Subscriptions

A subscription charges the buyer every billing cycle instead of once. Set it up per variant, so the same product can sell outright and on a monthly plan side by side. Requires a plan that includes subscriptions. Live subscriptions are listed under Subscriptions in the dashboard.

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How renewals are charged

This decides how much ongoing work a subscription product takes, so it is worth settling before you build one. If subscriptions are central to your shop, connect Stripe or PayPal Checkout. Manual renewals lapse more often, since every cycle asks the buyer to decide again rather than continuing on its own. Free trials need automatic billing, so they only work on those two.

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Setting it up

Subscription settings sit on the variant, under its subscription section.

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Mode

Optional suits products that still make sense as a single purchase, and lets buyers choose the recurring option themselves. Subscription only suits access that has no meaning as a one-off.

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Price and interval

Subscription price is charged every cycle. Leave it empty to reuse the variant’s price, or set it lower to make subscribing the better deal. Billing interval is a number and a unit: every 1 month, every 2 weeks, every 90 days. The count goes up to 90 and the unit can be days, weeks, months or years. Trial days gives free access before the first charge, up to 365. Automatic billing methods only.

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What each renewal delivers

For serial and dynamic products, Renewal Delivery decides what the buyer gets when a cycle is paid. Choose by asking whether what you delivered expires on its own. A monthly key that stops working needs redelivery. A Discord role or an account that keeps working does not. Dynamic products call your webhook on every renewal regardless of this setting. Returning an empty response means the existing access was extended rather than replaced. See Dynamic Delivery. Every paid cycle creates its own invoice, linked to the subscription, so your invoice history stays complete.

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Managing subscribers

The Subscriptions page lists every subscriber with their billing amount and interval, next renewal date, cycles completed, and whether renewal is automatic or manual. Past Due is the status to watch. On manual methods it usually means the renewal invoice went unpaid, and a reminder often recovers it. On automatic methods the card failed. On Stripe, the customer dashboard shows a Pay now link to the failed invoice, and Stripe keeps retrying the card on its own schedule.

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Cancelling

Cancelling from the dashboard ends the subscription at the end of the paid period by default, so the customer keeps what they already paid for. Tick Cancel immediately to end access at once, which you would normally only do for abuse or at the customer’s request.

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What customers can do themselves

Buyers manage their own subscriptions from the customer dashboard on your storefront, which shows each subscription’s product, price, interval, status and next renewal date. From there they can:

• Pay a renewal, on manual methods, through a link on the subscription
• Cancel, which schedules the end of the paid period rather than cutting access instantly
• Resume a subscription they cancelled, while the period is still running
• Update their card on automatically renewing Stripe subscriptions, through Manage billing, which opens Stripe’s customer portal and returns them to your storefront afterwards

Because resuming is possible until the period ends, a customer who cancels and changes their mind can keep the subscription without buying again.

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Staying informed

Turn on the subscription events in Notifications to hear about new subscriptions, cancellations, expiries and failed or overdue renewals. Route failed renewals somewhere you check often, since each one is lost revenue that produces no other signal.

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Troubleshooting

Renewals are not charging automatically. The subscription is on a method other than Stripe or PayPal Checkout. Those customers get a renewal invoice by email instead. Trial days are ignored. Trials require an automatic billing method. A renewal delivered nothing. Renewal Delivery is set to nothing new, which is correct for access-style products. Switch it to deliver again if each cycle should hand over a fresh item. A renewal ran out of stock. Redelivery consumes stock like any sale. Keep serial stock topped up ahead of renewal dates. Price change did not apply to existing subscribers. Working as designed. Only new subscribers get the new price.

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Next steps