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Subscription lifecycle management for SaaS products

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After a subscription is activated, its status may change due to terminations, upgrades, or downgrades. It is critical that your SaaS product remains synchronized with the STACKIT Marketplace to ensure correct service delivery and accurate billing.

Status synchronization

Section titled “Status synchronization”

To keep your system up to date, you must implement a mechanism to monitor the lifecycle of your active subscriptions.

Polling mechanism

Section titled “Polling mechanism”

You should implement a polling mechanism with an appropriate frequency to query the current status of all subscriptions via the Vendor API. This ensures that your system reflects the “Source of Truth” on the STACKIT side.

Email notifications

Section titled “Email notifications”

As an additional layer of information, you can be notified automatically via email when subscriptions are created or deleted.

  • Action Required: Contact the STACKIT Marketplace team to set up these notifications for your provider account.
  • Purpose: Use these notifications to trigger internal workflows or plan for manual setup steps.

Handling plan changes

Section titled “Handling plan changes”

Currently, plan changes (upgrades, downgrades, or sidegrades) follow a coordinated manual process involving STACKIT Support and you, the SaaS vendor.

Vendor responsibilities

Section titled “Vendor responsibilities”

During a plan change, you are responsible for managing the service transition to prevent data loss. You must address the following three areas:

  1. Data Persistence: Map the customer’s existing data and account settings to the new subscriptionId provided by the Marketplace. 2. Plan Activation: Update the service level in your SaaS application to reflect the new plan (e.g., increasing storage limits or enabling new features). 3. Billing Update: Update your internal records with the new ID to ensure that future STACKIT invoicing matches the current plan.

Subscription end and resource cleanup

Section titled “Subscription end and resource cleanup”

When a subscription ends, the status on the STACKIT Marketplace changes to reflect this state. Follow these guidelines to manage the end of a service:

  • Respect grace periods: Ensure your system follows defined grace periods before you delete customer data.
  • Remove resources: After a subscription has officially ended, you should remove or shut down the corresponding resources within your SaaS environment.

Need assistance?

Section titled “Need assistance?”

If you are unsure about the status of a specific subscription or need help with a manual plan change: