Recurring subscription with trial period, or products and services

What is the best way to set up Gravity Forms: Recurring subscription with trial period, or products and services one time fee with recurring renew form in members area?
My main objective is to have GF update user at expiry and update the join date when a member renews, or is renewed automatically with a recurring payment.
There's a $10. initiation fee for new/reinstate membership with annual dues of $60.yr., and a few options; 1. to get a mailed newsletter for an extra fee and one other fee based option. Membership access is controlled with Justin Tadlock's Members plugin. I am using the GF mailchimp, paypal, user registration and directory add-ons.
A few more questions:
• if I use recurring, the first year member may feel locked in. it's sort of unusual to sign some one up for club membership and have them automatically set up for recurring payments without their active consent. or, if paypal merchant or user cancels the recurring payment, sometime after the join and user activation, does that mean the expiry date will no longer be available to GF and the user role will not be changed at expriy?
• If i use a trial period, how do i set this, 10. for a trial period of a year, and put the join amount for $60 ,plus any chosen options, after 1 year. or do I put $70 for trial period for year one.
• If they are on recurring, then there would be no need for a renew form in the membership area. is this correct? or if they cancel their recurring and wanted to renew, I could have a renew form in the members area.
• I installed the Gravity Forms Subscription add on plug in, but it does not seem to work according to the posts on its forum.