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Self-serve, or product-led growth, is the motion where customers discover, try and buy without talking to sales: a published price list, a card checkout, in-app upgrades and automated renewals. This quick start maps that motion onto Alguna — plans, hosted or embedded checkout, the customer portal, trial credits and collections — with the dashboard step and the API endpoint for each. The same objects serve your sales-led deals, so a self-serve customer can be moved to a quote later without migrating anything; see How Alguna works and Hybrid motion.

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Self-Serve Billing Flow

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Key Characteristics

1

Create simple, clear plans

In the dashboard, Plans → Create Plan; via the API, Create a plan.
  • Free: $0, limited features (optional)
  • Starter: $X/month, core features
  • Pro: $Y/month or per-seat, full features
Keep plans simple — three or four options. See Plans and Pricing models.
2

Put checkout on your pricing page

Create a checkout session per plan with POST /checkout-sessions, passing the plan_id, a success_url and your own client_reference_id, then redirect to the returned url — or mount it in-page with Embedded Checkout. Payment methods and branding come from your organization settings; see Hosted Checkout.
3

Enable in-app upgrades

Open the Customer Portal from a “Manage billing” button with POST /customer-portal-sessions. With plan_overview_settings.allow_self_serve_change on, customers can:
  • View current plan and usage
  • Upgrade or downgrade plans
  • Update payment methods
4

Set up automated billing and collections

Plans define the billing cadence; invoices are issued and charged to the stored payment method on schedule. Configure retries and reminders for failed payments in Collections and Dunning.
5

Trigger upgrade prompts from billing events

Subscribe to webhooks — account.credits.balance_depleted for trial or usage limits, subscription.canceled for win-back — and read entitlements to gate features. The full trial-to-paid flow is in Launch self-serve.

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Free Trial vs. Freemium

In Alguna a trial is usually a subscription on a free plan plus a credit grant; when the grant is spent, the account.credits.balance_depleted webhook is your upgrade prompt.

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Conversion Optimization

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Reduce Checkout Friction

  • Accept all major credit cards
  • Offer both monthly and annual options
  • Show pricing in customer’s currency
  • Minimize form fields
  • Display trust badges and security info

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Upgrade Triggers

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Metrics to Track

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Key Features to Configure

Hosted Checkout

Set up self-service checkout pages.

Customer Portal

Let customers manage their own subscriptions.

Automations

Trigger emails and actions based on customer behavior.

Dunning

Recover failed payments automatically.

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API Reference

Customer Portal API

Generate portal links for customers.

Subscriptions API

Create subscriptions programmatically.

Checkout Sessions API

Mint a checkout for a plan or one-off purchase.

Plans API

Retrieve plans for your pricing page.

Webhooks

Track checkout, subscription and payment events.

Developer quick start

Auth, SDK, events and sandbox.

B2B SaaS

Per-seat and tiered pricing models.

AI & Infrastructure

Usage-based and credit systems.

Hybrid Motion

Add sales-assist for larger deals.

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