Subscriptions overview
In plain English
A subscription is just an order that repeats on its own. The customer agrees once, and then it comes every month (or week, or whatever you set) without them doing anything.
This is worth a lot for two reasons. You get predictable income you can plan around. And the customer stops deciding whether to buy from you each time — which is the single hardest thing to get someone to do repeatedly.
There are two screens here:
- Plans — what you offer. "Coffee, every 2 weeks, 10% off." You make one of these per product you want to sell on repeat.
- Subscribers — the actual people signed up, and what state they're in.
When you create a plan, the app also adds the "Subscribe & save" option to that product on your shop. You don't have to touch your theme — buyers see the choice at checkout automatically.
How to use it
- Click "Subscriptions" in the left-hand menu.
- Fill in the "New subscription plan" form: name it, pick the product, choose how often it repeats, and set the discount.
- Click Create. The plan is saved and the subscribe option appears on that product in your shop.
- Check the product page on your storefront — you should see the delivery-frequency option.
- Watch the "Subscribers" tab as people sign up.
- Check for failed payments regularly. Those are customers about to be lost for a fixable reason.
⏱ ~10 min to set up your first plan · 💳 Pro+ · 🎯 Predictable, repeating revenue
Why this matters for your business
Every sale you make once, you have to make again next month. That's the treadmill most shops are on — a good month is followed by an empty pipeline and the whole thing starts over.
Subscriptions change the shape of that. A customer who signs up for a monthly delivery is revenue you can count on before the month starts. You can plan stock, staffing, and spend against a number you actually know. And because they're not deciding each time, they stay far longer than a repeat customer who has to be re-convinced every cycle.
The other benefit is less obvious but bigger over time. A subscription customer's lifetime value is typically several times a one-off buyer's — not because they spend more per order, but because they keep going. The cost of acquiring them is the same; the return is much longer.
Two honest notes. Subscriptions suit some products and not others — consumables, replenishables, and anything with a natural rhythm work well; one-off purchases don't. And a subscription programme you don't tend to will quietly leak customers through failed payments, which is why the failed-payment tracking matters as much as the sign-up flow.
What this typically unlocks
| What you get | Typical result |
|---|---|
| Predictable monthly revenue | Known in advance rather than hoped for |
| Customer lifetime value | Typically several times a one-off buyer's |
| Repeat purchase effort | Near zero — no re-convincing each cycle |
| Revenue lost to failed payments | Visible and recoverable rather than silent |
| Storefront setup | Automatic — no theme editing |
What you actually get
The two screens
| Screen | What's on it |
|---|---|
| Plans | Every subscription offer you've created, and how many subscribers each has |
| Subscribers | Every individual subscription, its status, and what you can do with it |
The four numbers at the top
| Number | What it means |
|---|---|
| Active plans | How many subscription offers you're running |
| Active subscribers | People currently subscribed and being billed |
| Paused | Subscriptions temporarily on hold |
| Total revenue | Everything your subscriptions have earned to date |
What a plan contains
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Plan name | What the customer sees, e.g. "Monthly Essentials" |
| Product | Which product is being subscribed to |
| Variant | Optionally, a specific size or option |
| How often | Weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly |
| Interval count | Repeat every n of those — "every 2 weeks" |
| Discount % | The saving vs. buying one-off. Defaults to 10% |
Why the discount matters
The discount is the reason a customer commits. You're asking them to give up flexibility, so you have to give something back.
| Discount | Typical effect |
|---|---|
| 0–5% | Rarely enough — most buyers stay on one-off |
| 10% (the default) | The common standard; works for most categories |
| 15–20% | Strong uptake, watch your margin |
| 25%+ | High uptake, but check the maths carefully |
The right level depends on your margin and how long subscribers typically stay. A 20% discount is easily worth it if subscribers last a year; it isn't if they cancel after two orders.
What happens on your storefront
Creating a plan does two things:
- Saves the plan in the app, and
- Adds the subscribe option to that product on your shop, with a delivery-frequency choice the buyer picks at purchase.
You don't edit your theme. If you delete a plan, the option is removed from the storefront too — and if that removal fails for any reason, the app tells you rather than reporting success while the option is still live on your shop.
A note on quarterly
Your storefront's underlying system supports weekly, monthly, and yearly intervals but has no separate "quarterly." The app handles this by setting quarterly plans up as every 3 months, which is the same thing. You choose "quarterly" and it works; this is just so the wording doesn't surprise you elsewhere.
Who can manage subscriptions
| Action | Permission needed |
|---|---|
| View plans and subscribers | Billing read access |
| Create, change, pause, or delete | Billing manage access |
Subscriptions touch billing, so they sit behind billing permissions rather than general marketing access. See Team & permissions for how roles work.
