🎫 Configuration

Membership Tiers & Billing Cycles

Last updated: March 14, 2026 3 min read

Traffic Exchange Script membership upgrade page with pricing tiers

Traffic Exchange Script supports multiple membership levels with flexible pricing and feature access. This article explains how to create and manage tiers as the site operator.

How Membership Levels Work

Each member belongs to one membership level at a time. The level determines:

How many credits they earn per site viewed (surf ratio)
Daily and session limits for auto surf
How many ads they can run simultaneously
Access to premium features
Their upgrade/downgrade path

Creating a Membership Level

Navigate to Members → Membership Levels → Create New Level.

Basic Settings

Field	Description
Name	Display name (e.g. “Free”, “Silver”, “Gold”)
Price (Monthly)	Monthly subscription cost in USD. Set to 0 for free.
Price (Annual)	Annual subscription cost. Often discounted vs. monthly.
Billing Cycles	Which billing options are available: monthly, quarterly, annual
Sort Order	Display order on the upgrade page
Is Default	Whether new registrations are placed on this tier automatically

Credit and Surf Settings

Field	Description
Manual surf ratio	Credits earned per N sites viewed (e.g. 1:2 = 1 credit per 2 views)
Auto surf ratio	Credits earned per N auto surf views
Popup surf ratio	Credits earned per N popup views
Auto surf session limit	Maximum sites surfed per session
Auto surf daily limit	Maximum sites surfed per day

Ad Allowances

Field	Description
Max active banner ads	How many banner campaigns can run simultaneously
Max active text ads	Simultaneous text ad campaigns
Max active PTC ads	Simultaneous PTC campaigns
Max active sites	How many surf URLs can be submitted (default system max: 25)

Billing Cycles

Supported billing cycles: – Monthly — charged every month – Quarterly — charged every 3 months – Annual — charged every 12 months

Members choose their preferred billing cycle at checkout. You can enable or disable specific cycles per membership level.

Grace Period

After a subscription payment fails, the member enters a grace period before being downgraded. During this time, they retain their current membership benefits.

Configure the grace period duration and number of retry attempts in Settings → Billing:

Grace period — how many days to wait before downgrading (default: 3 days)
Max retry attempts — how many times to retry a failed payment before downgrading (default: 3, via TE_SUBSCRIPTION_MAX_RETRIES in .env)

Dunning

The dunning system automatically retries failed subscription payments. Each retry is spaced out over the grace period. If all retries fail, the member is automatically downgraded to the free tier.

The te:process-dunning command runs hourly via the scheduler to handle this. See Scheduled Tasks Reference.

Downgrade Behavior

When a paid subscription expires or fails:

Member enters the grace period (retains paid benefits)
Payment retries occur (up to TE_SUBSCRIPTION_MAX_RETRIES attempts)
If no successful payment: member is downgraded to the default free tier
Active ads may be paused if they exceed the free tier’s allowances

The te:apply-scheduled-downgrades command runs hourly and handles all downgrade transitions.

Auto-Downgrade Scheduling

Downgrades happen automatically — you do not need to intervene. However, you can manually change a member’s level at any time:

Go to Members → Find the member → Edit
Change their membership level
Optionally set an expiry date for their subscription

Viewing Subscription Revenue

Go to Analytics → Revenue to see:

Active subscribers by tier
Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
Churn rate
Renewal success rate

Tips for Structuring Your Tiers

Free tier: Keep credit ratios lower than paid. This creates upgrade motivation. A 1:3 ratio (1 credit per 3 views) vs 1:1 for paid tiers is a common approach.
Mid tier: Offer meaningfully better ratios (e.g. 1:1 or even 2:1) and higher ad allowances.
Top tier: Premium ad types, higher limits, and best ratios. Price it so it’s clearly worth it for active members.
Annual discount: Offer 2–3 months free on annual plans to improve retention.

Traffic Exchange Script membership levels and billing cycle configuration in admin — The Membership Levels panel — create and manage free, silver, gold, and premium tiers with custom surf ratios, credits, and billing cycles.

Screenshots

Traffic Exchange Script revenue dashboard — total earnings, withdrawals and financial overview — The Revenue Dashboard gives you a real-time view of membership upgrades, billing cycles, and recurring income.

Traffic Exchange Script commission rates management — configure referral commission percentages per membership level — Use Commission Rates Management to configure what each membership tier earns in referral commissions.