Stripe subscription plan with trial but immediate payment and with end date

Question

I am using Stripe payment gateway. I am working on a project having recurring payments.

Basically I have three plans created on Stripe,

1) Free  - 14 days, $0.00 , No trial, Should NOT be auto renewed
2) Basic - 1 Month, $15.00, No trial, auto renewed 
3) Pro   - 1 Month, $25.00, No trial, auto renewed

I have some doubts as following:

1) Is it required to provide the credit card details while subscribing a customer to a Free plan? What if I don't want to provide it for now and still subscribe him to Free plan?

2) I don't want the Free plan to be auto-renewed. So subscribing any customer to Free plan, how can I identify the end of the period or cycle using webhook since there is NO end date/period is there for plan? I want to cancel the customers' subscription (having Free plan) after 14 days and redirect them to choose Basic or Pro plan with credit card details.

3) For Basic and Pro plans there is no trial period has set. But still I want to provide 14 days trial to some specific customers. Is it possible by setting trial_end while subscribing a customer to a plan (i.e. For Basic or Pro)?

4) If I specify the trial_end attribute while subscribing a customer to a plan (i.e. Basic or Pro), the charge will be created after the trial period ends. Correct me? If yes, what if I want to charge them immediate but still they must have the trial period?

Answer 1

1) No, it's not. Credit card information is not required. So, you can subscribe without credit card data. Credit card information is stored in source, and it's optional. I have tried it. Create a subscription

2) The subscription is always auto renew. If you don't want the subscription to be auto renew, you can subsribe without credit card. So, when the system tried to renew and failed, it will be as canceled or unpaid. See The subscription object in status attribute.

3) Yes, it is possible. You can set / update the trial_end.

4) Yes. But I think, you can not to charge them immediate with still they must have the trial period.

My question: Why you have 3 plans with no trial at all?

My suggestion is, you should have 3 plans, and for the Free plan, it should has trial 14 days. So when user choose Free plan, it will have 14 days trial, and without credit card. Then when trial period is up, and it will auto renew and payment to renew the subscription will fails (because of no credit card). So then user should change plan to Basic or Pro with the credit card data. And for these plans, it should charge them immediately, without trial (trial_end = now).

Without a credit card, the subscription charge attempt will fail after that trial, and the subscription will be marked as delinquent. You may consider that to be useful

For more information about Stripe Trial, you can follow this link Using Trial Periods on Subscriptions