Direct answer
Once a subscriber is on the Pro plan, most subscription management happens through a dedicated Creem customer portal rather than inside the app itself — canceling, updating payment method, and viewing invoices all live there. The billing page's "manage subscription" action opens that portal directly, so subscription management is a hop out to Creem's own interface rather than a set of forms rebuilt inside the app.
Why management lives outside the app
Payment method storage, invoice generation, and cancellation logic are exactly the kind of functionality a payment platform is built to handle securely and correctly — rebuilding it inside the app would mean reimplementing security-sensitive logic that already exists, correctly, on Creem's side. Routing to the portal for these actions is a deliberate choice to keep payment data handling inside a system built for it.
The portal link is generated per request, not stored
Opening the portal doesn't navigate to a fixed URL — it makes a live request that returns a fresh portal link tied to the current session. That's worth knowing if a portal link is ever saved or shared: it isn't a stable bookmark, and a new one needs to be generated through the app each time.
What still happens inside the app
Not everything routes to the portal — plan upgrades between monthly and yearly for an active subscription happen directly inside the app rather than through Creem's portal, because that specific flow needs coordination with the app's own record of which plan a user is on. The portal is for account-level payment management; in-app actions are for plan-level changes tied to app state.
Common mistakes
- Expecting to manage payment method or view invoices inside the app itself instead of following the link to the portal.
- Bookmarking a previously opened portal link, not realizing it isn't a persistent URL.
- Looking for the monthly-to-yearly upgrade inside the portal instead of using the in-app upgrade flow.
Checklist
- Use the in-app "manage subscription" action to reach the portal rather than expecting payment settings inside the app.
- Re-open the portal link fresh each time rather than relying on a previously saved link.
- Use the in-app flow for monthly-to-yearly upgrades, and the portal for payment method, invoices, and cancellation.
Operating rule
Account-level payment management lives in the portal; plan-level changes tied to app state live in the app — knowing which is which avoids hunting for a control in the wrong place.