Gift Subscriptions

Important:

How Gift Subscriptions Work

Gift Subscriptions allow one customer (the gifter) to buy a subscription for another person (the recipient).

Here is how it works for the gifter:

  1. Choose an offer and buy it as a gift: The gifter can choose a friend, family member, or anyone they'd like to surprise with your premium content.

    Note: If you use Hosted Customer Flows, you can enable Guest Checkout. The gifter doesn't need an account to complete the purchase.
  2. Choose the gift length: The gifter selects how many billing periods to give, from the options you allow. The price is the offer price multiplied by the number of billing periods. For example, 3 periods of a monthly offer cost three times the monthly price.
  3. Choose the delivery date and time: The gifter picks the date and hour when the recipient receives the gift by email.
  4. Add a personal message: The gifter can include a message for the recipient.

After the purchase, the gifter receives an invoice and, once the gift is delivered, a confirmation with the gift code. For the full list, see What Emails Are Sent to My Customers?

Benefits of Gift Subscriptions

  • Audience growth: Subscribers introduce your service to new people.
  • Revenue: Gifting adds a revenue stream. You can promote gifts during holidays, Black Friday, or other events.
  • Lower checkout friction: Gifters can buy without creating an account.
  • Customer loyalty: Gifting builds community among your customers.
  • Data insights: Gift analytics show how customers use gifts, so you can refine your offers and marketing.

Set Up Gift Subscriptions

To sell an offer as a gift, complete two steps.

Step 1: Enable Selling an Offer as a Gift

  1. In your Cleeng dashboard, go to Offers & Coupons > Offers and create or edit an offer.

    Important: Before you continue, check your offer tags. Cleeng compares tags to decide what happens when a recipient redeems a gift:

    • Same tags, or no tags: Cleeng treats the offers as the same. The gift adds time to the recipient's current subscription.
    • Different tags: Cleeng treats the offers as different. The recipient sees the options you turn on in Gift Checkout. For more information, see Step 2: Configure the Gift Checkout below.

    For example, if your Basic and Premium offers have no tags, a Basic subscriber who receives a Premium gift gets more time on Basic, not Premium, because Cleeng recognizes them as the same offer.

  2. In Pricing, click advanced options.
    • Optional: In Offer weight, enter a number that ranks this offer against your other offers. A higher number means a higher-value offer. For example, set Basic to 1 and Premium to 2. Cleeng uses the weight only for gift redemption: if you turn off Allow switching to a lower plan in Gift Checkout, recipients cannot switch to a gifted offer with a lower weight than their current offer.
    • In Purchasable as a gift, select Yes.
    • In Allowed billing periods, select the gift lengths gifters can choose, from 1 to 12 billing periods. For example, for a monthly offer, select 1, 3, 6, and 12 to let gifters give 1, 3, 6, or 12 months. Use Select all or Clear to change all values at once.
  3. Click Save & continue and complete the offer setup.

Note: Coupons can be disabled for gift purchases on request. To request it, contact your account manager.

Step 2: Configure the Gift Checkout

  1. In your Cleeng dashboard, go to Offers & Coupons > Gift Checkout.
  2. In Checkout URL, enter the page where recipients redeem their gift. On the delivery date, the recipient receives an email with this URL and a gift code. The URL takes them to the gift redemption screen, where they enter the code.

  3. In Gift redemption behavior, turn on the options you want recipients to see when they have an active offer that does not match the gifted one:

    Setting What it does
    Create new subscription Lets recipients create a new subscription, even if they already have one. This may result in multiple active subscriptions.
    Extend current subscription Lets recipients extend their current subscription using the gift's calculated value. The redemption flow shows an Extend option.
    Switch to gifted plan Lets recipients switch to the gifted offer during redemption. Their new offer doesn't automatically revert when the gift period ends.
    Allow switching to a lower plan Lets recipients switch to a gifted offer with a lower offer weight. When disabled, they can still extend their current subscription.
  4. Click Save.

To see what recipients experience with each setting, see How Gift Redemption Works.

Integration Options

You can use Gift Subscriptions with:

Gift Analytics

You can track gift performance in:

The Gift Report shows whether the gifter was a guest or a logged-in customer. A gift of several billing periods appears as one gift, with the number of periods, total duration, and total value.

FAQ

Do gift codes expire?
No. Recipients can redeem a gift code at any time.

Does the gifter need an account to buy a gift?
No. Gifters can check out as guests if you use Hosted Customer Flows. If they are logged in, the purchase is linked to their account. See Guest Checkout.

Does the gifter pay again after the gift ends?
No. A gift is a one-time payment and does not renew.

Can a customer buy an offer as a gift when they have the same offer themselves?
Yes. For example, if customer A subscribes to Monthly Tennis, they can buy Monthly Tennis as a gift for customer B. At checkout, only Purchase as a gift is available. Purchase for myself is inactive.

Can the recipient redeem the gift on an account with a different email address?
Yes. The gift code is not tied to an email address. The recipient can redeem it on any account.

Can a customer get a refund for a gift they bought or received?
No. Refunds for gifts are blocked by default. If a customer requests a refund for a gift, they see an error message.

Can I make an existing offer giftable?
Yes. You can edit any monthly, 3-month, 6-month, or annual subscription offer to make it giftable and set its allowed billing periods.

Can a gifter send a gift on the day they buy it?
Yes. The recipient usually receives the gift email within 5 minutes of the delivery time set by the gifter.

What time does the recipient get the gift if the gifter and the recipient are in the same time zone?
The recipient usually gets the gift within 5 minutes of the delivery time set by the gifter

What time does the recipient get the gift if the gifter and the recipient are in different time zones?
Delivery follows the gifter's time zone. For example, the gifter is in GMT+1 and sets delivery for March 7, 2027 at 00:00 (GMT+1). The recipient is in GMT+7, so they receive the gift on March 7, 2027 between 06:00 and 06:05 their local time.

Is the recipient charged automatically after the gift ends?
Only if they have a payment method on file. Gifted subscriptions renew at the offer's standard price. Recipients without a payment method get a reminder email before the gift ends and can add one in My Account.

Can the gifter change the recipient's email, delivery date, or message after buying?
Yes, if they bought the gift while logged in. Before the gift is delivered, they can use Edit gift delivery details in My Account > Your payments > Gift history.

Can Passes be purchased as gifts?
No. Only subscription offers with monthly, 3-month, 6-month, or annual billing periods can be gifted.

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