How it works (without the technical bits)
Real merchant scenarios
Scenario A — From guessing to planning
Setup. Coffee roaster, £38k/month, entirely one-off orders. Every month started from zero and stock buying was guesswork.
Action. Created three plans — every 2 weeks, monthly, and every 2 months — at 12% off.
After nine months:
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Active subscribers | 0 | 1,180 |
| Predictable monthly revenue | £0 | £24,900 |
| Stock written off | ~8%/month | ~2% |
| Average customer lifespan | 2.4 orders | 9.1 orders |
The stock effect was the surprise. Knowing 1,180 bags were going out on a schedule meant they could roast to order rather than to a forecast.
Scenario B — The discount that was too small
Setup. Supplements brand launched subscriptions at 5% off. After two months: 34 subscribers out of 2,900 customers.
Diagnosis. 5% off a £30 order is £1.50. Not enough to give up the freedom to stop whenever you like.
Action. Raised to 15% and said clearly on the product page that subscribers could pause or cancel any time.
| 5% off | 15% off | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription take-up | 1.2% | 11.4% |
| Subscribers after 2 months | 34 | 330 |
| Revenue per customer over 6 months | £61 | £142 |
The margin maths. They gave away 10 more percentage points and more than doubled six-month revenue per customer, because subscribers kept buying.
Scenario C — Failed payments that looked like churn
Setup. Meal-kit business. Monthly cancellations had crept from 4% to 7%. The team was planning a retention campaign.
What the Subscribers screen showed. 68 subscriptions carrying failed payment attempts — expired cards, mostly. Those customers hadn't chosen to leave. Their cards had simply stopped working.
Action. Emailed all 68 with a direct link to update their payment details.
Result: 41 updated within nine days. Monthly cancellation rate fell to 4.6%.
Why this matters so much. A customer who chose to leave is hard to win back. A customer whose card expired usually wants to stay and just needs telling. Treating the second as the first means spending money on the wrong problem — see MRR & churn.
Scenario D — A product that shouldn't have been a subscription
Setup. Furniture retailer set up a subscription plan for occasional tables at 10% off.
Result after three months: 4 subscribers, 3 of whom cancelled after the second delivery.
Why. Nobody needs a new side table every month. The product had no natural rhythm.
What they did instead. Applied subscriptions to their candles and refill range — genuinely consumable — where uptake was 19%.
The lesson. Subscriptions work where there's a natural repeat need. Forcing them onto a one-off product wastes the discount and confuses buyers.
Best practices
✅ Start with your most obviously consumable product. Prove it works before you roll out widely.
✅ Offer at least 10% off. Below that most buyers won't commit — see Scenario B.
✅ Say clearly that they can pause or cancel any time. The fear of being trapped is the biggest objection.
✅ Offer 2–3 frequencies, not one. Different customers get through your product at different rates.
✅ Check failed payments weekly. Those are recoverable customers with a short window.
✅ Match the frequency to real usage. If a bag of coffee lasts three weeks, a weekly plan will pile up and get cancelled.
❌ Don't put subscriptions on one-off products. Scenario D.
❌ Don't set a discount you can't sustain. Check it against how long subscribers actually stay.
❌ Don't ignore paused subscriptions. Paused often means "about to cancel" — reach out.
❌ Don't treat failed payments as churn. Different problem, different fix, much better odds.
Plan tiers
| Capability | Free | Starter | Pro | Agency | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Create subscription plans | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Storefront subscribe option | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Subscriber management | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pause / cancel controls | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Failed-payment tracking | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Real MRR and churn metrics | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-store subscription roll-up | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
Frequently asked
Do I need to change my theme? No. Creating a plan adds the subscribe option to that product automatically.
Can a customer pause instead of cancelling? Yes, and you should encourage it — a pause keeps the relationship alive where a cancellation usually ends it.
What frequencies can I offer? Weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly, each repeatable every n periods — so "every 2 weeks" or "every 3 months" are both possible.
What happens if a payment fails? The attempt is recorded and the subscription is flagged. After three consecutive failures it's marked failed. A successful payment resets the counter.
Can I enrol a customer manually? Yes — useful for phone orders or migrating subscribers from another system.
What if I delete a plan with active subscribers? Deleting removes the storefront option. Handle existing subscribers deliberately rather than assuming deletion tidies them up.
Why does my quarterly plan show as 3 months? Because that's how the underlying storefront system expresses it. Same schedule, different wording.
How is subscription revenue counted in my other reports? Subscription orders are normal orders and appear in your revenue reporting as usual. Recurring-revenue metrics specifically live in MRR & churn.
See also
- Plans — creating and managing what you offer
- Subscribers — managing individual subscriptions
- MRR & churn — real recurring revenue and at-risk money
- 2nd Purchase — converting one-off buyers
- Loyalty overview — the other route to repeat purchase
- Customer 360 — the customer view
- Billing & plans — permissions for these screens