Plans
In plain English
A plan is the offer. It answers three questions:
- What are they subscribing to? (a product)
- How often does it arrive? (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly — and every how many of those)
- What do they save? (a percentage off)
"Colombian coffee, every 2 weeks, 12% off" is one plan. If you also want a monthly option, that's a second plan on the same product.
Once you create it, the app adds the choice to your shop's product page by itself. The buyer sees a delivery-frequency option alongside the normal buy button and picks whichever suits them.
How to use it
- Click "Subscriptions" in the left-hand menu.
- Find the "New subscription plan" form near the top.
- Enter a plan name — the customer sees this, so make it clear: "Monthly Essentials," not "PLAN-A-2026."
- Pick the product (and a specific variant, if you only want one size on subscription).
- Choose the frequency and the interval count. For "every 2 weeks," pick weekly and enter 2.
- Set the discount percentage. 10% is the default and a sensible starting point.
- Click Create.
- Open that product on your storefront and check the subscribe option is showing.
⏱ ~5 min per plan · 💳 Pro+ · 🎯 Give buyers a reason to commit
Why this matters for your business
The plan is where the economics of your whole subscription programme get decided, and it's easy to set carelessly because it's a short form.
The discount is the main lever. Too low and nobody signs up — the customer is being asked to give up flexibility and getting almost nothing back. Too high and you've built a programme that loses money on customers who don't stay long enough to make it back. The right number depends on your margin and, crucially, on how long your subscribers last — which you won't know until you've been running a while.
The frequency matters nearly as much, and it's the one most people get wrong. If a bag of coffee lasts your customer three weeks and you only offer weekly, it piles up on their counter and they cancel. Not because they didn't want the coffee — because the rhythm was wrong. Offering two or three frequencies lets people self-select, and it costs you nothing.
The storefront integration is the part that saves the most time. Subscriptions normally mean theme work, and theme work means a developer. Here, creating the plan puts the option on the page.
What this typically unlocks
| What you get | Typical result |
|---|---|
| Time to launch a subscription offer | ~5 minutes, no developer |
| Theme changes required | None |
| Take-up when frequency options fit | Substantially higher than a single option |
| Control over live offers | Pause without affecting subscribers |
| Risk of a "deleted" plan still selling | Removed — failures are surfaced |
What you actually get
The plan settings
| Setting | What it does | Advice |
|---|---|---|
| Plan name | Shown to customers | Plain and descriptive |
| Product | What's being subscribed to | Start with a genuine consumable |
| Variant | A specific option, if you want | Leave blank to cover the whole product |
| Frequency | Weekly / monthly / quarterly / yearly | Match real usage |
| Interval count | Every n of those | "Weekly, 2" = fortnightly |
| Discount % | What they save | 10% default; see below |
Choosing a discount
| Discount | What tends to happen |
|---|---|
| 0–5% | Very low take-up. Not enough to give up flexibility |
| 10% | The common standard. Works across most categories |
| 15–20% | Strong take-up. Check it against subscriber lifespan |
| 25%+ | High take-up, and easy to lose money if people leave early |
The test that matters: how much do you make from a subscriber over their whole lifetime, versus a one-off buyer? If subscribers stay for nine orders, a 20% discount is comfortably profitable. If they stay for two, 20% is expensive.
You won't know your number until you've run for a few months. Start at 10%, measure, then adjust.
Choosing a frequency
Work backwards from how long your product actually lasts:
| If your product lasts | Offer |
|---|---|
| ~2 weeks | Weekly and fortnightly |
| ~1 month | Fortnightly, monthly, every 2 months |
| ~3 months | Monthly, quarterly |
| ~1 year | Quarterly, yearly |
Offer two or three, not one. People's usage varies more than you'd expect, and the wrong rhythm is one of the most common reasons subscribers cancel.
Plan states
| State | What it means | Effect on existing subscribers |
|---|---|---|
| Active | Live and accepting sign-ups | Billed normally |
| Paused | No new sign-ups; storefront option withdrawn | Unaffected — they carry on |
| Archived | Removed | Handle deliberately — see below |
Pausing is the safe control. Use it when you're out of stock, reworking pricing, or testing. Existing subscribers keep being served; nobody new can join.
Deleting a plan
Deleting removes the subscribe option from your storefront.
Two things worth knowing:
- Existing subscribers aren't automatically dealt with. Decide what happens to them — move them to another plan, or cancel them with notice — rather than assuming deletion tidies up.
- If the storefront removal fails, the app tells you. It won't report success while the subscribe option is still live on your shop. That sounds obvious; plenty of systems get it wrong and leave merchants selling a plan they think they deleted.
Quarterly, and what you'll see elsewhere
The storefront system underneath supports weekly, monthly, and yearly but has no separate "quarterly" concept. Choosing quarterly sets the plan up as every 3 months — identical in practice. Mentioned only so the wording doesn't confuse you if you look at the plan elsewhere.
