Time-Limited Passes
Sell access to a scheduled window — customers buy in advance, access opens and closes on time, automatically.
An ordinary subscription starts the moment someone pays. A time-limited pass doesn't — it grants access during a window you schedule. Someone can buy your Sunday pass on Wednesday, be admitted Sunday morning, and be removed Sunday night, without you touching anything on the day.
One purchase buys one window. To attend another window, the customer buys another pass.
Available on every plan — bundled on Growth, an addon elsewhere
Time-Limited Passes is included in Growth. On Free and Starter you can unlock it with the Passes Addon, billed on your plan's cycle — $19 USD per month, or $190 USD per year on an annual Starter plan. Free is monthly-only, so the addon is always the monthly price there. See Addons for what happens when you add, remove or change it.
Ordinary recurring plans are available on every tier, including the free one.
When to use one
Passes fit anything sold by the occasion rather than by the month:
- A sports handicapper selling per-slate access — Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday
- A trader running a London-session or market-open room
- An educator selling a seat in a scheduled class or cohort
- An analyst opening a channel on the day a report drops
If your product is an ongoing membership, use an ordinary subscription plan instead.
Creating one
Turn the toggle on
Open Create New Subscription Plan, fill in the name, description and linked resources as usual, then switch on Mark Subscription Plan as a Time-Limited Pass.
The pricing, trial and recurring sections are replaced by Pass Schedule — a pass is a one-off purchase, so there is nothing to renew and no trial to run.
Pick the timezone
Times you enter are wall-clock times in this timezone. A 9:00 AM window stays 9:00 AM after a daylight-saving change rather than drifting by an hour.
It is prefilled from your account timezone, which Subscriby detects from your browser the first time you sign in. If the plan's timezone and your browser disagree, a warning appears under the field showing what your window times would actually mean — the one check that catches a zone you simply mis-picked.
A pass cannot go on sale until your timezone is confirmed
A pass is nothing but scheduled times, so a zone nobody ever confirmed puts windows on sale at an hour you never chose — and every screen afterwards renders that same zone, so nothing else in the product would ever disagree with it.
Until you confirm it, Activate Subscription Plan is replaced by Activate — Confirm Your Timezone First. Confirming takes one click in Localization settings: choosing a zone there — even the one already shown — counts. New pass plans are also created switched off for the same reason, so you see the generated dates before anything can sell.
Set the price and how often it repeats
Currency and Charge work exactly as they do on an ordinary plan — a pass can be priced in any currency an active payment method supports, and the price shown beside Add Window is what each window sells for, not the whole series.
Use individual dates instead of a pattern decides how the schedule is built:
- Off (the default) — windows are generated from a pattern. Best for a regular slate. Repeats then sets the pattern: Daily, Weekly or Monthly.
- On — no pattern at all. Repeats disappears, and you place each date by hand from Manage Access Windows after saving. Best for one-off events: a single match, a one-time workshop.
A hand-placed date is never removed when you later edit a repeating schedule, so you can also add one to a repeating plan for the occasional extra session that doesn't fit the pattern.
Stop selling closes sales a chosen number of minutes before each window — and the dropdown beside it chooses which end those minutes count back from. That second control does more than it looks: it decides whether a window can be bought at all once it has started.
| Anchor | What it means |
|---|---|
| before a window starts (default) | Sales close that many minutes before the window opens, and nothing is sold once it is running. Leave the number at 0 to sell right up to the start. |
| before a window ends | The window keeps selling while it runs. Someone can join a session already in progress and be let in straight away — their access still ends when that window closes. Minimum 5 minutes, and the window itself must be longer than 5 minutes. |
Existing plans are on before a window starts, so nothing you already sell changes.
Selling during a window: what the buyer gets
A mid-window buyer pays the full price for whatever is left. Someone buying at 2 PM on a 12:00–23:00 window pays the same as someone who bought on Wednesday, and is removed at 23:00 with everyone else. That is deliberate — see one price, every window — and the cutoff is the control that stops the last-minute case feeling unfair.
Also see When a payment lands late.
Add your access windows
Each row is one window with its own length, so a single plan can mix them:
| Day | Starts | Lasts | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday | 19:00 | 3 | Hours |
| Saturday | 12:00 | 10 | Hours |
| Sunday | 09:00 | 14 | Hours |
Choose Repeats first — weekly asks for a day, monthly asks for a day of the month, and daily just asks for times.
Monthly days 29, 30 and 31 skip months that don't have them. They are never rolled back to the 28th — a window on the 31st runs in January, March, May, July, August, October and December only, so 7 times a year rather than 12. The 30th skips February; the 29th skips February in non-leap years.
There is no "last day of the month" option, and adding slots for 28, 30 and 31 does not make one — it generates three separate windows in any month that has all three days. For a window in every month, pick a day of 28 or lower.
Save and check the dates
Subscriby generates the actual dates from your schedule. Open Manage Access Windows from the plan's row menu to see what it produced, how many customers hold each window, and to cancel one if plans change.
