Entitlements
Trials, Pauses and Cancellations: Model Access as a Lifecycle
By the Orvlin team · · 2 min read
Subscription access lifecycle: what to decide
A customer cancelling today may retain paid access until the period ends. A paused subscription may allow exports but no new processing. A trial may include premium features with a smaller usage grant. Those are distinct promises.
Use explicit states and transitions, then map each state to permissions and charging behavior. Keep cancellation intent separate from the effective end of service. Payment collection state may also differ from commercial access during a grace period.
An illustrative case
An account gives notice on October 10 with service ending October 31. A state called cancelling can preserve access until the end date. Marking it inactive immediately would deny a service period the customer may already have paid for.
The important caveat
Trial abuse controls should not be hidden inside the paid entitlement definition. Identity checks and commercial rights answer different questions, and merging them makes legitimate support cases harder to investigate.
Review these decisions
- Create a state transition table.
- Define billing and access effects for each transition.
- Test reactivation before and after expiry.
- Record the reason and effective time of cancellation.
Frequently asked questions
- Does a failed payment always mean immediate loss of access?
- No. Many offers include retry or grace policies. The product should follow a defined policy rather than treating every payment failure as a permanent cancellation.