Selling an option by subscription
On the Settings tab, Add Products opens your catalogue. Tick the options to sell by subscription, and Add: each renews every month until you change it. Its pencil sets how often it renews:
An option on this list is sold only as a subscription: a buyer cannot buy it once instead. To sell both, give the product two options, for example “One Month” and “Monthly”, and add only the second. A change to how often an option renews reaches new subscriptions only: one already running renews as it started.
Stop Selling as a Subscription, in an option’s menu, sells it once again from then on. Subscriptions to it that are running keep renewing until you or the buyer cancel them.
Deleting a product, or taking an option out of it, is different: there is nothing left to sell again. Every subscription to it renews no more and ends when what was paid for runs out, and a renewal waiting to be paid is cancelled at once, so nobody pays for something that can’t be delivered. A past-due one ends straight away. The Delete Product dialog says how many subscriptions it ends.
What the buyer sees
A subscription is bought from your store, in an embed or in the Checkout Kit. Never through an invoice or a payment link. Its product’s page says how often it renews under the price, “Renews every month” in the buyer’s language, for the option they pick, in every theme. The checkout says it again on the line, and how each renewal is paid: charged to the card they pay with, or by a link they are emailed. A subscription is bought on its own. A cart with a subscription and anything else says so on the line, and Pay is refused until the rest is taken out, so each renewal is one clean order. When the first order is paid the subscription starts, and the order delivers as any order does. It renews at the option’s price before any sale or coupon, for the quantity bought, in the currency of that order: a coupon or a sale is the first order’s alone. A later change to the option’s price does not reach it.How a renewal is paid
A few days before what was paid for runs out, Shoply makes the renewal: an unpaid order in the buyer’s name for the next period, at the subscription’s price, taxed as the first order was. How it is paid is under How Renewals Are Paid in Settings:- Automatically Where It Can: a buyer who pays by card through Stripe, Authorize.net or Tagada, on Mollie’s, MONEI’s, Adyen’s or Square’s page, or through NMI with Keep Cards for Subscriptions on, has that card kept in your own account there, and each renewal is charged to it on its day. Stripe’s card form tells them so as they pay, and the checkout says so under the subscription. Every other way to pay renews by email.
- Always by Email: every buyer is emailed a link to pay, whatever they paid with.
Charged automatically
On its day, a renewal with a kept card is charged to it, with the buyer not there. Paid, it renews and the buyer is sent its receipt, as for any order. A subscription’s page says what it Renews With, the provider that keeps its card, such as “Card (Stripe)”, and the card, and its history each charge. A card that is declined is tried again once a day, as many times as Tries for a Declined Card says (3 unless you change it), while the grace period lasts. Meanwhile the subscription is Past Due and keeps what it has. The buyer is emailed the first time it is declined and the last, with the renewal’s link, which takes another card or any other way you take payments. A decline a day cannot mend is not tried again: the bank wants the buyer there to approve it, or the card ran out or is gone. A renewal the buyer pays by its link with another card keeps that card for the next one, while Change How They Pay is on. For a card kept through Stripe it also lets them give another from their customer panel, with Change Card, on Stripe’s own page; nothing is charged there. The other providers have no such page here, so a buyer whose card is kept there changes it by paying a renewal by its link. Stripe, Authorize.net, Tagada, Mollie, MONEI, Adyen, Square and NMI charge by themselves for now, and only where they are your card methods: with another card method beside them, a buyer could pay by a card that is not kept, so the checkout says renewals are by email. A card already kept stays charged either way, and so does one kept through NMI after Keep Cards for Subscriptions is turned off: the switch stops new cards being kept. Subscriptions from before automatic charging was turned on renew by email until a renewal is paid by card.When a renewal is not paid
A renewal not paid by the renewal date is Past Due. For the grace period (3 days unless you change it) the buyer keeps what they already have, and nothing new is delivered. They are emailed that it is due. It is under Needs Attention on the Subscriptions tab, with Email Again, which sends the renewal email once more, at most once an hour for one subscription. When the grace period runs out unpaid, the subscription ends: its renewal is cancelled and the buyer is emailed that it ended. A renewal paid after that still completes, as a late payment always does, and starts the subscription again from that day.Cancelling
On a subscription’s page, Cancel Subscription ends it When the Period Runs Out, after what was paid for, or Straight Away. Nothing is refunded either way. While a cancellation is waiting to take effect, Undo Cancellation takes it back. Add Free Days makes what was paid for, and every renewal after it, that many days later. A buyer can cancel from their customer panel while Cancel is on in Settings. When It Ends says which of the two that is, and Undo a Cancellation lets them take it back until the period runs out.Pausing
On a subscription’s page, Pause stops it for a week up to a year. While it is paused:- Nothing renews. A renewal waiting to be paid is cancelled, no renewal email goes, and it never becomes past due.
- Where Take Access Back When It Ends is on, its license keys and files are hidden from the buyer, as an ended one’s are. Off, what was delivered stays theirs.
- The time left of what was paid for is kept. When it resumes, what was paid for runs on from there, so it renews that much later, and every renewal after it is counted from the new day.
Settings
The figures
A subscription’s page has its orders, the first and every renewal, and its history: when it started, each renewal made, emailed and paid, and anything you or the buyer did.
Your server
Seven webhook events say what happens to a subscription:subscription.started, subscription.renewed, subscription.cancelled, subscription.ended, subscription.paused, subscription.resumed and subscription.charge_failed, sent each time its kept card is declined. A renewal’s order also sends every order event, as any order does. Where a subscription ended or was paused with its access taken back, subscription.ended and subscription.paused are how a server that delivers dynamically is told, and subscription.resumed that access is back.
With an API key, your server can do everything the Subscriptions page does: list subscriptions and read one with its history and orders, cancel, undo, pause, resume, add free days, email a renewal again, choose which options are sold by subscription, and change the settings. Reading needs Read Subscriptions and the rest Change Subscriptions. See Subscriptions in the API reference.
A storefront of your own reads it from the catalogue: an option sold by subscription has renews, how often, and type 1, and shoply.renews(variant) reads it.