Each date is listed with its time range in the plan's timezone, a status badge — Scheduled before it starts, Open while it runs, Closed once it's finished, Canceled if you cancelled it — and an N sold count. Both are read live, so a purchase or a window opening shows on your next look at the panel. Yesterday's windows stay listed so a session that has just finished is still visible.
Creating one from the Telegram bot
The plan wizard on the Subscriby bot builds pass schedules too, so a slate can go on sale from your phone.
Start Add Plan on your project as usual. After the price, the bot asks how customers should get access — choose Time-Limited Pass and it takes over from there:
- Timezone — your account timezone is offered as a button, alongside a short list of
common zones. Anything else you type is accepted, so
Europe/MadridandGMTboth work. Older names are resolved to their modern equivalent rather than rejected, soAsia/Calcuttais stored asAsia/KolkataandUS/EasternasAmerica/New_York. - Repeats — Daily, Weekly or Monthly, the same three patterns as the dashboard.
- Access windows — send one per message as day, start time and length:
Sunday 19:00 3hon a weekly plan,15 19:00 3hon a monthly one, or19:00 3hwhen it repeats daily. Day names work in English or in your bot's language, times take19:00or7pm, and lengths takem,hord. Tap Done when the slate is complete, or Remove Last to drop the window you just added. - Stop selling — send a number of minutes, or tap Skip to sell right up to each window opening. Any number above zero then asks whether it counts back from when a window starts or when it ends, the same choice as the dashboard.
Choosing a pass skips the billing cycle, trial and renewal questions — a pass has no cycle to bill and nothing to renew — and goes straight to linked resources. The plan is created inactive, exactly as the dashboard leaves it, and the bot reports how many windows went on sale.
The bot only builds repeating schedules. Use individual dates instead of a pattern needs an explicit date and time for every window, which no chat flow handles well, so place those from Manage Access Windows in the dashboard or through the REST API.
Adding a date by hand
Manage Access Windows has an Add a Window form at the bottom: pick a Date and a Starts time, set how long it Lasts, and add it.
This is how a fixed-dates plan gets every one of its windows. On a repeating plan it's for the exception — a rescheduled match, a bonus session — because a hand-placed window is never removed when you edit the schedule. Only generated windows are rebuilt.
Times are wall-clock in the plan's timezone, exactly like the slot times above, so 14:00 means 14:00 where your audience is rather than wherever you happen to be.
Four things are refused, with the reason shown:
- a start time in the past
- a window shorter or longer than the configured limits
- a start time this plan already has a window for
- on a plan set to before a window ends, a window no longer than its own cutoff — it would close its sales before it ever opened
That last one matters most on a fixed-date plan. Those have no repeating slots, so there is no schedule for the checks above to measure and this is the only place the length is checked against the cutoff.
To remove a hand-placed date, cancel it like any other window — holders get moved to the next one or told to ask you for a refund, which is why there's no plain delete.
Cancelling one customer's pass
Open Subscriptions, find the purchase and choose Cancel Subscription. Cancelling a pass does two things: the customer is not admitted when the window opens, and that date goes back on sale for them, so they can rebook it or pick a different one.
That second part is what makes cancelling the right tool for clearing up test purchases. A date stays reserved for whoever holds it, so a live pass keeps its window off their list — but a cancelled one releases it.
Cancelling does not remove anyone already inside the channel. If the window is running and you want them out now, cancel the pass and then remove them from the channel in Telegram.
What your customer sees
- They pick a date at checkout — the next one is preselected, and dates they already hold are hidden. On a plan that sells through its windows, one already running is marked On now and leads the list, because it is the one they get into immediately.
- After paying, the bot names the window they bought — plan, start, end and how long until it opens — and their invite links follow in the next message. The portal's confirmation screen states the same window, so the date is visible without leaving the browser.
- Tapping the link puts them in a queue. The bot confirms this straight away and states when access opens, when it ends, and how long they'll have.
- When the window opens they are admitted automatically, whether or not they are at their phone.
- When it closes the pass ends and they are removed — unless another pass of theirs, or an ordinary subscription, still grants that same channel. Removal is decided per channel, so a customer who holds a Sunday pass and a monthly membership keeps their seat when Sunday's window closes.
The queue is what makes a pass feel automatic. A customer acts once, days early, and is let in at the right moment without being present.
If a purchase produces no access
Provisioning can fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the payment — most often the bot no longer being an administrator with the Invite Users via Link right on the channel.
When a paid purchase produces no invite links at all, both sides are told: the customer gets a message saying their payment is safe and offering 🔄 Refresh Invite Links, and you get one naming the customer, the plan, and the likely cause. Fix the bot's permissions and the customer's refresh will then work — you do not need to re-issue anything yourself.
A plan whose resources are all manual is not a failure and stays silent: there are no links to issue, and the customer's confirmation screen says you will arrange access directly.
When a payment lands late
Buying and paying are not the same instant. A customer taps Pay at 10:59 for an 11:00 window, and the payment provider confirms it at 11:00, 11:01, or — on a card that needs 3-D Secure, or a crypto payment waiting on confirmations — considerably later. Subscriby only learns the payment succeeded when the provider's webhook arrives.
Three things can happen, and all three are handled without you intervening.