How it works (without the technical bits)
Real merchant scenarios
Scenario A — Frequency options tripling take-up
Setup. Coffee roaster launched with a single monthly plan. Take-up: 4.1% of orders.
Cancellation feedback was consistent — "too much coffee" from some, "ran out before it arrived" from others. One rhythm, many different drinking habits.
Action. Added fortnightly and every-2-months alongside the existing monthly.
| One frequency | Three frequencies | |
|---|---|---|
| Take-up | 4.1% | 12.8% |
| Cancellations in first 3 orders | 31% | 9% |
Which frequency won:
| Frequency | Share of subscribers |
|---|---|
| Fortnightly | 41% |
| Monthly | 38% |
| Every 2 months | 21% |
No single option would have served more than 41% properly.
Scenario B — Discount maths done properly
Setup. Supplements brand debating 10% vs. 20%. Product: £34, gross margin 62%.
They ran both for eight weeks:
| 10% off | 20% off | |
|---|---|---|
| Take-up | 6.2% | 14.1% |
| Average orders before cancelling | 7.8 | 6.9 |
| Gross profit per subscriber | £158 | £123 |
| Subscribers per 1,000 customers | 62 | 141 |
| Total gross profit per 1,000 | £9,796 | £17,343 |
20% won clearly, despite lower profit per subscriber, because it acquired more than twice as many.
The point. Per-subscriber margin is the wrong measure on its own. Total profit across everyone the discount brings in is the one that decides it.
Scenario C — Pause instead of delete
Setup. Merchant's supplier had a three-week gap. Their instinct was to delete the plan so nobody could order.
Why that would have been wrong. Deleting removes the storefront option but leaves existing subscribers needing separate handling — and rebuilding the plan afterwards would mean new sign-ups couldn't be linked to the original.
What they did instead. Paused it. No new sign-ups; existing subscribers unaffected; resumed in three weeks with one click.
Result. Zero disruption to 340 existing subscribers, and no rebuild.
Scenario D — The delete that would have gone unnoticed
Setup. Merchant deleted an old plan during a tidy-up. The storefront removal failed — a permissions issue on the shop connection.
What the app did. Reported the failure explicitly instead of showing success.
Why that mattered. Without it, the plan would have vanished from the admin while the subscribe option stayed live on the product page. Customers would have kept signing up to a plan the merchant believed no longer existed, and nobody would have noticed until a subscriber complained.
Fix. Reconnected the shop permissions, deleted again, and got a clean confirmation.
Best practices
✅ Name plans for customers, not for you. They see the name.
✅ Offer 2–3 frequencies per product. Scenario A.
✅ Start at 10% and measure before changing it.
✅ Judge a discount on total profit, not profit per subscriber — Scenario B.
✅ Use pause, not delete, for anything temporary.
✅ Check the storefront after creating a plan. Ten seconds, and it confirms the whole thing worked.
❌ Don't set frequencies that don't match real usage. It's the top cause of early cancellation.
❌ Don't delete a plan with active subscribers without deciding what happens to them.
❌ Don't offer a discount you can't sustain if subscribers turn out to leave early.
❌ Don't create a plan per variant unless the variants really need different pricing or rhythm — it clutters the storefront choice.
Plan tiers
| Capability | Free | Starter | Pro | Agency | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Create and edit plans | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automatic storefront option | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Weekly / monthly / quarterly / yearly | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Variant-level plans | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pause and resume | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Verified deletion | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Plan templates across stores | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
Frequently asked
How many plans should I have per product? Two or three frequencies. More than that makes the storefront choice confusing.
Can I change the discount on a live plan? Yes. Consider how it affects existing subscribers before you do — and whether you want to tell them.
Does pausing a plan stop billing existing subscribers? No. Pausing only stops new sign-ups. To stop billing someone specific, pause their subscription in Subscribers.
Can I offer a free trial? Not as a built-in trial period. A common alternative is a heavier first-order discount using the offers system.
What if the product goes out of stock? Pause the plan so nobody new signs up, and manage existing subscribers deliberately.
Can I set a minimum number of orders? Not currently. Most merchants find "cancel any time" increases sign-ups more than a commitment increases retention.
Why do I need to check the storefront? Because it's a ten-second confirmation that the whole chain worked. Worth doing on your first plan especially.
Can I move subscribers from one plan to another? Not in bulk. Handle it per subscriber, or ask them to re-subscribe to the new plan.
See also
- Subscriptions overview — how the whole module fits together
- Subscribers — managing the people on your plans
- MRR & churn — measuring whether your discount is working
- Offer Lab — designing the pricing structure around this
- Inventory & pricing — stock for subscription products
- Variants, bundles & collections — variant-level setup