Sorry for the late reply. My site has gone live 2 weeks ago and that takes up most of my time. There are some problems with easysocial on my site which have nothing to do with payplans (see my other topics and more to come ;-)), but this consumes most of my time.
However, I have integrated payplans with easysocial, easydiscuss and an 3th party chat software and this is where this topic is about.
It works perfect I can tell You.
Off course it depends on what kind of membership system You want to build, to decide if Payplans is suitable for You or not, but with the amount of apps in the appstore of ReadyBytes (payplans) I think there are more ways then one to create a good membership system... I will describe the way I have integrated it.
The situation I have created is that I have a basic (free) membership and a gold (payed) membership. Every new member will become a basic member. Basic members have some limits, which gold members haven't. For example, Basic members can only have 3 site friends (this is for limiting the chatfeatures mostly). Basic members can only chat 1-on-1 with site friends (third party chatsoftware), they can not send private conversations to other members, but they can answer private conversations (max 2 a day), they can have a maximum of 10 photos on their profile, group/events they create must become approved by me and some more acl.
The trick is to create two (or more if You want more membership types) of the same profieltypes, with the same profielcustom fields (important to create this the good way! Easysocial does not have generic profilefields. You don't want the member who changed profilefield after payment to fill in everything again, so make sure the id's are correct of the custom fields troughout all Your easysocial profiletypes. This way I have created two profiletypes. basic & gold. They only difference between the 2 profiletypes is the ACL tab. There You can specify limits to the profiletype. Needles to say that the gold profiletype has no limits at my site. Gold can do everything. basic has thelimits.
If You want more profiletypes on Your site. For example You have teachers and students. You have to keep in mind that every profiletype needs a copy for the paying version of that profiletype! The more profiletypes, the more work and it will become more complex. It can be done, but I would advise to just use the profiletypes to make the difference in acl (paying vs free). Dont use them for making difference in the custom fields!
It would be nice if easysocial will give the option to set custom fields to site wide. To have an extra type off custom field which is not profiletype bound, but userbound. That way it would be a lot easier to create such a membership system, but also without it can be achieved. (there is a voice for this, so you can vote for this:
http://stackideas.com/voices/easysocial/item/581 :-))
Tip: First create the basis easysocial profiletype. When ready, save that one as a new one. This way You dont have to create the custom fields with the same id's twice. When You have 2 profiletypes, edit the acl of the profiletype to make the difference ;-)
At this moment payplans comes in play. Payplans has an app to change easysocial profiletype after plan change. Every new member becomes a basic member after registration. They do not choose anything at registration (this is also possible, but I did not want that. New members just become basic member. If they want more options, they can (after registration) become a paying member. They just have to click on the period they want, pay the amount of money, and they are instantly (after payment) gold member. When the period they pay for is over, the member goes back to the basic membership with the limits that belong to that. If they like, they can become a paying member again....
The previous extra's (the ACL rules) are lost. However, no data is deleted and if You have created the easysocialprofiletypes the way I describe here, the userdata on their profile is not lost either. Take for example the following situation: basic member can only have 10 pictures on their profile, gold member unlimited. Once a gold user becomes basic again, he will not lose all his uploaded pictures. If he had uploaded 200 pictures during his gold time, his profile still has those 200 pictures. However, he is basic member again, so he cant upload pictures to his profile anymore. Even stronger, he can not upload pictures before he deletes his own photos to under the max of 10 pictures.
To give user privilege acces to centain areas, you will have to take a look at the apps of payplans.there are lots of them. I also use joomla usertype change app. This way I can set certain areas of my site to have only access for paying members. The chatssoftware I use also makes use of joomla build in usertypes to have acl, so for this I also need this extra app. browse through the applist of payplans to see if there is an app available for what you need.
Tip: In easysocial profiletype, You can set the belonging joomla usertype(s). When user changes easysocial profiletype, the belonging Joomla usertype DOES NOT change!! You will have to use the joomla usertype app for this!
Final word: I hope there will be more acl in the future in easysocial, so the difference can be made bigger between basic and paying member.
Next to this, it would be nice if it was easier to setup the messages a basic member receives when hitting the limits. For example: when user tries to upload the 11th picture, he now gets a notification that that is not allowed. However, it would be nices if the user gets a message that he or she should upgrade to gold if he likes to upload more then 10 pictures on his profile. This can be done now but not very easy. I used to use JSPT before I used easysocial, and there with every acl limit, You could provide a message to show if the user hits the limit.
and finally, global (user) profile fields option in easysocial would really lighten the work. Especially when You want more then 1 membership option.
So, conclusion: easysocial works perfect with payplans as it is right now, but it depends on what You want. Feel free to ask if You have questions about payplans integration. If I know the answer I will answer ;-)