The window has not started yet
The normal case. The pass is bound to the window they chose and they are admitted when it opens, exactly as if they had paid a week earlier.
The window has already opened
They are bound to that window and admitted within about a minute, keeping whatever is left of it. Someone confirmed at 11:01 on an 11:00–14:00 window gets 2 hours 59 minutes.
This is worth understanding because the admission does not come from the window opening — that already happened. A separate catch-up runs every minute and admits anyone whose payment landed after their window opened, so late arrivals are never stranded waiting for an event that has passed.
If they tap their invite link before that catch-up runs, they are let straight in. Either route counts as attending; neither is recorded as a missed window.
The same machinery is what makes selling during a window work: on before a window ends this is not a late payment being rescued, it is the normal path. Set that anchor and the catch-up becomes the front door.
Why the end anchor has a 5-minute floor
The catch-up is scheduled once a minute, but that is not a promise: it will not start while the previous run is still going, so a slow pass can push the next one several minutes out.
Sell into the final seconds and a customer can pay, receive a working invite link, and have the window close before anything reaches them. Five minutes is the floor for that reason. If such a purchase does slip through, Subscriby records it as Access Ended rather than Never Joined — it will not tell you a paying customer no-showed when the timing was ours, because that is exactly the case where you may owe a refund.
The window has already ended
They are not bound to a window that can no longer deliver anything. Subscriby moves them to the next available window on the same plan and their pass runs then instead, and messages them to say so — naming the window they missed, the one they now hold, and telling them to contact you if that date does not suit.
If the plan has no further window — a one-off, or a series that has finished — the purchase is left unbound and logged for you to resolve. The customer is told plainly that they were given no access and should contact you for a refund. Check Manage Access Windows after any schedule ends and refund through your payment provider.
Why moving them is safe: one price, every window
Every window on a plan sells for the same price, which is what makes this automatic move fair rather than presumptuous. Subscriby treats the windows on one plan as interchangeable — same price, so the same content and experience is assumed throughout.
If your windows are not interchangeable — Sunday's slate is worth more than Thursday's, a weekend intensive is not the same product as a weeknight Q&A — do not model them as one plan with several slots. Create a separate pass plan for each, priced and named on its own. Then nobody is ever moved between two things you consider different.
Rule of thumb: put windows on the same plan when a buyer would be happy to attend any of them for the price. Split them into separate plans when they wouldn't.
This is the case worth designing away, because the customer has paid and received nothing on the date they wanted. A sales cutoff closes the gap.
Use the sales cutoff to control this
Stop selling closes sales a set number of minutes before each window, at whichever end the anchor names. It exists precisely for this race.
On before a window starts — nothing is sold once a window is running:
| Cutoff | Effect |
|---|---|
0 (default) | Sells right up to the start time. Maximum revenue, maximum chance of a late confirmation. |
15 | A comfortable margin for card payments, including 3-D Secure challenges. |
60+ | Sensible if you accept crypto, or want time to prepare before anyone is let in. |
On before a window ends — the window stays on sale while it runs:
| Cutoff | Effect |
|---|---|
5 | The minimum. Sells almost to the end; leaves just enough time for a card payment to confirm and admission to run. |
30 | A comfortable margin, and the same advice as the start anchor. |
60+ | Sensible on crypto, or when the last hour is not worth selling. |
The cutoff hides the window from checkout — it does not affect anyone who already bought it.
A plan with mixed window lengths needs a cutoff shorter than its shortest window
Slot lengths are per-slot on purpose, so one plan can run a three-hour Thursday beside a fourteen-hour Sunday. A single before a window ends cutoff lands differently on each.
At 240 minutes, that three-hour Thursday would stop selling an hour before it even opened, while the Sunday still sold for ten hours. Subscriby refuses that and names the window holding the ceiling down, because nothing about the schedule would look wrong — the number is plausible, the dates are right, and the window would quietly never sell.
A window of 5 minutes or less cannot use this anchor at all
The shortest window Subscriby allows is 5 minutes, and the closing margin is also 5 — so on such a window no number works: anything below the margin is refused for being too close to the end, and anything at or above it swallows the window whole.
Subscriby therefore refuses the anchor rather than the number, so you are not left retyping values that each fail for a different reason. Use before a window starts, or make the window longer than 5 minutes.
Changing a schedule
Editing slots rebuilds future dates — except any window a customer has already bought. Those keep their original times and are never moved or deleted, because someone paid for that occurrence.
So after a change a plan can legitimately show an old Saturday 12:00 that 47 people bought alongside a new Saturday 13:00 for future buyers. The windows panel marks the sold ones.
Cancelling a window
A postponed game is the one case where a sold window disappears, and it is never automatic. Cancel it from the windows panel and every holder is either moved to the next available window or, if there is none, has their pass ended and is told to ask you for a refund. Everyone affected is messaged either way.
A plan cannot be deleted while customers hold windows that have not run yet. Disable it instead — that stops new sales while the purchased windows still go ahead.
Questions
Related
- Subscription Plans — ordinary recurring plans
- Managing Subscriptions — what a held pass looks like
pass.*webhook events — automate around windows opening and closing
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