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Need billing system!
I take payments each year using worldpay.com to process credit cards. What I'd like to do is automatically email users each year so they can make another payment (perhaps a couple of times, once shortly before renewals then a final reminder).

I suppose this could run as a separate script to gmail (ie not even a plugin), but it would be nice to have integration. But for that I think I'd need to have extra fields available from admin, such as first payment dates (which may differ from sign up dates, for example if I've had to credit their account with extra time). The plugin would use this data to send out the email reminders.

These reminders would link to a page on gmail with a summary of the next payment. Within this page would be hidden fields that are passed to worldpay when the form is submitted. These include price, what they're buying etc.

If users don't renew admin is notified. The system could be taken further in that worldpay have a "callback" feature, where they can talk to a script listening on your server and send back details of purchases as they happen.

Has anything like this already been created? If not I'd like to talk about how much a system might cost.

Jason
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Re: [wickedmoon] Need billing system! In reply to
Is this for Gossamer Mail or for Gossamer AutoRespond.. I've moved it to Gossamer Mail as I think that's what you are talking about.

Cheers,

Alex
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Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: [wickedmoon] Need billing system! In reply to
I am currently working on an integration of GMail with worldpay. It's pretty much tailored to my site at the moment, but it might be possible to make a plugin out of it.

What I do is roughly the following:

1. when a user subscribes, they are taken to worldpay to pay, and then the worldpay callback is used to updated the user status to 'Validated' if they paid (otherwise it's 'not validated')'. The user can immediately log in if the payment was successfull.

2. I have a script running automatically every day (cron job) that does some bookkeeping jobs, like deleting username that have been reserved, buth where users have not paid. The script sends out reminders to users that will have to pay again soon (one month in advance, one week in advance), and there is a special page where users can go to prolong their subscription.

If you are interested, contact me. I am still experimenting with this (the site is not yet live), and I am changing things frequently.

Ivan
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Iyengar Yoga Resources / GT Plugins
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Re: [yogi] Need billing system! In reply to
Hi Ivan,

I'm thinking of implementing something similar to what you're describing in your post, so your script sounds good to me.

I'd still want to have "free" or "basic" accounts for users too though - and just offer paid upgrades. For example, you could sign up for free and then pay to upgrade to bigger mailbox, or upgrade to get pop access etc.

I'm not sure how simple it would be to build in and allow other "upgradable features" to your payment system?

Regan.
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Re: [ryel01] Need billing system! In reply to
My implementation will be for a paid webmail service, so it won't include the upgrade option. But I will try to see if it the upgrade option could be integrated.

Ivan
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Iyengar Yoga Resources / GT Plugins
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Re: [yogi] Need billing system! In reply to
That sounds perfect. If it didn't already exist I was going to work with my programmer to develop something similar and maybe release it as a plugin too. I'm very interested to hear more and hopefully start using it as soon as possible! If you need another server to test it on you can use mine. It's a dedicated redhat 7.3 server.

Jason
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Re: [wickedmoon] Need billing system! In reply to
Thanks for the interest.

As I said, it will still be a while before anything is ready, but I will keep you informed.

Ivan
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Iyengar Yoga Resources / GT Plugins
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Re: [wickedmoon] Need billing system! In reply to
I think that this be a good idea to make a additional plugin so we can use 2checkout, clickbank and paysystems...