Shopify Feature Compatibility with Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout

Shopify Feature

Integration Notes

Online Store

Bold Subscriptions integrates with your online Shopify store to allow you to offer subscriptions to your customers.

Themes

Bold Subscriptions is compatible with most themes, including Storefront 2.0 themes.

If you need help installing the liquid code, please visit our Installation Guide for Bold Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

Classic Customer Accounts

When a subscription is purchased, Shopify initiates the customer account creation process and links the customer with their subscription in Bold Subscriptions.

Customers can manage their subscription through the Bold Subscriptions Customer Portal within their Shopify Customer Account area.

Customers will need to register their account using the same email that was used when purchasing the subscription.

Payment Gateways

Bold Subscriptions is compatible with Shopify Payments, PayPal Express, and Authorize.net.

Please visit Payment Options & Eligibility for all available payment options.

Accelerated Checkouts

Google Pay and Shop Pay are approved accelerated checkouts.

For more information on Shop Pay, please visit Shopify's article on how to Activate Shop Pay.

Abandoned Checkouts 

Shopify's abandoned checkout feature is compatible with subscription orders.

Shipping Settings

Your Shopify shipping rates are applied to your customers subscriptions.

If a product or address change is made in the subscriber's account after the initial purchase, this prompts Bold to update the subscriber's shipping method. A new shipping rate is assigned using the following priority:

1. No delivery (for digital products only).
2. Pickup (if and only if it has already been set).
3. Local delivery (if and only if it has already been set).
4. Fixed shipping.
5. General shipping (the cheapest option).

Local Delivery & Pickup

Because Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout uses the Shopify Checkout, it is compatible with all shipping methods provided by Shopify, including local delivery and pickup.

Shipping Locations

The shipping location that the product inventory is pulled from is controlled within Shopify.

Refunds

Subscription refunds are completed within Shopify.

Note: Refunding a subscription will not cancel future orders. For instructions on how to fully cancel future orders, please visit Subscription Management: Merchant Perspective.

Cart/Order Notes

Cart/Order notes can be enabled through the Shopify theme settings. 

Note: Shopify 2.0 themes do not have cart note functionality.

Once enabled, notes will be shown on recurring orders under the notes section.

Bold Subscriptions also offers the option to add subscription notes via the app admin when editing a customer's subscription. These notes will be visible to the store admin only and will populate on Shopify orders.

Fraud Analysis

Because orders are processed within Shopify, all fraud analysis is handled by Shopify. If you have any questions about this, please contact Shopify about their Fraud analysis feature.

Tax Overrides

Tax overrides are a Shopify feature supported by Shopify. If you have any issues with the overrides, please reach out to Shopify.

Subscription-Only Sales Reports Filter

Within Shopify, you can filter your sales reports by purchase option. You can easily view one-time purchases vs. subscription purchases.

In addition, Bold Subscriptions offers even more reporting features. You can find more information about cancellations, sort your customer by product, view transaction reports, and more.

Shopify Flow

Shopify Flow can be used to add order tags to subscription orders. For more information on how to build this workflow, please visit Shopify Flow & Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout Integration.

Shopify Mobile App

Shopify Mobile app is compatible with Bold Subscriptions. Merchants can manage their orders and subscriptions via the Shopify mobile app.

Shopify Feature

Integration Notes

Customer & Order Tags

At this time, Bold Subscriptions is not able to add order tags, but will apply a customer tag of active_subscriber or inactive_subscriber to the customer profile depending on the status of their subscription. 

For more information, please visit Customer Tagging in Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

Note: You can add your own custom tags with the Shopify API or using Shopify Flow.

Inventory

During initial checkout, Shopify utilizes your inventory settings to process orders. 

Bold Subscriptions does not check inventory when processing recurring orders. Therefore, recurring orders will process regardless of inventory available.

New Customer Accounts

The Bold Subscriptions Customer Portal is not accessible from within Shopify's new customer accounts.
It is possible to place the Customer Portal (My Subscriptions) link in another area outside of the Shopify customer account area. This will allow your customer to access the Customer Portal via the storefront once logged in to their Shopify account.

Notifications

Merchants have the ability to control and edit the following email notifications from Bold:

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

Other notifications like order confirmation, fulfillment notifications, abandoned checkout, order refunds, and customer payment method update requests, are controlled by Shopify.

Dynamic Checkout, Accelerated Checkout & Buy Now Buttons

Shopify does not allow the use of accelerated checkouts such as Facebook Pay or Klarna for subscription purchases.

Shop Pay and Google Pay can be used for subscriptions.

The standard Buy Now button can be used if Shopify payments is your payment gateway.

Gift Cards

Shopify gift cards can be used as a payment method at the time of initial checkout when orders contain subscription products.

Gift cards cannot be used on recurring orders. For this reason, customers still need to provide a payment method to ensure that they are billed for their recurring orders.

Note: The gift card amount is only reflected on the order details in Shopify. When looking at customers via the Bold Subscriptions app admin, there will be no indication of the gift card being applied.

Line Item Properties

Line item properties from the initial subscription order will be added to the Shopify subscription contract and recurring orders. They will also be added to the subscriptions line item attributes.

Note: Line item properties will not apply to a subscription contract if the Create Subscription endpoint is used, or if a customer is migrated.

Phone Number

Although you can require phone numbers in the Shopify checkout, if a customer removes their phone number when updating their address in Bold Subscription Customer Portal, this can cause the subscription order to fail until a phone number is added.

We recommend keeping your Shopify phone number settings to optional so that phone numbers do not impact orders processing.

Shopify Scripts

Shopify Scripts can be used by Shopify Plus merchants using Bold to process subscription orders. As per Shopify’s limitations, Scripts that discount subscription prices or shipping rates apply to the first payment only and will not carry over to recurring orders.

You can work with Shopify to enable Shopify Scripts for subscriptions.

Permalinks

Shopify offers built in permalinks to send customers directly to checkout. To use this feature, you must have a technical knowledge. A solution for creating subscription permalinks can be found here.

Note: Bold Subscription Selling Plan IDs change when a subscription group is disabled/enabled or when the group’s frequency is changed. If changes are made to a subscription group often then we do not recommend using Permalinks.

Shopify Feature

Integration Notes

Shopify Point of Sale (POS)

Bold is designed to work with the standard Shopify Checkout. As the Shopify Point of Sale (POS) system creates orders outside of the standard checkout process, subscription products won't work with Shopify POS.

For more information about Shopify's subscription limitations, please visit this article.

Outside Sales Channels

Shopify’s Online Store is the only sales channel that Shopify allows for subscription contracts.

Shopify Markets

Bold Subscriptions will not display the correct price within the subscriptions widget when the Shopify Market is set to a non-primary market.

As well, the Customer Portal is not compatible with shops who have assigned multiple domains through Shopify Markets.

Read more about this in Shopify Markets Compatibility with Bold Products.

Draft Orders

Shopify’s draft orders are currently not compatible with subscription products. 

Order Editing

Merchants can edit orders, but cannot add an additional subscription product to the order. When a product is added to an existing order, it will only register as a one-time product. The change will not be reflected in Bold Subscriptions order history.

This is because Shopify requires all subscription orders to go through their checkout initially.

Automatic & Buy X Get Y Discounts

This is a Shopify limitation. Automatic and Buy X Get Y discounts aren't supported by subscriptions.

For more information about Shopify's discount limitations, please visit Shopify's Help Center.

Combined Discounts

Shopify's combined discounts feature is not yet compatible with Bold Subscriptions.

While the discounts on initial orders can process correctly, only one discount will be applied to future orders.