Subscription Group Settings

Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout provides many powerful subscription group settings to help you create a variety of unique subscriptions that satisfy both your customers and your business’ needs.

In each subscription group, you can determine the products you’d like to offer for subscription, the subscription type, the frequency of the subscription, and discounts.

This article provides a detailed description of the options available to you when creating up your subscription groups.

Subscription types

In each subscription group, you are able to determine the type of subscription you would like to offer your customers. These are as follows:

• Standard Subscriptions - This subscription type allows your customers to sign up for a regular pay-as-you-go subscription that provides the same product(s) from order to order. Read more about how to Create a Standard Subscription Group.
• Prepaid Subscriptions - This subscription type allows your customers to prepay for a specific number of orders in advance. Read more about this in Prepaid Subscriptions.
• Convertible Subscriptions - This subscription type allows you to automatically swap the product in your customer’s subscription to a different product after the initial purchase. Read more about this in Convertible Subscriptions.

Standard subscriptions can be offered with or without prepaid options. Prepaid subscriptions can be offered with standard options or with prepaid options only. Convertible subscriptions cannot be offered with prepaid options.

Subscription frequency

The Subscription frequency settings in the subscription group determine how often your customers can receive orders and when. For example, you can allow subscriptions to recur on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis either on the same day as the initial order or on a specific day. Customers can choose how often they’d like to receive their subscription by selecting one of the frequency options you’ve made available.

The two types of subscription frequencies are Non-fixed and fixed. Read more about these below.

Non-fixed subscription frequency

Non-fixed frequency orders recur based on the day of your customers initial purchase. This means that each customer's subscription can recur on different dates.

Based on frequency, orders recur on the following schedule:

• Daily subscriptions recur every number of days you select, starting from the time of your customer's initial purchase.
• Weekly subscriptions recur every number of weeks, on the same day of the week that the original order was placed. For example, if an initial order is placed on a Thursday, the recurring order will complete every following Thursday on a weekly basis. If it is placed on a Monday, it will recur every Monday.
• Monthly subscriptions recur every number of months you select, on the same day of the month as the original order. For example, if an order is placed on the 15th, it will recur every month on the 15th.

  Note: If an order is placed on the 31st, the order for a month without 31 days uses the next closest date. For example, an order placed on Jan 31st will recur on feb 28th, or in the case of a leap year, it will recur on the 29th.

• Yearly subscriptions recur every number of years you select, on the same month and day of the original order.

Fixed subscription frequency

Fixed subscription frequency orders recur at fixed intervals. For example, they could recur each month on the 15th, every week on Monday, or the first weekend of each month (custom occurrence). This is different from non-fixed subscription frequencies since all orders recur at the same time, regardless of when the initial order was placed.

Cutoff days

Cutoff days are used with fixed subscription frequencies to prevent the initial order and the second order from falling too close together. Cutoff days allow you to set a minimum amount of time that must pass between your customer's first and second order. If the second scheduled order falls within the number of cutoff days you've specified, the second order will be skipped.

This ensures your customer is not charged twice before they have received their first order.

The cutoff day controls are available depending on the recurrence type you select under the Advanced options, such as specific day of the month or custom occurrence.

Minimum order requirement

The Order requirement setting allows you to specify a minimum number of orders that must pass before a subscriber can cancel their subscription. This feature ensures that customers must stay subscribed for a minimum number of orders in order to benefit from your subscription discounts.

The minimum number of orders include the initial order. For example, if your setting says that Customers can cancel after at least 3 orders, this means that customers can cancel after the initial order and two subscriptions orders have passed.

If a customer attempts to cancel their subscription before the minimum amount of orders have passed, they will not be able to activate the cancel button from within the customer portal. A message appears to let them know how many orders they have left before they meet the minimum requirement to cancel.

Additionally, customers who are subscribed to multiple products will not be able to remove a product from their subscription until the minimum order requirement is met. However, the above message will not be displayed to customers in this scenario.

Only a store admin can remove a product or cancel a subscription with a minimum order requirement.

Important considerations

It’s important to check with your local laws before applying a minimum order requirement. Some regions have laws specifically disallowing this. Due to local laws, subscribers with a shipping or billing address in California will be able to cancel their subscription regardless of any set minimum order requirements.

The subscription widget does not display information about the minimum order requirement to potential subscribers. It’s best to ensure that you clearly communicate any subscription restrictions on your storefront, such as in your product description.

If a customer is subscribed to multiple different products which belong to different subscription groups with different minimum order requirements, the maximum order requirement will be applicable to all products. This is true even if one product does not have a set minimum order requirement.

Minimum order requirements can only be used with Standard and Convertible subscriptions.

Subscription discounts

You can add discounts for subscribing in the subscription group settings. Discounts incentivize your customers to subscribe and encourage them to stay subscribed for longer.

Standard, prepaid, and convertible subscriptions all have their own discount settings.

Pro-tip: You can offer additional discounts to your subscribers using Shopify discount codes. For more information, please visit Discount Codes for Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

Standard subscription discounts

You can offer a Subscribe and Save discount to customers who purchase a product as a standard subscription. These discounts can remain the same through the duration of the customer's subscription, or you can add a dynamic discount to change the discount amount automatically after a certain number of orders have passed. 

Dynamic discounts

You can use dynamic discounts with standard subscriptions to change the discount automatically after a specified number of orders have passed. For example, you can set the discount to 5% off until three orders have passed and then increase the discount to 10% off. 

The number of orders that must pass before the discount changes includes the customer’s initial purchase. For example, if you specify that the discount should change from 5% off to 10% off after the third order, this means that the discount will change automatically after the initial order and two recurring orders have passed.

Alert: Swapped products do not receive discounts when dynamic discounts are enabled.

Prepaid subscription discounts

Prepaid subscriptions have their own discount settings. Prepaid subscriptions can have different discounts applied to each prepaid subscription length. For example, you can offer a 5% discount to customers who purchase three orders, a 10% discount for six orders, and 15% discount for 12 orders.

Convertible subscription discounts

Convertible subscriptions have their own discount settings. You can offer the same or different discounts on both the initial product and the recurring (swapped) product. If different discounts are selected, then the discount amount automatically switches when the convertible product is swapped in.