Thank you for rolling out discount codes. I really appreciate this feature. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get many people to take advantage of them. The reasons for not taking advantage I’m hearing is the credit card requirement.
Other platforms allow you to comp someone membership from the dashboard. It would be helpful to have that ability to help promote membership or allow membership signup with a discount code that is fully comp without requiring a credit card.
I believe this would help those of us who are new to subscription platform marketing.
It is a known pain point for readers and has been brought to our attention several times.
Unfortunately this is a subscription platform that has only one payment processor currently, and we are required to follow their policies.
That includes the requirement that readers must apply a promo code through the checkout process.
Most codes are not forever, and the discounted time frame will end eventually. Having a credit card on file will make the next month’s invoice payment a painless process for readers. They always have to option to upgrade, downgrade or cancel before this occurs and reminders of those options are included within the invoice.
Ream is looking at adding more payment options in 2024 and we’ll be sure to update everyone if we come to an agreement with another payment processor.
Substack also uses Stripe and they have the option to comp paid months within the app (i.e. not requiring a credit card, and not even requiring involving Stripe at all). I assume that means that the contract that Substack has with Stripe has different terms. So, obviously, I have no insight into whether it’s possible to renegotiate what terms Ream has, but at least there is precedent for Stripe to allow it.