# Tier Groups Tier Groups let you group related products into a ranked ladder — for example, Bronze / Silver / Gold, or VIP / Elite / Premium — so customers who already own a lower tier only pay the difference when they upgrade. It works for both subscriptions and one-time purchases, across all game types including Minecraft, and is available on every plan, Free and up. Create a tier group, assign your products to it, and the upgrade and downgrade logic handles itself. No separate upgrade products, no manual math. *** ### How It Works When a customer already owns a product from a tier group and tries to buy a higher-tier product from the same group, PayNow treats it as an upgrade rather than a brand-new purchase. The customer is only charged the difference between what they already own and the tier they're moving to. The same logic applies in reverse for downgrades — the customer's existing access stays in place and the move to the lower tier is handled cleanly. *** ### Subscriptions For subscription products in a tier group: * **Upgrades are applied immediately.** The customer is charged the prorated difference for the remainder of the current billing period and gets the new tier right away. * **Downgrades are scheduled for the next renewal.** The customer keeps their current tier until the renewal date, then drops to the lower tier. * **Pending tier changes are visible to the customer** on the storefront, so they can see when a scheduled downgrade will take effect. ### One-Time Purchases For one-time products in a tier group: * **Pricing is cumulative.** If a customer has already purchased Bronze and wants Gold, they only pay the difference between the two prices. * **No separate upgrade products needed.** You don't have to create Bronze-to-Gold, Silver-to-Gold, etc. as their own products — the tier group handles the math based on what the customer already owns. *** ### Tier Order The order of tiers inside a group comes from the order your products appear on the **Products** page. The first product listed is the lowest tier; the last is the highest. To change the tier ladder, reorder the products on the Products page — the tier group uses that same order. {% hint style="info" %} Because tier order follows the Products page, price is not what determines rank. If you want VIP → Elite → Premium as the ladder, make sure that's the order they appear in on the Products page, regardless of how they're priced. {% endhint %} *** ### Creating A Tier Group Tier Groups are managed from [**Content → Tier Groups**](https://dashboard.paynow.gg/tier-groups): 1. Click **Create** in the top right of the Tier Groups page. 2. Enter a **Name** for the group. This is for your reference and can be anything recognizable (e.g. "Ranks"). 3. Click **Create**. The new tier group will appear in the list. It starts empty — products are assigned from each product's edit page, not from the tier group itself. ### Assigning Products To A Tier Group Open the product you want to add to the group, then in the right sidebar look for the **Tier Group** section ("Used for cumulative pricing and subscription upgrades/downgrades"). Select the tier group from the dropdown and save the product. Repeat for every product that should belong to the tier ladder. Products can belong to one tier group at a time. *** ### Email Verification Stores where customers sign in with just a username or IGN (no Steam login) require email verification before a tier change goes through. This stops someone who only knows a player's name from interfering with their subscription or upgrades. Stores using Steam login skip this step — the identity is already verified through Steam. You don't need to configure this; PayNow applies it automatically based on how customers authenticate on your store. *** ### Storefront Support If you're running a **custom storefront** or headless integration, you'll need to implement the upgrade and downgrade flows yourself using the Storefront API. See the [Tier Groups API reference](https://docs.paynow.gg/storefront-headless/storefront-api/tier-groups) for the endpoints and expected behavior. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://guides.paynow.gg/content/tier-groups.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.