Plan expiration, plan integration actions and grace periods

We are trying to understand the expiration flow when a plan has a grace period attached. We can't find a reliable way to test various settings as when we modify expiration dates, for example, in the CBSubs subscriptions page, things don't seem to operate as they normally do when the system does its normal operation.

Questions:

Is the user sent the usual automatic email telling them that their subscription has expired at the end of the subscription or the end of the grace period?

When do the plan Integrations (such as CB Fields and Email) for deactivation/expiration occur? At the end of the subscription or the end of the grace period?

During the grace period, are there any limitations to what a logged in user can do? Or is it exactly the same as if they are still on an active plan?

Is the user sent the usual automatic email telling them that their subscription has expired at the end of the subscription or the end of the grace period?

Depends on what emails you're using. If CBSubs Mailer you've more control over this otherwise all behavior happens when the user actually expires at end of grace period.

When do the plan Integrations (such as CB Fields and Email) for deactivation/expiration occur? At the end of the subscription or the end of the grace period?

At the end of the grace period when they actually expire.

During the grace period, are there any limitations to what a logged in user can do? Or is it exactly the same as if they are still on an active plan?

No, plan works normally during grace period.


Grace periods are basically best used to support payment providers ability to notify your site about a payment. You'll typically want a grace period of at least 3 days to account for IPNs potentially being slow. This is really only a factor for recurring subscriptions though since you don't want a recurring subscription to expire prematurely.

One more question:

If, for example we have a 1 year plan that has a 1 month grace period (I know it is long, but in our case it is necessary), if that plan expires and is then renewed and we have "Manual renewal extends expiration date as follows" set to "Renewal extends expiration date (without gap or overlap)", does the expiration date that the renewal is based on reflect the actual 1 year from registration expiration date? Or will it be based on the expiration date of the grace period (the 13 month time period expiration date)?

For example, if they have a 1 year plan from 2020-01-01 to 2021-01-01 (1 month grace period results in actual expiration on 2021-02-01) and if they renew after expiration, will the renewed membership period ( with plan set to "Renewal extends expiration date (without gap or overlap") start on 2022-01-01 (original plan 1 year expiration date) or on 2022-02-01 (original plan expiration date plus 1 month grace period)?

does the expiration date that the renewal is based on reflect the actual 1 year from registration expiration date?

Yes.