How Renewable, Evergreen, and Nonrenewable Products Work

At the highest level, the Subscription app supports three types of products:

• Renewable products.
• Evergreen products.
• Nonrenewable products.

All three product types can exist on an opportunity at the same time.

Renewable products

Renewal products are the items and services you sell for a pre-defined period. With these products, the Subscription is for a fixed term that often cannot be cancelled part-way through but can be renewed at the end of the term.

A 36-month service contract and a 12-month SaaS app agreement are both examples of renewable products. That’s because the product or service is renewable at the end of the contract, albeit potentially at a different price. On the other hand, the customer has no contractual obligation to renew.

Evergreen products

Evergreen products are the products and services you sell where the Subscription does not have an end date. That means the customer continues with the Subscription until they cancel or stop paying.

An example of an evergreen product is an open-ended SaaS app agreement without an explicit end date. Often, there’s an automated way of collecting customer payments on evergreen products.

Nonrenewable products

Nonrenewable products and services are not linked to a Subscription. However, these items are often purchased when starting a Subscription because they facilitate or supplement the core service you are selling.

For example, implementation services, training, or hardware are all examples of nonrenewable products.

Defining the product type

System administrators use the Default Renewal Type field on the Product object to set each product’s value as Renewable, Evergreen, or Nonrenewable.

There are step-by-step instructions for doing this in Setting Up Subscription Products.

Default Renewal Type values in the Product Manager

Remember that the Default Renewal Type field allows you to set only one value for each product. Nevertheless, when a user adds a product to an opportunity using the Product Manager, there’s an option to apply a different option to the default setting.

For example, the user can set a renewable product to evergreen or vice versa on a specific deal. Alternatively, if the customer is purchasing a service that is by default renewable after twelve months, but for whatever reason, the product is not needed in the following year, the user can set a value for Nonrenewable.

You can learn more about this, and some examples in How The Product Manager Works.