Create a Standard Subscription Group

Setting up a subscription group on your store will allow your customers to purchase any of your products on a recurring basis. 

When creating subscription group, you can select which products you would like to offer to your customers as a subscription, set the frequency options they can choose from, and offer a subscription discount as an incentive to subscribe.

At this time, only standard subscriptions can be created within Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

Functionality

Once a standard subscription group has been created and activated within Bold Subscriptions, a subscription widget appears on the product page. 

Using the options in the subscription widget, customers can either choose to subscribe at a particular frequency, or purchase the product one time.

Cart functionality

After a subscription product is added to your customer's cart, they can continue shopping as they normally would. This means that multiple items can be added to the cart prior to your customer checking out.

Subscription frequencies

Using the Subscription frequency options in the subscription group settings, you can determine how often you'd like your customers to be able to receive orders. For example, you can to make your product available on a weekly and monthly basis. These options will be available for your customers to choose from when they purchase a subscription on your store.

There are two types of subscription frequencies: Non-fixed and fixed. 

Non-fixed subscription frequency

Non-fixed frequencies orders recur based on the day of your customers initial purchase. This means each customer can have a different date at which their order will reoccur.

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. If an order is placed on the 15th, it will recur every month on the 15th. If an order is placed on the 31st, the order for the next month will use 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 that the original order was placed.

Fixed subscription frequency

Fixed subscription frequencies 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 because regardless of when the order was placed, all orders recur at the same time.

When using a fixed subscription frequency, it is best to use cutoff days. This feature is useful to ensure that the recurring order does not take place too soon after the initial subscription purchase on your store. For example, if you have a monthly subscription that recurs on the 15th of each month and a customer orders on the 14th, you wouldn't want to have the order generate both on the 14th and 15th.  Cutoff days allow you to skip the next order for that customer.

Cutoff days

Cut off days are used with fixed subscription frequencies 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 prevents a subscriber's initial and second order from occurring too close together to ensure 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.

Advanced options such as RRULES are available for those who have Bold Cashier installed on their store. For more information on using RRULES with Cashier, please visit Create RRULES for Bold Subscriptions.

Setup

When creating your subscription groups, you will be presented with multiple features that can be enabled within the group. For an explanation of these features and step-by-step instructions, please follow the steps below.

1. Within Bold Subscriptions, select Subscription Groups.

2. Select Create Subscription Group.

3. Enter a Group name.

   Note: This is an internal name, your customers will not see it.

4. Select Select Products.

5. Select the checkbox beside all of the products you'd like to include in the group.

   Note: Digital products will not require a shipping address be entered in the checkout.

6. Select Confirm.

7. Set your Subscription Frequency. Select Days, Weeks, Months or Years.

8. Select Show advanced options. There are a few different options to choose from depending on the frequency you have selected. These are as follows:

   • On purchase day: This will cause the customer's subscription to renew based on the date of their initial purchase.

   • On specific day of the month: This will cause the customer's subscription to renew on the same day every month; regardless of their date of purchase.

   • Custom occurrence: This allows you to set up custom logic for when your customers subscriptions will renew. Additional choices will show after selecting this option.

     Note: If either of the last two options are selected, you will have the ability to Use cutoff days. For more information, please see Subscription Frequencies above.

9. Enter Frequency name.

10. Select Save Frequency.

11. Optional: Select Add new frequency and repeat steps 7 - 10 for additional frequency intervals.

12. Select Offer a discount for subscribing. 

    Note: This provides a Subscribe & Save! incentive to your customers. Discounts applied within this area for Bold Subscriptions will recur on every order for this product.

13. Select Save Changes.

    Note: Newly created subscription groups will be active on your storefront as soon as they are saved.

To create a test order for your new subscription product, please visit Shopify's article Testing Shopify Payments.

To change the colors or appearance of your subscription widget, please visit Customize the Subscription Widget.

Subscription-only products

By default, all products added to subscriptions groups will be available as recurring purchases and one-time purchases. Within your Shopify admin product page, you can enable the setting to only allow purchase of this product as a subscription. This will remove the option for a one-time purchase on the product page widget. 

If you would like your items to be available by subscription only, please follow the steps below once you have finished creating your subscription groups.

1. Navigate to the Shopify admin.
2. Select Products > All Products.
3. Find a subscription product.
4. Select Only allow purchase of this product as a subscription.
5. Select Save.

Activate or deactivate a subscription group

Alert: Deactivating a subscription group will not affect recurring orders for any customers who already have existing subscriptions. Existing subscription orders will continue to generate as normal. This only turns subscription options off on your storefront. 

Once you create and save a subscription group, it is automatically activated. This means the subscription options for the products in that subscription group will be live on your storefront.

If you would like to deactivate your subscription group, move the toggle to the off position on the Subscription group page.