Subscription Management
Define and tune Free, Basic, Premium and Family tiers with device count, resolution caps and ad policy, then track billing status across the user base from a single view.
Tiered plans
Free, Basic, Premium and Family with entitlements.
Monthly & yearly
Dual price points for every plan.
Device limits
Concurrent device count enforced per tier.
Ad/quality policy
Resolution cap and ad inclusion per plan.
Designing the plan matrix
A plan is a bundle of entitlements: which catalogue the subscriber can reach, the maximum resolution they get, how many devices may stream at once, whether ads are included, and the monthly and yearly price. Free, Basic, Premium and Family tiers are the common shape, with Family differing mainly in concurrent streams and profile count.
The temptation is to add tiers. In practice each extra tier multiplies the entitlement combinations that have to be enforced, tested and explained on a TV screen with a remote control, so fewer and clearer tiers usually convert better than a detailed matrix.
Enforcing entitlements
Entitlements are only real if they are enforced where playback is authorised, not in the UI. Resolution caps are applied through DRM licence policy, concurrent stream limits are counted server-side at licence or playback-authorisation time, and catalogue visibility is filtered by the backend.
Concurrency in particular has to tolerate the real world: a device that loses power never sends a stop event, so sessions need heartbeat-based expiry or subscribers end up locked out of streams they are no longer watching. Getting that wrong generates more support tickets than almost anything else in a streaming product.
Trials, upgrades and churn
Free trials, promotional pricing, upgrades and downgrades all change entitlement mid-cycle, and each needs a defined behaviour: an upgrade normally takes effect immediately with a prorated charge, a downgrade at the end of the paid period. Cancellation keeps access until the period ends rather than cutting it off at once.
The admin view tracks active, cancelled and expired accounts so billing state is visible alongside plan configuration, which is what makes churn measurable rather than anecdotal.
Inside the CMS
Frequently asked questions
- Can subscribers change plan mid-cycle?
- Yes. Upgrades normally apply immediately with proration and downgrades at the end of the current period, and both are configurable.
- How are concurrent device limits enforced?
- Server-side at playback authorisation, with heartbeat-based session expiry so that a device which disappears without signing off does not hold a slot indefinitely.
- Can we run a free ad-supported tier alongside paid plans?
- Yes - a hybrid AVOD/SVOD model is supported by making ad policy and resolution cap part of the plan definition.