Subscription plans let you accept recurring payments and automatically renew access to products, channels, and groups. You set the price and subscription period, and Zenedu charges the subscriber at renewal.
If a scheduled payment fails, Zenedu helps recover it by retrying the charge according to a schedule and notifying the subscriber. These settings apply to all plans within a bot and are located under Subscriptions → Revenue recovery.
How to create a subscription plan
Open the bot, go to Sales → Offers, and click Create offer.
Enter a name for the plan.
Add the product, channel, or group you want to grant access to. Select the relevant item from the list in the window that opens.
Select Subscription as the payment type.
Set the price, currency, and subscription period.
Select a payment method.
To offer the first period at a special price, set up a paid trial as described below.
Click Create.
Open the plan's Links and copy the payment link. Add it to your bot or channel, or send it to potential customers.
Which payment methods support subscriptions
Subscriptions work with the following automatic payment methods: WayForPay, Fondy, Stripe, plata by mono, and LiqPay.
Some payment providers require you to enable recurring payments or tokenization for your merchant account:
WayForPay — contact support at [email protected]. You can use this message: “Hello! Please enable token support for merchant [merchant name] so we can accept recurring payments on the zenedu.io platform.”
plata by mono — contact monobank support using the financial phone number registered to your merchant account and ask them to enable tokenization for recurring payments.
Fondy — ask support to enable token support for recurring payments.
LiqPay — follow LiqPay's subscription instructions and contact support through your account or official support channels to activate recurring payments for your merchant account.
How to set up a paid trial
A paid trial is the first subscription period with its own price and duration. For example, you can offer one week of access for $1, then renew the subscription at the regular price.
When creating the plan:
Enable Paid trial below the plan price.
Set the trial price and duration.
Finish creating the plan.
How to set up revenue recovery
If a scheduled payment fails, for example because the card has insufficient funds, Zenedu can retry the charge and offer the subscriber the option to pay with another card.
Open Subscriptions → Revenue recovery. This tab contains payment retries, subscriber notifications, metrics, and the monthly report.
These settings apply to all plans within the bot. You no longer need to configure recovery separately for each plan.
Payment retries
In the Payment retries group, open Schedule.
Enable Retry failed payments to retry charges automatically.
Choose a schedule:
Standard — up to 5 retries within 10 days after a scheduled payment fails. For shorter subscriptions, the schedule is shortened so that retries finish before the next scheduled charge.
Custom — available on Pro. Choose between 1 and 10 retries and a recovery period of 3 to 30 days. Retries run no more than once a day. For shorter subscriptions, the recovery period is also shortened.
Save your settings.
While retries are in progress, the subscription has the Past due status, and access to the product, channel, or group remains available.
If the payment is recovered, the subscription continues. If all retries fail, the subscription is canceled and access ends.
Notifications before the next payment
In the Payment notifications group, open Before the next payment. You can enable or disable reminders and choose how many days before the payment to send them.
A reminder helps subscribers check that their card has sufficient funds in advance. It is not sent if the subscription period is equal to or shorter than the reminder's lead time.
On Pro, you can add up to three reminders and customize their text. Basic includes one reminder.
Failed payment notifications
Open When a payment fails. You can configure notifications separately for three situations:
Scheduled payment failed — retries are still ahead.
Retry failed — more retries remain.
Payment could not be recovered — all retries have ended, and the subscription has been canceled.
Notifications about failed scheduled payments and failed retries include a Pay with another card button. Subscribers can pay immediately with another card without waiting for the next retry. After a successful payment, the subscription continues.
On Pro, you can customize the notification text and the button text.
If you disable the “Payment could not be recovered” notification, the subscriber will still receive the standard subscription cancellation message.
How to view recovery results
Select a period at the top of the tab to view these metrics:
Zenedu recovered — the total amount of scheduled payments successfully recovered.
Recovery rate — the share of failed payments successfully recovered.
Failed payments — the total amount of scheduled payments that failed on the first attempt.
Failure rate — the share of all scheduled payments that failed on the first attempt.
The Zenedu recovered metric is also available on the dashboard.
Monthly report
In the Recovered revenue report group, enable Send monthly. On the first day of each month, the owner receives a report in the Zenedu bot showing how many payments and how much money were recovered in the previous month.
If your bot already had active subscriptions
Payment retry and notification settings have been transferred automatically from individual plans to the bot level. Check them under Subscriptions → Revenue recovery and make sure they suit all your plans.
For three months after the transfer, a notice with a link to the new settings is shown on the offers page.
Managing subscriptions in a subscriber's profile
You can view and manage subscriptions directly in the subscriber's profile:
Open Subscribers.
Find the subscriber and open their profile.
Open the Subscriptions tab.
The tab shows the plan name, payment amount, status, and subscription dates.
To cancel a subscription, click ⋮ to its right and select Cancel.
Cancellation stops future charges. The subscriber keeps access until the end of the paid period.
Managing a subscription through the bot menu
After you create a subscription plan, the /subscriptions command is added to the bot menu automatically. You can change the command description in the bot menu settings.
Subscribers can select this command in Telegram to view:
the product they are subscribed to;
the subscription price and period;
the next payment date.
They can also cancel their subscription here if they no longer want it to renew. Access remains available until the end of the paid period.
Filtering orders
Under Orders, you can view one-time payments and subscription payments separately:
Open the orders list.
Click Filters.
Select the payment type.
The list will show only orders matching the selected payment type. Subscription is a payment type, not an order status.
How to change the subscription price or next payment date
You can change the subscription amount or the next charge date for an individual customer:
Open Subscriptions and find the subscription.
Click ⋮ to its right and select the action to change the price or the next payment date.
Enter the new value and click Save.