Forumotion Packages

by **The Godfather** April 23rd 2018, 6:08 pm

Forumotion packages

Forumotion packages allow you to enrich your forum with additional features. As you know, Forumotion offers for many years the possibility to create a free forum, with a rich diversity of features. If, by default, our forums offer most of the tools necessary for the proper use and development of your forum, some paid options can enhance it with new features, and improve your members' experience (ads deletion, SSL certificate, custom domain name, etc.). Until now, these paid options were dispersed in the administration panel.

Today, and thanks to the arrival of Forumotion packages, the purchase of a package will allow you to access a set of additional features, while leaving you free to activate or not, step by step, each of these options. Very Happy

What are the different offered packages ?

Forumotion forums offer three packages: Free, Advanced and Premium. Here is a non-exhaustive presentation:

Free package

Advanced package

Premium package

Features of Forumotion packages

Depending on the package you choose, Advanced or Premium, you will have access to some additional features. Details of the features included in each package are presented in the general table on your Administration panel  Misc  Forumotion packages.

 Increase storage space	See tutorial
 Disabling Ads	See tutorial
 Ability to set up an external domain name	See tutorial
 Ability to buy a domain name	See tutorial
 Ability to send more newsletters	See tutorial
 Ability to enable extended search	See tutorial
 Ability to easily monetize your forum	See tutorial
 Removal of Forumotion copyrights	See tutorial
 Customizing the Popular Content Newsletter	See tutorial

How to subscribe a Forumotion package?

The subscription to a package can be done with two payment methods: an annual payment, or a monthly payment. Only the founder can subscribe a package.

Annual payment

In this case, you pay your package in a single payment, for a validity period of one year.

Go to your Administration panel  Misc  Forumotion Packages. At the bottom of the column of the package you are interested in (Advanced or Premium), click on "Per year" in the payment method line, before clicking on the "Order your pack" button:

See the example:

Note that the annual payment of a package includes 2 months offered. It can be done via credits, the virtual currency specific to Forumotion forums. Subscribing to a package on an annualized basis requires a sufficient credit balance on the forum. You can buy credits via Allopass, Paypal, Hipay or Skrill.

The activation of a package subscribed via an annual payment is immediate and requires no waiting.

Monthly payment

Without expiry date and no commitment, it allows you to access Forumotion packages by paying very accessible monthly installments and to spread the payment of your package. Go to your Administration panel  Misc  Forumotion Packages. At the bottom of the column of the package you are interested in (Advanced or Premium), click on "Per month" in the payment method line, before clicking on the "Order your pack" button:

See the example:

Attention, the monthly subscription to a package is only possible by Paypal (the PayPal account has to be linked to a valid card or bank account).

The activation of a package subscribed via a monthly payment is not immediate and requires a waiting time that can sometimes goes up to several minutes. This waiting time is independent of the Forumotion will, but is necessary to receive the confirmation of the monthly payment from Paypal. In this case, a message reminds the administrator that a payment authorization request is pending with Paypal:

See the example:

As long as this warning message is displayed, it means that your previous payment confirmation request has not yet been received by Forumotion. Therefore, you do not have to submit a new payment.

Stop or change a payment

Switching from a monthly payment to an annual payment or vice versa

Switch from monthly to annual payment: this is only possible with an upgrade of your package. Indeed, an Advanced package activated via a monthly payment can be transformed into a Premium package paid annually. In this case, a refund in proportion to the price of the monthly Advanced package already paid and not consumed will be done to the forum.

See example:

Switch from annual to monthly payment: this is only possible with an upgrade of your package. Indeed, an Advanced package activated via an annual payment can be transformed into a monthly Premium package paid monthly. In this case, a refund in proportion to the price of the annual Advanced package already paid and not consumed will be done to the forum.

See example:

Anyway, if you had already bought the Premium package and you want to change its payment type,you will have to wait for the package to expire in order to subscribe again with the desired payment method.

Stop a payment

Annual payment

The annual payment is made in one time and allows to activate the chosen package for one year. It is therefore not a subscription but a single purchase valid from date to date. There is no payment to stop under this plan annually paid. As the package expires, the founding administrator is free to manually renew it for an additional year if he wishes. If not, the package expires and the forum falls back into a free package.

Note that additional paid options acquired as part of a package (domain name or additional storage) are not lost and remain active until their respective expiration dates.

Monthly payment

The monthly payment method is a subscription without expiration and without commitment via Paypal. Once the subscription is in place, every month, a monthly payment corresponding to the agreed price for your package will be debited from your Paypal account. This will automatically credit your forum with the number of credits needed to renew your current package for the following month and so on.

However, if the administrator wishes to suspend this payment, he can very easily do so from his administration panel  Misc  Summary & Management  Summary
You just have to click on the "Stop monthly payment" button.

See example:

A confirmation is necessary to validate the operation:

See example:

The cancellation of the monthly withdrawal of the current package is taken into account. As the current month has been already paid, the end of the monthly payment and the deactivation of the package will only be effective at the end of its current validity period.

Example:
I subscribed an Advanced package in monthly payment on January 01, so my package is active until January 31 and will be automatically renewed via Paypal on this date. I request a cancellation of my monthly package on January 20. As I have already paid in advance in January, the cancellation will be registered on January 20 but will be effective only on January 31 after the expiration of the validity of my current package. On February 01, my forum will be in Free package and no more debits will be made to my Paypal account.

Remarks

If you had already acquired some features before the packages launch (removal of ads, removal of copyrights, etc.), the forum will take them into account when calculating the price of the package which includes these features. Indeed, a refund equivalent to the amount paid, less the time already elapsed, will be deducted from the purchase price of the package (if you choose an annual payment) or added to the forum credits amount (if you choose a monthly payment).

See the example:
If you have already subscribed to an Advanced package, the forum will take this into account when calculating the Premium package price, if you decide to upgrade. Indeed, if you choose an annual payment, it will deduct from the Premium package price the equivalent of the time paid for the Advanced package, but not expired. If you choose a monthly payment, this refund will be credited directly to the sum of credits available on the forum.

See the example:
With packages, all activated features have the same expiry date, except for the domain name and the additional storage space: if the package was purchased on 20 April 2018 by a single annual payment, it will expire on 20 April 2019. All options will expire with it on that date, even if they were activated later.

See the example:

This is true for all options, except for the domain name and additional storage space for the Premium package:

The acquisition of a domain name is not included free of charge in the Advanced or Premium package. These packages give you the right to buy a custom domain name via Forumactif. Each founder with a valid package is then free to order a custom domain name for its forum for an additional 1200 credits.

The purchase of an additional storage space (in addition to the 2 GB included in the Premium package) is not included free of charge in this package. Indeed, if the 2 GB of storage space included in the Premium package is not enough, the founder of the forum can increase these space by buying additional disk space to store the attached files and images from the photo gallery of his forum for as long as he wishes. These additional GB will have a validity period independent of the current Premium package.