Shopify subscriptions let customers buy once and receive the same product on a schedule, which suits coffee, supplements, pet food, skincare and anything else people run out of. The setup itself is quick. The parts that decide whether it works come later: the first renewal, the first failed card and the first customer who wants to skip a month. I’ll cover the choice between Shopify’s own app and third-party apps, plans and product pages, payment gateways, failed payments and how to test a full cycle. Details are current as of October 2026.
Decide what kind of subscription you sell
Settle the business model before you touch an app. Shopify describes three common types:
- Replenishment: the same essentials on a schedule, often with a small discount.
- Curation: a box with different items each time.
- Access: a membership fee for perks or lower prices.
Then decide the billing. Pay-as-you-go charges for each delivery, while prepaid takes payment upfront for several deliveries. Not every app handles both, so confirm yours does before you promise prepaid plans. Choose the delivery frequencies you’ll offer, the subscriber discount, and whether the product stays available as a one-time purchase. Fewer options are easier for customers and for whoever packs the orders.
Shopify Subscriptions or a third-party app?
Shopify’s own Subscriptions app is free and covers the core well. You can create plans that renew weekly, monthly or yearly, offer a percentage, fixed amount or fixed price discount, and let customers pause, resume, skip or cancel from their account. It emails customers three days before each recurring charge and includes reporting. For a straightforward replenishment product, it’s where I’d start.
Third-party apps such as Recharge, Loop Subscriptions and Appstle Subscriptions go further. Depending on the app, you get build-a-box and bundle options, product swaps, cancellation flows with retention offers, loyalty features and deeper analytics. Pricing usually scales with your subscription volume or revenue, and some have free entry plans. Choose one if you need those features now, not because you might someday.
Think about switching costs from day one. Subscription contracts and saved payment details live in Shopify, but other data a third-party app holds is deleted 48 hours after you uninstall it. Never remove a subscription app without a migration plan.
How to set up Shopify subscriptions step by step
This is the order I’d follow with Shopify’s app. Third-party apps follow a similar path.
- Check your payment gateway. Subscriptions need Shopify Payments, PayPal Express, Authorize.net, Adyen or Stripe, depending on your region. Buyers must pay with a method that can be charged again later, so manual and many local methods won’t work. With Shopify Payments, buyers can also subscribe through Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal. Shopify keeps the current list on its Shopify Subscriptions requirements page.
- Create a plan. Add a title customers will see, a delivery frequency (a number plus weeks, months or years), any extra frequency options, and the discount. Behind the scenes, Shopify stores this as a selling plan: a set of pricing, billing and delivery rules attached to products, the same structure that pre-orders use.
- Add products. Attach the plan to the products or variants it covers.
- Decide on one-time purchases. In the product’s admin page, check Only sell this product as a subscription if it’s subscription-only. Those products can be sold only on the Online Store channel.
- Add the widget to your theme. In the theme editor, open the product template, add the Subscription widget block to the product information section, and save. Shopify’s Online Store 2.0 and Horizon themes support it.
- Write your cancellation policy. Selling subscriptions adds a purchase options cancellation policy under Settings > Policies. If you leave it empty, customers see a generated template, so write your own.
On the product page, put the one-time price, the subscription price, how often it ships and how to cancel right next to the button. At checkout, Shopify shows the delivery frequency under each subscription item and an agreement confirming the buyer will be charged until they cancel. Nothing in that agreement should come as a surprise after reading your product page.
Customer accounts and self-service
Subscribers manage everything from their customer account: pause, resume, skip an upcoming order, cancel, update the payment method and change the shipping address. They sign in with their email and a six-digit code, so there’s no password to forget. Stores still on legacy customer accounts get a subscription management link instead. Shopify deprecated legacy accounts in February 2026, so if you still use them, plan the move.
Make the account link easy to find in your header and in every subscription email. A customer who can’t work out how to skip a month may cancel instead, or dispute the charge with their bank. Rules on renewal notices and easy cancellation vary by country and by US state, and they keep changing. This isn’t legal advice, so have a lawyer check your terms for the places you sell to.
Failed payments and dunning
Cards expire, get replaced or hit their limit, so plan for failed renewals on day one. In Shopify Subscriptions, go to Apps > Subscriptions > Settings and set:
- The number of retry attempts after a failed payment.
- The days between retries.
- What happens when every retry fails: skip, pause or cancel the subscription.
- Matching retry settings for renewals that fail because a product is out of stock.
Shopify Payments also uses automatic card updates, which reduce failures when customers get new cards. For more visibility, Shopify Flow, free from the Basic plan up, has a trigger for failed subscription billing attempts, which you can use to tag the customer or alert your team. If you want a failed renewal to start a follow-up in your CRM or email platform, that’s the kind of workflow I build in my automation work.
Test a full subscription cycle
Shopify’s test payment gateway doesn’t work with subscription products, so use Shopify Payments in test mode instead: go to Settings > Payments, click Manage next to Shopify Payments, and enable test mode. Then:
- Buy a subscription and check the order, the subscription in the app and the confirmation email.
- Sign in as the customer and skip, pause, resume and cancel.
- Update the payment method and shipping address from the account.
- Try a declined test card from Shopify’s test card list to see the error a buyer gets.
- Check the product page and checkout wording on a phone.
- Confirm the first order reaches your analytics as a purchase with the right value. My conversion tracking setup covers this.
If you’d like this built and tested for you, subscription setup fits into my Shopify development work.
What to do next
- Pick the model, frequencies and discount.
- Confirm your gateway supports subscriptions.
- Start with Shopify Subscriptions unless you need a third-party feature now.
- Write your cancellation policy and product page wording.
- Set retries and the final action for failed payments.
- Test the full cycle in Shopify Payments test mode.
Related reading: Shopify Email Marketing: The Flows to Set Up Before You Spend on Ads and How I Set Up Shopify Markets to Sell Internationally.
FAQ
Is the Shopify Subscriptions app free?
Yes, the app itself is free. Your normal payment processing fees still apply to every charge.
Can I sell subscriptions with PayPal?
Yes. PayPal Express is a supported gateway, and with Shopify Payments active, customers can also pick PayPal at checkout. Without Shopify Payments, third-party transaction fees apply.
Can customers cancel on their own?
Yes. Subscribers can cancel, pause or skip from their customer account, and Shopify’s subscription emails link straight to it.
Can I move subscribers from one app to another?
Yes, with care. Shopify Subscriptions can take over existing contracts from other apps. Test with a few contracts first, and keep the old app installed until renewals run in the new one.
A second pair of eyes before your first renewal date is cheap insurance. Ask for a free website review and I’ll check your gateway, plans and product pages.
