Plans

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What is a Plan?

A Plan is the commercial package that you offer to your customers. It defines exactly how you monetize your product by bringing together a specific pricing model, a set of features, and optional add-ons. This document provides a complete guide to the entire lifecycle of a plan, from creation and configuration to publishing and management.

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Viewing All Plans

To see a comprehensive list of all plans from all of your products, select the Plans sub-section from the Product Catalog in the left navigation pane. This global view is useful for managing your entire pricing structure in one place.

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Creating a Plan

You can create a plan from two primary locations:

1. Directly from a Product’s detail page to ensure it’s linked to that specific product.
2. From the global Plans tab in the main sidebar navigation.

This guide follows the recommended flow of creating a plan from within a product.

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Step 1: Start from the Product Page

After creating a product, you will see a prompt to create your first plan. Click the ”+ Create plan” button.

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Step 2: Define the Plan Details

A “Create plan” modal will appear. Fill in the following details:

• Plan name: The public name for the plan (e.g., “Starter”, “Pro”, “Basic”).
• Identifier: A unique ID for the plan, used to reference it in your code. This is auto-generated but can be overridden.
• Description: An optional description that appears on customer-facing elements like invoices and checkout pages.

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Step 3: Review Your Draft Plans

Once created, your plans will appear on the product’s detail page in a Draft state. A draft plan is not yet live and can be safely configured before you publish it.

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Configuring a Plan

Click on any draft plan to navigate to its detail page. From here, you will set its price, add features, and associate add-ons.

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Step 1: Set the Price

Click the “Set price” button to begin. A modal will appear asking you to choose the fundamental plan type. You have three options for the plan type: If you select the Free plan, you’ll see a success message and can continue with setup.

To offer a free trial for a limited time, you must select the Paid plan type.

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Step 2: Configure the Pricing Model (for Paid Plans)

If you selected a Paid plan, you will first define the Billing Cycle. After setting the cycle, you can add different types of charges. The decision process for structuring these charges can be visualized as follows:

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Charge Type Details

This section provides detailed configuration steps for each charge type.

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Fixed Charges

A Fixed Charge is a recurring flat fee that customers are billed for each billing period. It serves as the stable, predictable base price of a plan. To add a fixed charge:

1. From the plan’s detail page, click ”+ Configure pricing” and select “Fixed charges”.
2. Enter the charge amount for each allowed billing period, for example, $10 for monthly and $100 for yearly.
3. Click “Save” to save the charge.

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Usage-Based Charges

Usage-Based Charges are fees that customers pay for their consumption of specific product features. A single plan can have multiple distinct usage-based charges. The first step is always to Choose a billable feature you want to charge for. If the feature doesn’t exist yet, you can type its name in the dropdown and create it on the fly. Once a feature is selected, you must choose how customers will be charged for it:

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Prepaid Commitment

Customers are billed upfront for a specified quantity of usage (like seats or API calls). This model is ideal for creating predictable, recurring revenue from committed customer spend.

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Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) Coming soon 🚧

Customers are billed at the end of the period based purely on their actual consumption. This model is perfect for variable resources where upfront commitment is difficult, such as for AI tokens, compute time, or data storage.

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Adding Multiple Charges

To add another usage-based charge, click the ”+ Add more” button after saving the previous one. When finished, click “Continue”.

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Free Trial

Paid plans can be configured to start with a free trial, giving customers a risk-free way to try your product. These settings can be changed at any time without engineering resources.

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Defining an Initial Trial

1. After configuring all charges for a plan, you can enable a trial by checking the “Provide free trial” box.
2. Enter the duration of the trial, for example, 7, 14, or 30 days.

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Editing or Removing a Trial

You can modify the trial for a plan at any time:

1. Navigate to the plan’s detail page and find the Price section.
2. Click the edit icon (pencil) and select “Edit”.
3. To change the trial, update the configuration. To remove it, uncheck the “Provide free trial” box.
4. Click “Save changes”.

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Assigning Features to Plans

Once a plan’s pricing is configured, the next step is to define the functionality that customers on this plan are entitled to use. In ParityDeals, the combination of a feature and its specific configuration (e.g., on/off, a numeric limit) is called an entitlement. On the plan’s detail page, under the “Entitlements” section, you can see all the entitlements assigned to that plan.

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Adding Entitlements to a Plan

1. Click the ”+ Add” button under the “Entitlements” section of the selected plan.
2. Search for the features you’d like to assign to the plan and select them from the list.
   If a feature you need doesn’t exist yet, you can type its name and select “Create new feature” directly from the dropdown menu without leaving the page.
   
3. Apply the relevant configuration for each selected feature (see Features Types below).
4. Confirm the action by clicking the “Add” button. The features are now assigned to the plan.

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Features Types

ParityDeals provides several ways to configure features to support various business models.

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Switch / Boolean

This is the simplest entitlement. It acts as a toggle for a feature.

• Allowed: The customer has full access to the feature. For example, enabling “Premium Support” or “Dark Mode”.
• Not Allowed: The customer does not have access. In a UI powered by ParityDeals, the feature might appear disabled or be hidden behind an upsell prompt.

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Customizable

This entitlement grants access to a feature up to a specific numeric limit you define. You must enter a numeric value for the limit. For example, allowing up to 10 team members, a 500 MB maximum file upload size, or 3 connected social media accounts. You can also toggle “Enable unlimited usage”, which effectively grants infinite access to the feature for that plan.

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Metered

A metered entitlement links a feature to its consumption, which is essential for usage-based billing.

