Overview

Video

Definition

A subscription plan in Recurly Commerce defines which products customers can subscribe to, how often they’re billed, and any discounts, gifting options, add-ons, or shipping rules that apply.

Key benefits

• Launch in minutes: Spin up subscription offers without touching code or waiting on engineering.
• Flexible pricing & discounts: Configure one-time, subscription-only, prepaid, or hybrid offers with tiered discounts and special promotions.
• Rich add-ons & gifting: Enable product swaps, one-time or recurring add-ons, and gift-option prompts to boost average order value and delight customers.

Key details

Creating a subscription plan

With Recurly Commerce, you can create a subscription offer in minutes, which will feed into your storefront widget where your customers can add a subscription product to cart.

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Subscription Information

1. In the Recurly Commerce admin, navigate to Subscription Plans and click + Create Offer in the top-right.

2. In Subscription Information, enter:

   • Subscription offer group name: an internal name for your team to reference.
   • Description: internal notes—your customers never see these.

3. Click + Select Products. Your entire Shopify SKU catalog loads in a modal.

   • Check the box next to each product you wish to include in this plan.
   • Uncheck to remove. These selections determine which product detail pages (PDPs) display the subscription widget.

4. Click Confirm at the bottom to save your product selection.

Note: Only products that do not currently have a subscription offer are available for selection.

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Choosing purchasing options

Once your products are chosen, select how they’ll be offered to customers:

• One-time & Subscribe & Save

  • Customers can either purchase once or subscribe on a recurring schedule.

• Subscription only

  • The product is available exclusively as a subscription.

• Pre-paid subscription only

  • Customers pay upfront for the entire subscription term (e.g., full year) and receive deliveries at each interval.

• One-time, subscribe & save, and prepaid subscription

  • All three options appear in the widget, letting customers choose among one-time purchase, recurring billing, or prepaid plans.

• Membership

  • Offer the product as a membership subscription.

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Add subscription options & discounts

1. Select Offer discounts or Do not offer discounts to enable or disable promotional pricing.
2. Click + Add Option to define each delivery frequency (e.g., every 1 month, every 2 months).
3. For each frequency, enter the discount percentage you wish to apply (e.g., 15% off every month, 10% off every 2 months).

Note: Offering larger discounts for more frequent deliveries incentivizes subscriptions and boosts customer retention.

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Gifting option

Toggle Add gift option on to include an “Is this a gift?” prompt below the subscription choices. This adds a radio button customers can select to flag their order as a gift.

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Product swaps and add-ons

For each product in your plan, you can configure:

• Swap

  • Allow subscribers to swap this SKU for any other plan product at renewal.

• One-time Add-on

  • Let subscribers select this (or other store) SKU as an optional extra on a single delivery. Great for accessories like tote bags or water bottles.

• Subscription Add-On

  • Automatically include this SKU on every renewal—for staples your subscribers always need.

Note: By default, only the products you selected for this subscription are available to swap or add-on—but you can extend add-on availability to any store product.

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Special discounts

In addition to recurring frequency discounts, you can grant one-time promotions based on order count or quantity:

• By Order

  • Apply a special discount to the first N deliveries, e.g., 50% off the first 3 orders to win initial sign-ups or 100% off the first order to offer a free trial.

• By Quantity

  • Discount based on the total quantity of products (e.g., 10% off when ordering 2 products, 15% off when ordering 3 products) to encourage larger carts.
  • Click + Add Discount Tier to add additional discount tiers by quantity.

Note: Discounts don’t stack. Special discounts override the recurring frequency discount until they expire—for example, a “first 3 orders 50% off” runs first, then the “10% off every 1 month” takes over.

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Free shipping

Define your subscription shipping rules:

• Toggle Free shipping to define the Countries where free shipping applies.
• Select All countries available or Selected countries available to select where free shipping applies.

Note: If your Shopify store’s existing shipping profile already handles subscriptions, skip this section to avoid conflicting rules.

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Contract Type

The Contract Type determines if the subscription plan requires a term commitment and allows for charging a cancellation fee.

• Flexible (default)

  • No term commitment, the customer can cancel anytime free of charge

• Committed

  • Add a term commitment and cancellation fees
  
  

Note: A Committed Contract Term is not available on Prepaid or Membership Subscription Plans.

To set a term commitment, define the Term Commitment Length. This is the total number of deliveries your customer agrees to as a part of the Plan. The delivery length must be at least 1 delivery.

To enable an early cancellation fee:

• Select the corresponding checkbox.
• Choose the Fee Product you have configured in Shopify.
• Choose whether to Prorate the cancellation fee. If prorated, the fee is based on the remaining term. For example, if 40% of the term is left, the customer pays 40% of the maximum cancellation fee.

Creating the fee product in Shopify

The Cancellation Fee must be set up as a standard Shopify product. Follow these steps in your Shopify admin:

1. Go to Products > Add Product.
2. Set a clear Title for the product (e.g., "Cancellation Fee").
3. Under Price, ensure the product is not taxable.
4. Under Inventory, either disable tracking inventory or ensure you have adequate stock to charge the fee.
5. Under Publishing, set the "Online Store" sales channel to Unpublished.
6. Set the product Status to Active.

Note: Only one cancellation product can be selected per subscription plan.

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Cancellation flow

Finally, set up your desired Cancellation Flow. With tailored cancellation flows, you can configure flows that:

• Prevent cancellations with timely incentives or suggesting alternative products
• Gather critical customer feedback with custom, on-brand surveys and
• Personalize the subscriber experience with relevant messaging and upsells

Click None in the Cancellation Flow drop down to select from your list of Cancellation Flows.

To learn more about creating a Cancellation Flow, check out the Cancellation and churn prevention flows overview.

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Publish offer

When you’re satisfied with your selections, click Publish Offer in the top-right corner. Your subscription plan is now live on the product pages you configured.

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Still need help? Contact [email protected].