Welcome to the course! In this intro episode, we kick things off by explaining what you can expect to learn—mainly, how to add subscriptions to your app super quickly using Laravel Cashier and Stripe. You'll be able to support monthly, yearly, or custom duration subscriptions with ease.
We also start with a demo so you can see exactly what we'll be building. You see how a user tries to access a protected area, gets redirected to pick a subscription plan, and then checks out using Stripe (in test mode for now). The demo covers subscribing with test details, handling promo codes, and being redirected back into the app once subscribed.
You'll get a preview of managing subscriptions, updating payment details, and even canceling or resuming a subscription both through Stripe's portal and directly from the app. There's coverage of accessing invoices, downloading them as PDFs, and how all this functionality is a great starting point for apps that need to process recurring payments.
Lastly, we mention that while Laravel Cashier will take care of a lot of the heavy lifting, we'll also dig into displaying plans, setting them up in our own database, and other key customizations. In the next episode, we'll start building this setup from scratch.