Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout offers your customers the ability to manage their own subscriptions in the customer portal.
Customers can access the customer portal by to logging into their Shopify customer account via the storefront and selecting the Manage Subscriptions link.
This article provides information about the customer portal setup, permissions, and more.
Video Walkthrough
Setup
1. Complete the Subscriptions installation
The customer portal page is created automatically, as soon as you download Bold Subscriptions to your store. By default, this page is titled Manage Subscriptions.
You can place a Manage Subscriptions link in a location of your choice. These steps are typically completed during the installation process.
For step-by-step instructions, please visit one of the following articles:
- Activate Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout
- Manual Installation Guide for Bold Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.
2. Show customer account login links
By default, customers must log in to their Shopify customer account to access the customer portal. Therefore, you must show your Shopify customer account login links in the header of your store and in the checkout. How this appears is dependent on your theme.
Once the customer is logged into their store account, they can click the Manage Subscription link to access their subscriptions in the customer portal.
Subscriptions supports both regular customer accounts and legacy customer accounts in Shopify. For more information on Shopify's customer accounts, please visit Shopify's Help Center.
Pro-Tip: If you do not want to require customers to create an account or you have hidden your store’s login links, you can enable Passwordless Login in Bold Subscriptions so customers can still access the customer portal to manage their subscriptions.
3. Review your customer portal settings
In the customer portal settings, you can select which actions can be performed by your customers when managing their subscriptions.
By default, as long as the customer portal is accessible to your customers, they can perform the following actions:
- Change their product quantity
- Update their shipping address
- Update their customer information (name, shipping address, email)
- Update their payment method and billing address
- Add or remove a discount code
- Swap a subscription product
- Reactivate a previously cancelled subscription
The following section outlines the additional permissions you can enable in the customer portal.
To adjust the Customer Portal settings in the Bold Subscriptions admin, navigate to Settings > Customer portal.
Customer permissions
Customer can pause and resume their subscriptions
When this setting is enabled, your subscribers are able to put their subscriptions on hold whenever they need to, for as long as they need. During this time, they will not be billed or receive any orders that have not yet been sent.
This feature is different than skipping an order since your customer will need to manually resume the subscription. If you prefer not to give your customers this functionality, keep the toggle turned off. You will still be able to pause and resume your customers' subscriptions on their behalf from within the app admin.
Customer can change their next order date
When this setting is enabled, your customers can change their next order to date within the customer portal. This is helpful for customers who would like to receive their next order earlier or later than scheduled.
Customers will have a choice to either update all future orders from the new date selected, or only change the next order.
This setting only applies to subscriptions that are not on fixed intervals such as every Monday or the 15th of the month.
Customer can cancel their subscriptions
When enabled, this setting will allow your customers to cancel their own subscriptions through the customer portal.
If this feature is not enabled, then this option will hide the Cancel subscription option from your customers in their customer portal. Customers will only be able to cancel their subscriptions by contacting your store directly.
Customer can change their prepaid renewal method
Enabling this setting allows your customer to change the default renewal method on a prepaid subscription in the customer portal. For example, if you set the prepaid subscription to renew as a prepaid subscription once all the orders have been fulfilled, your customer can change this to renew as a regular subscription or expire.
Customer can change their order frequency
When this setting is enabled, your customers will be able to change the frequency of their orders within the customer portal. This is helpful for customers who find they need more or less of your subscription product on an ongoing basis.
Customers will only be able to choose from the frequencies that are already available on the subscription product.
Customer can create an additional order
When enabled, this setting places an Order Now button in the customer portal. Clicking the Order now button allows your customer to create a subscription order right away (the order processes within 60 minutes) and automatically skip the original next order date. If desired, customers can recover the original next order shipment if they would still like that order as well.
Customer can add products to their existing subscriptions
Caution: When this setting is enabled, customers are able to add any product regardless of inventory. This functionality is scheduled to be updated to match your Shopify inventory settings in the near future.
This setting allows you and your customers to add an additional product to their subscription right from within the customer portal. The ability to add the additional product as a one-time or recurring purchase depends on the options you have made available for the product.
As an admin, you will need to use the Log into the Customer Portal as the Customer feature to add a product. For more information, please visit Subscription Management: Merchant Perspective.
For customer facing instructions, please visit Subscription Management: Customer Perspective.
Customer can access customer portal using passwordless login
This setting allows your customer to access the customer portal from a storefront link (placed manually by you), without the need to create an account or password. For more information, please visit Passwordless Login in Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.
Replace storefront account login with passwordless manage subscription page
This setting replaces your Shopify store’s customer account login with the passwordless login page leading to the customer portal. For more information, please visit Passwordless Login in Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.
Admin customer portal link
The Admin customer portal link field contains the URL to your customer portal page as it was created upon install (pages/manage-subscriptions). By default, the customer portal page is titled Manage Subscriptions.
If you change the title of your customer portal page in Shopify, you must update the link here as well.
The correct URL must be present in this field in order for passwordless login and the Log in as Customer feature to function correctly. For more information on using either of these features, please visit the following articles:
- Passwordless login: Passwordless Login in Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.
- Log in as Customer: Subscription Management: Merchant Perspective.
Manage subscriptions
Once Bold Subscriptions is set up on your store and your customers have subscription orders, you can manage your customer's subscriptions on their behalf or allow them to manage their own depending on the settings you have enabled in the customer portal.
As the store admin, you are not limited by the permissions you restrict for your customers when making changes to their subscriptions, unless you are using the Login as Customer feature.
For a full list of the adjustments you can make to your customer's subscriptions, please visit Subscription Management: Merchant Perspective.
For a list of adjustments your customers can make to their own subscriptions, please visit Subscription Management: Customer Perspective.
Customizations
You can customize the colors and style of the customer portal using CSS or translate the language. These adjustments require advanced technical skill. For more information, please visit Customize the Customer Portal.