal.
Expected Behavior for Moving Off a Trial
The below table outlines expected and observed behavior for a customer moving off of a trial, which should occur either when a trial expires or when a paid plan is applied to the same namespace.
Customer Persona | Scenario | Expected Behavior | Current Observed Behavior |
---|---|---|---|
Potential Customer | User without a paid plan enrolls in a trial. Trial ends. | User should be downgraded to free immediately at the end of the trial. | Some users are not downgraded and are able to continue using their trial per gitlab-org/customers-gitlab-com#4390 (closed). |
Potential Customer | User without a paid plan enrolls in a trial. User purchases a paid plan during the trial period. |
|
TBD |
Potential Upgrade | Customer with an active paid Premium plan enrolls in an Ultimate trial. Ultimate trial ends and paid Premium plan is still active. | Customer should be reverted to their Premium paid plan immediately after the trial. | TBD |
Potential Upgrade | Customer with an active paid Premium plan enrolls in an Ultimate trial. Premium plan ends prior to trial period. | Customer should be able to continue using their trial until the end of the trial period. When trial period ends, customer is downgraded to free. | TBD |
Potential Upgrade | Customer with an active paid Premium plan enrolls in an Ultimate trial. Premium plan is renewed prior to trial period. |
|
TBD |
Temporary Extension | Customer with an expired paid subscription is using a same plan trial temporarily to extend their current subscription. Customer renews their paid subscription. | Trial should be ended immediately upon renewal and customer's subscription should be updated to their paid subscription. | At one point, customer was reverted to free when the trial expired, but I believe this has since been resolved. |
Temporary Extension | Customer with an expired paid subscription is using a same plan trial temporarily to extend their current subscription. Trial ends prior to renewal occurring. | Customer should be reverted to free at the end of the trial period. | TBD |
In Progress & Upcoming Work
- [Feature] Allow existing Premium customers to trial Ultimate on their current Namespace
- [Bug] Trials should be deprovisioned upon expiration
- TBD: work to align current behavior to expected behavior documented above