Recurly lets you assign multiple active subscriptions to a single account — different plans, different billing cycles, all under one roof. Whether you're building a hybrid billing model or simply giving customers more choice, this feature makes it straightforward to create, invoice, and communicate around multiple subscriptions at once.

Available on all Recurly plans

1Definition 2Key benefits 3Key details 4Communication and notifications

Definition

Multiple subscription support allows a single account to hold several active subscriptions simultaneously. Businesses can combine those subscriptions into a single consolidated invoice or keep billing separate for each — and Recurly handles the invoicing, notifications, and data exports across all of them automatically.

Key benefits

Streamlined management Manage all subscriptions for an account in one place, keeping administration and customer management organized and efficient.

Greater customer choice Offer subscribers the ability to hold multiple plans at once, giving them more ways to engage with your services.

Flexible billing Combine multiple subscriptions into a single invoice or bill each one separately — whichever approach fits your business model.

Consolidated notifications When multiple subscriptions are created in a single purchase, Recurly sends one consolidated New Subscription email covering all of them.

Richer data insights Track and analyze subscription data across multiple plans per account for more complete reporting and business decisions.

Key details

Purchase endpoint

The purchase endpoint is the primary way to create multiple subscriptions in a single request. It works for both new and existing accounts and supports combining subscriptions with one-time charges as part of a hybrid billing model.

Two requirements apply to all subscriptions within a single purchase:

Shared payment method — all subscriptions in the purchase must use the same payment method.
Consistent collection method — all subscriptions must share the same collection method.

Purchase invoices

A purchase containing more than one subscription produces a single invoice that lists each subscription and charge individually. This keeps billing clear for customers while reducing invoice volume for your team.

Consolidating multiple subscriptions into a single invoiceSubscriptions must meet certain eligibility criteria to be grouped onto one invoice. Use the Aggregate Invoice or Alignment features to consolidate billing, or explore Calendar Billing as an efficient way to merge multiple subscription charges into a single bill.

Admin Console

You can add multiple subscriptions to an account directly in the Admin Console by increasing the quantity in the Quantity field for a plan. Each subscription is invoiced and billed separately upon payment.

NoteMultiple subscriptions cannot be created when a subscription start date in the past is provided.

Create subscription endpoint

The create subscription endpoint lets you add individual subscriptions to an account one at a time. Each is invoiced and billed separately upon successful payment. If you have New Subscription or New Invoice email notifications enabled, a separate email is sent for each subscription added through this method.

Communication and notifications

Emails

The following email templates support multiple subscription purchases:

When multiple subscriptions are created in a single purchase, one New Subscription email is sent containing all subscriptions in the purchase. To update your email templates to support this, see the Subscription fields reference.

Webhooks

When the multiple subscriptions feature is enabled on your site, the following webhooks include a subscriptions XML tag containing a list of all subscriptions on the invoice:

new_invoice
closed_invoice
successful_payment
failed_payment
past_due_invoice
new_dunning_event
successful_refund

If multiple subscriptions is not enabled, these webhooks continue to use the original subscription XML tag.

Exports

When the multiple subscriptions feature is active, any export containing a subscription_id column will include an additional subscription_ids column listing all subscription IDs in comma-separated format.

Coupon redemption

For details on how coupons are applied in multiple subscription purchases, see Multiple coupons in a multiple subscription purchase.

Custom notes

Recurly supports customizable invoice notes including Terms & Conditions, Customer Notes, and VAT Reverse Charge Notes (see Invoice Settings). When using custom notes with multiple subscriptions:

Each invoice includes one set of each note type, defaulting to site-level settings.
To customize notes for a specific invoice, specify them in the purchase API request.
It isn't possible to assign different custom notes to individual subscriptions within a single invoice.

For VAT Reverse Charge Notes to appear on an invoice, all three conditions must be met:

Your Recurly site has EU VAT enabled or uses an Avalara AvaTax account.
The customer is in the EU, has a VAT number, and is based in a different country than your company.
No custom VAT notes are specified for the invoice (in which case, those override the site-level notes).