Subscription trials

Stripe Price data may include a default trial period, and trial subscriptions are projected with exact Stripe timestamps.

Required product decisions

Before enabling a trial, decide and document:

• whether a payment method is required at signup;
• which plans and customers are eligible;
• whether repeated trials are prevented;
• when reminder messages are sent;
• what happens when payment fails at conversion;
• whether access ends immediately or receives a grace period; and
• how cancellation during a trial behaves.

Supacharger does not make these product decisions automatically.

Access state

trialing is a distinct subscription state on each Subscription. Applications may grant trial access, but they must use the same billing-account entitlement decision as paid access. With multiple Subscriptions, one trial ending must not revoke features still granted by another Subscription or by a manual/promotion grant. Never trust a client-side timer or Checkout redirect.

Testing

Use a Stripe Sandbox and test clocks to verify:

• trial creation timestamps;
• reminder timing if customer.subscription.trial_will_end is added to the implemented event contract;
• conversion to active;
• payment failure and recovery;
• cancellation before the trial ends; and
• expiry without a payment method.

The current canonical event list does not handle customer.subscription.trial_will_end. Add that event only with a notification handler, duplicate protection, retry behaviour, tests, and matching documentation.