• Pre-aggregated usage: Your application is responsible for counting usage and reporting the total to ParityDeals periodically. Good examples include total GB of storage used, the number of active projects in an account, or the minutes of video rendered.
• Raw events: Your application sends individual event records to ParityDeals (e.g., an event for each API request), and ParityDeals calculates the total usage.

When configuring a metered entitlement, you can grant unlimited usage or set a specific limit. You can also define if the usage count should reset each billing period. The most critical setting for a metered limit is Limit Enforcement. This is controlled by a toggle labeled “Hard Limit (disable usage at zero balance)”. The state of this toggle determines what happens when a customer consumes all of their allowance. By default, this toggle is ON (Hard Limit enabled).

Toggle State for “Hard Limit”	Effective Behavior	Description	Customer Experience	Use Case Examples
ON (Default)	Hard Limit	Access is blocked when the usage limit is reached (i.e., balance is zero). ParityDeals will deny further attempts to use the feature.	The customer is stopped from further usage and is typically shown a message prompting them to upgrade their plan or purchase more units to continue.	Controlling costs strictly, protecting critical resources, ensuring users do not exceed prepaid allowances without an explicit top-up or upgrade.
OFF	Soft Limit	Access is not blocked when the usage limit is reached. Usage can go into a negative balance or accrue as overage.	The customer can continue using the feature without interruption. This overage can be tracked for insights, to encourage an upgrade, or billed separately if an overage pricing model is configured.	Promoting user growth, avoiding service disruption for non-critical features, or implementing a pay-as-you-go overage model on top of a base allowance.

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Defining the Entitlement Order

The order of entitlement is critical as it determines their default display order in pricing tables that are rendered using ParityDeals. You can reorder entitlements to highlight your most important entitlements first. This ordering can be managed in two places:

1. From the Plan Details Page: In the “Entitlements” section of a plan, you can change the order by using the drag-and-drop handle that appears on the left of each entitlement row. This sets the default order for this specific plan.
   
2. From the Pricing Table Editor: You can also override the default order for a specific pricing table directly within the Pricing Table editor, using a similar drag-and-drop interface.
   

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Removing Entitlements from a Plan

1. On the plan’s detail page, find the entitlement you wish to remove in the “Entitlement” list.
2. Click the three-dot menu icon on the right side of the Entitlement’s row.
3. Select the “Remove” action from the dropdown menu.
4. A confirmation dialog will appear. Click “Remove” to permanently remove the entitlement from the plan.

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Customizing Entitlement Display Text

While entitlements have a default name, you often need more customer-friendly or descriptive text for your pricing tables. ParityDeals allows you to override the default text for any entitlement on a specific pricing table.

1. From the sidebar, navigate to Monetization > Pricing Tables.
2. Select the pricing table you wish to edit from the list.
3. In the pricing table editor, find the plan you want to modify and locate its feature list.
4. Click the three-dot menu icon next to the feature you want to customize and select “Edit”.
   
5. A form will appear with the following fields:
   • Customer display text: This is the main text the customer will see for the feature in the pricing table (e.g., changing “api_calls_limit” to “Monthly API Requests”).
   • Tooltip description: Add a longer, more descriptive explanation that will appear when a customer hovers over an info icon next to the feature.
   The original default text for both fields is shown at the bottom of the form. You can easily copy this value if you ever need to revert back to the default.
   
6. Click “Save” to apply the changes to your pricing table.

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Publishing and Managing Plans

This section guides you through the final steps of the plan lifecycle: making your plans live and managing all subsequent updates.

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Publishing a Plan

After a plan has been fully configured with its pricing, features, and entitlements, it remains in a Draft state. To make it available for new customer subscriptions, you must publish it.

1. Navigate to the draft plan you want to make live.
2. Click the “Publish” button, typically located in the top-right corner of the plan details page.
3. A confirmation dialog will appear. Review the summary and confirm the action.

The plan is now live and can be integrated into your pricing tables and checkout flows.

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Editing Published Plans

One of the core strengths of ParityDeals is the ability to make rapid changes to live plans without requiring engineering resources. This allows your product and growth teams to iterate on your pricing and packaging quickly. When you publish an update to a plan, you can decide how the changes are applied:

• For New Customers Only: This is the standard for most pricing changes. Any customer who subscribed before this update will remain on their original plan and price. All new subscribers will get the updated plan.
• For New AND Existing Customers: This is ideal for additive changes that benefit all users. For example, when you add a valuable new feature to a plan, you can roll it out to every existing subscriber on that plan simultaneously.

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Making and Publishing Changes

1. To edit a live plan, navigate to the side panel in Product Catalog > Plans.
2. Click the three-dot menu icon on the relevant plan and select the “Edit” action.
   
3. Apply any changes to the plan’s pricing, features, or other details.
4. Once a change is made, the plan will have unpublished updates. ParityDeals clearly indicates this with an “Unpublished changes” badge and a yellow border around the plan details section.
5. To make your changes live, click the “Publish updates” button in the top corner of the page. This will open a dialog where you can confirm the changes and choose how to roll them out.
   

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Restoring a Previous Version

If you make a mistake or wish to discard your unpublished changes, you can easily revert to the last published version.

1. On a plan’s detail page that has unpublished changes, click the three-dot menu icon located next to the “Publish updates” button.
2. Select the “Restore last published version” option from the dropdown menu.
   
3. A confirmation modal will appear, asking if you are sure. Click “Restore version” to confirm the action.

All of your pending changes will be discarded, and the plan will instantly revert to its last live state.

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Visualizing the Plan Lifecycle

The lifecycle of a plan involves several key states, from its creation as a draft to being published and subsequently updated. The following diagram illustrates these transitions: