Offer free membership via Coupon without credit card required?
I'd like to offer people a free year of membership without them having to enter a credit card unless they choose to renew next year.
Is that possible? Right now, it requires a credit card, even when the coupon reduces the price for the year to $0
Update 18 Feb 2026
I've been going back and forth with Tech support trying to figure this out.
What I want to do: Give a free trial sub/membership without requiring a credit card.
Their suggestion (the only way) is to make a $0 version of the subscription product and set it to 1 installment. This will allow someone to buy it without using a credit card.
The biggest drawback is that it will show the membership expiration date in their customer dashboard as "Invalid date" as the date is set by the payment processor's API response, and there is none here. I can live with that. But...
I tested it with a one day membership product, and it keeps renewing (for free) I don't know how to stop that. I put in a support ticket and will edit this part if they solve it.
Update 2 Feb 20 2026: It's not possible to give people a free trial membership that expires without them entering a credit card.
I got confirmation of this from tech support yesterday.
Sadly, this is so critical to my business plan that I may have to switch to another cart.
I haven't seen this behavior, but maybe just for subs, which I haven't tried, TBH? with one time purchase, you can definitely use a 100% off without a CC.
Maybe I need to create a special product (duplicate) that doesn't renew to offer a free one year membership that doesn't require a credit card, but that seems like a shame.
Nicolai I was also thinking that would be a workaround for you. I'm honestly not sure if this situation is caused by the way subs work, which seems to be significantly different than one time purchase, or just an oversight that could be corrected by a feature request.
Yes, thanks Jeff I will open a ticket and see what they say. If not I may create a special product.
It is a shame because it will clutter up their customer dashboard and there will not be a smooth path to becoming a paid subscriber when it expires. That kind of friction can make a massive difference in conversion to paid.
I have a few thousand people who qualify for the free year, so I want to be very sure before I commit to any solution
I got a reply from Tech Support and they confirm that it is not possible to 'purchase' a membership for $0 without using a credit card.
I should mention that many conversion experts recommend accepting credit card information for free memberships to filter out non-serious users, and I agree with that approach. However, I want to offer this membership as a no-strings-attached reward for early supporters who put up with a lot, without making them feel like I'm trying to upsell them.
Fluentcart Support suggested the workaround below (which I think I may do)
I am afraid the use case is not possible as subscription payment will require payment info. However, you may try the following as a workaround.
-
Create a product with two variation Free Membership and Pro Membership
-
Free Membership is a subscription with a price of 0 and has a one-time installment (make sure to select this)
-
The upgrade path will allow the user to upgrade from the Free Membership to the Pro Membership.
My other thought was:
Make them signup with a credit cards, but encourage everyone to cancel right away.
I don't know if they will lose access as soon as they cancel or at the end of the term. If it's the former then this won't work.
The other thing I don't like about this idea is that it feels wrong to put the burden on them twice. Once when they sign up and then right after signing up.
Is 1 year the only term? Maybe just offer at as single priced non-subscription product? Your customers buy 12 months of access, they'll get reminded when it's about to run out and encouraged to then purchase another 12 months. That way would you could offer everyone a one-time use 100% off code for that product.
The more I think about it, with FCRM tags, I don't even need to have them "purchase" anything. I can bypass the whole issue.
I should be able to set up a clickable link that adds the membership tag to give them access, and sets off an automation that expires it in a year.
Then I can email the free 1 year access to everyone in an email campaign.
Thinking out loud again...I see a problem with my idea of a 'non-purchase' membership simply using tags.
Users will look for their membership status and expiration date in their account and will see "you don't have any current subscription"
There are so many ways to go about all this, there must be something that works.
By the way. I tried the Fluentcart support suggestion of creating a $0 sub with 1 installment but I get a "cart is empty" error when I try to check out.
I've added an update (see edit at the bottom of the post above)