It's time for the first product update of the year, and we are pretty excited about it. In this product launch, we're introducing the first version of subscription rentals and much more.
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Previously in Twice, you have been able to make your products available for one-time rent or sale. Now we have added the possibility of selling your products on a subscription basis. The feature is available by default in all plans (Free, Discover, Build, Advance, and Enterprise).
This opens up a new dimension of selling durable goods with Twice and equips merchants to meet the growing consumer demand for buying products as services.
Subscription rentals are a recurring revenue model where customers pay a regular fee monthly (or annually) in exchange for access to a product.
Basically, a subscription rental is just a long-term lease with payments spread evenly over the lease period. At the end of the contract, the buyer is obliged to return the product to the seller, as the ownership of the product does not transfer to the buyer.
Other standard subscription models are subscription boxes and membership models. However, these models are not supported in this release.
The current (first) version of Twice's subscription feature allows selling products as subscriptions. Compared to subscription box models, the assumption is that the product will return to the seller's inventory at the end of the order.
To start selling subscriptions, you must define subscription pricing for products in the product catalog. Creating subscription plans requires specifying commitment periods (=the minimum contract length) and a monthly subscription fee for each duration option. For example:
Your customers can then subscribe to a product by choosing a contract period (a duration they commit to) and paying the first monthly charge during the online store checkout. The following payments will be automatically charged from the customer's payment card according to the recurring billing cycle.
The subscription ends at the end of the contract period. The first version does not include auto-renewal/open-ended subscriptions.
If you would like to learn more about creating subscription products as well as the requirements and limitations of the first version, you can head to our Help Center.
We want to point out that the current version is still limited, and we are already working on subsequent improvements. Among others, the following updates will include:
You can now manage your online store customizations via themes.
With themes, you can edit your online store on a location level, meaning if you want your location A's online store to look different and show different content from location B's, it is now possible.
The feature also supports theme drafting, so you can work on themes and save edits before publishing them to your audience. The existing customizations have been moved to this new theming system. Check out themes under Settings > Online Store or learn more about the feature from our Help Center.
We have improved the search in Customers view so you can search customers more easily with their names. The search now supports both partial name search and full name search. The search also supports searching by email addresses or phone numbers.
There's a new, cleaner UI for managing your store's business hours and exception periods. We have also made several bug fixes and minor performance improvements related to opening hours.