This is the setting that turns a series of one-off sales into a business with predictable income. It takes one click.
Where to find it
Edit any package under Real Estate, then Packages.
Scroll down to the block titled Mollie Settings.
The first setting is Payment Type, and the plugin explains it plainly: choose how Mollie should charge customers for this package.
One-time payment
Your customer pays once. They get access for the billing period you configured, and when that runs out, it runs out.
To keep going, they have to come back and buy again.
When to use it. For a starter package you want people to try. For a lifetime package. For a portal where people list a property occasionally and would resent a subscription.
Recurring / Subscription
Your customer is charged automatically every billing period until they cancel it themselves.
The plugin describes exactly what happens under the bonnet, and it is worth understanding: the first payment creates a mandate, and every payment after that is collected by SEPA Direct Debit, card or PayPal.
When to use it. For your main agency packages. This is what gives you income you can plan around, rather than a scramble every month to re-sell to the same people.
What a mandate actually is
Worth ten seconds, because it explains a problem you might otherwise hit.
When your customer subscribes and pays with iDEAL, they are doing two things at once. They are paying you, and they are giving permission for future payments to be collected from their bank account. That permission is the mandate.
Every renewal after the first is collected using that mandate, by SEPA Direct Debit. Not by iDEAL. iDEAL only sets it up.
So SEPA Direct Debit must be switched on in your Mollie account, even though your customer never sees it and never chooses it. If it is off, the mandate cannot be charged, and your renewals will silently never happen.
You will not find out for a month. Go and check it now, in your Mollie dashboard under Settings, then Payment methods.
Your customer needs a method that can subscribe
Only twelve of our thirty payment methods can carry a subscription.
iDEAL, Bancontact, card, PayPal, Apple Pay and SEPA Direct Debit can. Google Pay, TWINT, BLIK and Bank Transfer cannot.
The Payment methods tab labels each one, so you never have to remember.
If you sell subscriptions, make sure at least one Subscriptions method is switched on, or your customer will reach the checkout with no way to subscribe.
The expiry warning email
Also in the Mollie Settings block: Expiry warning email.
This is how many days before expiry we email the customer to warn them. It applies to one-time packages, which is exactly when a reminder is useful, because nothing is going to renew by itself.
Leave it empty and the plugin uses smart defaults, based on the billing period. A yearly package gets more warning than a weekly one, which is what you would do by hand anyway.
Fill it in only if you have a reason to.
Lifetime packages
If you have ticked Never Expire, the package is a lifetime package and it cannot renew. There is nothing to renew.
If you set it to recurring anyway, the plugin will tell you so, and it will charge once regardless. It is not going to quietly do something strange behind your back.
Mixing the two
You can, and it works well.
A cheap one-off listing package sitting next to a monthly agency subscription is a perfectly sensible thing to sell. Each package carries its own setting, so you are not choosing once for the whole site.