Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout Overview

Bold Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout allows you to quickly launch and scale your subscription business. Packed with features, it seamlessly integrates with your Shopify store to give you the ability to sell your products on a recurring basis.

Bold Subscriptions comes with a robust suite of tools. Out-of-the-box you can:

• Create a variety of subscription types such as standard, prepaid, or convertible.
• Allow your customers to manage their own subscriptions in the customer portal.
• Send email notifications using the built-in email templates.
• Set up a custom cancelation flow to reduce churn.
• Download reports to analyze your subscription data.
• Access powerful APIs.

And much more...

For more information, select an option below. When you're ready, visit Set Up Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

Availability & installation

Bold Subscriptions is currently available on Shopify. 

Bold Subscriptions must be properly installed to your theme in order to run correctly. You can follow the steps outlined in either of the following articles:

• Activate Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout - this guide takes you through the in-app onboarding flow.
• Manual Installation Guide for Bold Subscriptions - this guide allows you to install manually.

Each theme on your Shopify store is different. If you're switching to a new theme, the installation must be completed on the new theme as well. 

Price plan

Currently, Bold Subscriptions has a monthly fee of $49.99, with a 1% transaction fee that applies to orders with a subscription product present. A 30-day free trial is also offered to your store when it is first installed.

This plan includes all of the following perks, below:

Visit Pricing and Transaction Fees in Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout for more information.

For more information on PCI compliance, please visit Shopify's help center.

Eligibility

To ensure your store is eligible to run Bold Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout, please visit Payment Options & Eligibility in Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

If you are interested in migrating your subscription business, please visit Migrating to Bold Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

Features

Standard subscriptions

You can easily add a subscription option to your products with a just few clicks. Offer subscribe & save discounts and a variety of frequency options to encourage recurring orders.

Create, customize, and build your own unique subscription offerings. Use the cutoff days feature to match your billing cycle with your fulfillment cycle for a seamless flow.

To see how to set up a subscription, please visit Create a Standard Subscription Group.

Example

Prepaid subscriptions

Give your customers the convenience of paying upfront for multiple orders while still receiving their orders on a recurring basis.

Prepaid subscriptions build customer loyalty and generate predictable recurring revenue for your store.

Offer your customers higher discounts for subscribing for longer periods of time, offer both standard and prepaid subscriptions at the same time, or offer prepaid subscriptions on their own.

To learn more about prepaid subscriptions and how to set one up, please visit Prepaid Subscriptions.

Convertible subscriptions

Convertible subscriptions give you the ability to automatically swap the product in your customer’s subscription to a different product after the initial order. This feature allows you to create unique subscription campaigns for your business.

The following examples provide some ideas:

• Offer a trial-sized product that converts to a full-sized product.
• Provide refills after the initial product is purchased, such as a dispenser for soaps, lotions, or scents.
• Exchange a starter kit for a specialized product, such as a beginner cooking set that follows up with recipes, spices, or sauces.

Offer your customers different discounts between the initial product and recurring product for further incentive to subscribe!

To learn more, please visit Convertible Subscriptions.

Total customer control

Allow your customers to manage their own orders by editing, skipping, and swapping products within their Customer Portal. You can decide what actions your customers can perform within Bold Subscriptions' settings.

Allowing your customers greater flexibility in managing their own subscriptions can reduce churn. Customers may choose to simply skip an order rather than cancelling altogether!

To see a full list of actions that can be completed by your customers, please visit Subscription Management: Customer Perspective.

Example

Voluntary & involuntary churn reduction

Reduce churn by creating custom cancellation flows for your customers and managing situations when transactions fail, through the Cancellation and Dunning Management settings.

Using these tools, you can collect feedback from your customers if they choose to unsubscribe. When a transaction fails, you can determine the number of tries Bold Subscriptions will perform, alongside which actions. You can choose to simply pause a subscription, or skip the order instead of allowing the subscription to be cancelled.

To read more about using these features along with their setup, please visit Cancellation & Dunning Management in Bold Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

Full subscription management tools

Not only can your customers manage their own subscriptions through the Customer Portal, but you are also able to access each of your customer’s subscriptions to perform a variety of actions. Edit upcoming orders, add a product to an existing subscription, pause or reactivate subscriptions and more.

Use the log in as customer feature to view and use the customer portal as your customer would. This allows you check the permissions you have enabled for your customers, as well as troubleshoot any issues on your customer may be seeing on their end.

To read more about all the actions you can perform when managing your customer’s subscriptions, please visit Subscription Management: Merchant Perspective.

Customizable Email Notifications

Within Bold Subscriptions, there are a variety of email notifications you can use to send automatic notifications to your customers, such as:

• Subscription Created
• Transaction Failed
• Upcoming Order
• Expiring Credit Card

These emails are fully customizable to allow you to adjust the wording and provide specific instructions to your customer which are unique to your process. Preview these emails by sending a test email to yourself!

For more information on email notifications please visit Email Notifications in Edit Settings in Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

Reports, activitylogs & analytics

The in-depth reports, activity logs, and analytics within Bold Subscriptions will allow you to download important information within a CSV file so you can analyze your business.

In the Dashboard, you will be able to see your subscription information at a glance such as:

• Active subscriptions
• Average subscriber value
• Churn rate, estimates, and trends

In Reports you will be able to see and download all your current subscriber information as well as historical data such as:

• All subscriptions
• All customers
• Customers by product
• Cancelled subscriptions
• Transaction fees and sales

Within the activity log, you can review a log of all your customer's changes, app setting changes and other activities. You can filter by event, user type, and date range.

For a detailed explanation of these features and all the available reports, please visit Dashboard Analytics, Reports & Activity Logs.

Ready-made integrations

Bold Subscriptions has a wide variety of ready-made integrations, both with third-party developers and other Bold products, such as Bold Upsell.

Subscriptions and Bold Upsell integration

Bold Upsell helps maximize your conversions and increase your lifetime customer value. With both apps together, you can create the following types of offers:

• Upsell a subscription to a customer looking to purchase one-time.
• Show product offers to your existing subscribers in the customer portal.
• Email product offers to existing subscribers in the Subscription Upcoming Order email.
• Offer one-time purchase products to customers who are purchasing a subscription on the storefront.

Read more about this in Bold Upsell and Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout Integration.

Third-party integrations

More developers are choosing to build with Bold everyday. These powerful integrations help increase the functionality of Bold subscriptions and expand your business model. For example, you can:

• Offer gift subscriptions using the new integration with Govalo Gift Cards.
• Create SMS, MMS and text marketing campaigns and services using Bold webhooks with SimpleTexting.
• Deliver targeted multi-channel marketing campaigns to your Bold subscribers with Klaviyo.
• Track subscriptions that are processed in the Shopify checkout with Google Analytics and Littledata.
• Connect Bold Subscriptions to over 2,000 other web services with Zapier.
• Increase your average order value and turn a one-time purchase into a subscription with Bold Upsell.

For more information on these integrations and more, please visit our Integration Hub for Bold Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

Access to powerful APIs

Bold Subscriptions was designed with developers in mind. For those with developer knowledge, our powerful APIs and webhooks can be leveraged to build and scale a subscription service that fits your business. Tailor your setup, subscriptions and customer portal for a one-of-a-kind subscription experience and drive dependable recurring revenue as you scale.

For more information, please visit our Developer Portal.

Using APIs requires advanced knowledge. It is recommended to have your own developer if you plan to leverage the APIs in Bold Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.