Merchant
A Merchant is the business that sells a subscription. A Merchant integrates EazyOwl into their system to handle their Customers’ Subscriptions, Merchant Product Features, Merchant Plans, Billing options etc. Example: The Merchant is an online video conversion and publishing service.Platform (or “EazyOwl Platform”)
When we mention the word Platform (or “The Platform”), we are talking about our platform (EazyOwl), unless specified otherwise. If in any context, we are mentioning both EazyOwl Platform and the Merchant Platform, then we will prefix this word with the appropriate adjective. Example: The Merchant needs to register on the Platform before they can start building subscription plans to be managed.Merchant Platform
This is the overall technical solution which interfaces with EazyOwl to perform any and all technical tasks required for the Integration to work. This platform might be different from the Merchant Product (mentioned below). Example: The Merchant Platform needs to sent an Authentication Token with each request.Customer
A Customer is a user registered with the Merchant who might want to avail the products and services offered by the Merchant via a subscription. Example: The Customer shall have to provide a payment method before we can start their subscription.Merchant Billing Subdomain (MBS)
Merchants are required to dedicate a Subdomain under their apex domain which shall be served by EazyOwl. This Subdomain URL shall act as the portal where the Customer can manage their billing for the products and services of the Merchant. The interface provided on this subdomain is controlled by EazyOwl. Example: If Merchant’s website is hosted athttps://example.com and they decide to let their Customers manage their subscription plans and billing options on https://billing.example.com then the MBS for that Merchant shall be billing.example.com.
Merchant Product
This is the name given to the Collective set of Products and/or Services that Merchant provides/sells to his Customers. This is the part which EazyOwl does not concern itself, except from a conceptual standpoint. Exaxmple: A Customer needs to start uploading videos on the Merchant Product before they can publish them. In this example, while EazyOwl would know that the Merchant Product is a video upload and publishing service, it does not try to affect the product’s behavior in any way and shall not require interaction with such parts.Merchant Product Feature (or just “Product Feature”)
These are the services/functionality that the Merchant provides to their Customers under different plans. The merchant sets these features on EazyOwl’s Portal against their own Product. Example: If the Merchant offers online storage solution to its Customers, then “Cloud Storage” might be a good name for such a Product Feature. Before Customers could pay for such a feature, it would first need to be created on EazyOwl’s Portal against the Merchant’s account.EazyOwl Feature (or “Platform Feature”)
This is a functionality EazyOwl provides to the Merchant which may or may not be passed on to the Customers by the Merchant. Example: Managing automated welcome emails is potential Platform Feature.Plans (or “Merchant Plans”)
Plans are bundles of Product Features which are billed together in varying combination of values against each feature. Example: The Starter Plan allows Customers to store 5 GB videos and publish to 1 social media platform while the Professional Plan allows them to store 20 GB, publish to 5 social media platforms and also allows them to export the videos in different formats. The above example from a nomenclature perspective can represented as the below table.
The cells in the column under the “Starter Plan” and “Professional Plan” columns are the values against the features mentioned in the corresponding “Product Feature” column.