Release 3.17.2: A partial eclipse was visible

A small update that fixes some backend stuff, some improvements to handling upgrades from one plan to another, and a DNS email tracking dog.

Renewing recording renewals, upgrading upgrades, and we adopted a DNS watchdog to bark loudly if you delete your email tracking DNS records.

1 ADDED 2 CHANGED 5 FIXED 1 IMPROVED

Highlights

🔁 Renewals record correctly again

Stripe is changing the format of the data it sends, one account at a time. On sites already moved over, renewals were logged as first payments, so thank-you emails, member timelines, and renewal stats missed them. Charges were always correct, and Outpost now reads both formats.

📅 No credits back on switching plans

Changes of plans/tiers that are actually downgrades now start at the end of the existing billing period, so members keep the plan they paid for until it runs out. And switching plans never turns unused time into account credit. Any change that would mean a refund or credit from a publisher to a subscriber now instead gets scheduled to change at the existing renewal date.

🩺 A watchdog for email tracking

Turns out that if a site's custom DNS setting for tracking links stops working (e.g. you switch DNS services but only move over some of the custom DNS records), then links in the site's emails stop working, while sending still reports success because emails are getting delivered. To catch this rare case, Outpost now watches for email opens dropping to zero and alerts our team so this can get fixed fast. You'll probably never need this, but like having a tool to break a car window in case you drive into a lake, it's peace of mind.

ADDED 1 item

🩺 Automatic alert when a site's email opens drop to zero, the sign of a broken tracking domain

CHANGED 2 items

📅 Downgrades now switch at the end of the billing period instead of immediately

💳 Plan changes no longer hand back unused time as account credit

FIXED 5 items

🔁 Fixed member renewals being logged as first payments on sites using Stripe's newest data format

🔄 Fixed member plan and renewal dates drifting out of sync with Stripe

📊 Fixed an odd issue where there was a possibility that an email's open and click stats that we read from Mailgun could credited to the wrong site if a reader subscribes to several Outpost sites

✉️ Fixed our custom sending domain setup tool making sure it doesn't report success before the process had finished

🪃 Fixed a issue where a reader's pending cancellation wasn't uncancelled when the member paid to switch plans

IMPROVED 1 item

🛒 Members with subscriptions created outside Outpost who are changing plans (such as upgrading tiers with a discount) can now finish checkout all in one go via an outside link to cancel their old plan

Outpost Moved its Servers to the E.U.

Release 3.17.2: A partial eclipse was visible

Highlights