Getting paid on a rhythm
Memberships and subscription boxes — plans, tiers, and what happens at each renewal.
Overview
A subscription is something a customer keeps paying for: a class pass, a coffee box every month, a supporter tier. You set the price and the rhythm once, and the charge repeats on its own.
Subscriptions live in their own part of the side navigation, separate from Products, because they behave differently — the money arrives on a schedule rather than one order at a time.
Recurring billing runs through Stripe, so you'll need Stripe connected and a plan that includes selling before you can take a subscriber.
Memberships and boxes
Every plan is one of two kinds, and the choice decides whether anything needs packing:
- Membership — recurring dues for something you provide yourself, like classes or a supporter tier. Nothing ships, so nothing appears in your fulfillment queue.
- Box — goods each cycle, shipped to the subscriber or picked up at one of your locations. The tier carries a list of what goes in it, so you know what to pack. Shipped boxes go only to the countries on your Ship to list, and subscribers aren't charged shipping on top, so build postage into the price.
If you expected something to pack this month and there's nothing there, check which kind the plan is. A membership renewal is deliberately silent.
Create a plan
A plan holds the price, the rhythm, and the levels a customer can choose between.
- In the side navigation, under Commerce, open Subscriptions and go to Plans.
- Create a plan and choose whether it's a membership or a box.
- Add at least one tier — a level of the plan, like Standard or Premium, each with its own price.
- Choose the interval: Monthly, Yearly, or Monthly + yearly. Offering both lets the customer pick, and the yearly price is usually the discount that makes them commit.
- Add any add-ons — extras a subscriber can put on top of their tier.
- Decide whether sales tax applies. It's opt-in, and once on it applies at checkout and on every renewal after it.
- Save, then add the plan to your site so people can actually sign up.
A price that's already in use can't simply be edited. Change it and a new price is created behind the scenes, while existing subscribers stay on what they signed up for — changing what people already pay is a deliberate act, not a side effect of fixing a typo.
Watching your subscribers
Subscribers, under the same Subscriptions heading, is where you see who's on a plan, which tier they hold, and whether their payments are healthy. Five states are worth recognizing:
- Active — paying, and current.
- Incomplete — checkout started, but the first payment hasn't gone through.
- Past due — a payment failed and is being retried.
- Canceled — ended, and kept here so you can see who left and when.
- Unpaid — the retries gave up. Access has usually lapsed by this point.
Past due is the one to act on. A short, human note about an expired card recovers more subscribers than any automated retry ever will.
What subscribers can do themselves
Subscribers get their own page for managing their plan, reached from a link in their emails. It's deliberately self-serve, so most of what people want doesn't need you at all.
From there they can switch to a different tier, add or drop add-ons, update the card they pay with, and cancel. Canceling takes effect at the end of the period they've already paid for rather than cutting them off mid-month, and they can change their mind and resume any time before that date.
You can cancel for them too, from Subscribers: at the end of the period, or right away with a refund of the unused time or of the whole period. A cancellation set for the end of the period can be resumed until that date.
They're emailed along the way without you lifting a finger — when they subscribe, when they change or cancel, when a payment fails, and a week before a yearly plan renews.
Renewals and money
Renewals charge automatically — you don't send an invoice and the customer doesn't do anything. That's the point, and it's also the thing to keep an eye on: a subscriber who has quietly stopped paying shows up as Past due rather than as a missing order.
Payouts work exactly as they do for the rest of your store: the money goes to your Stripe account on your usual schedule.
Retiring a plan
When a plan has run its course, set its Status to Archived rather than deleting it. That stops new sign-ups without touching anyone already on it — existing subscribers keep their plan, their price, and their renewal date until they choose to leave.
Frequently asked questions
A membership bills for something you provide and ships nothing. A box sends physical goods each cycle, and its tier carries the list of what goes in. Only the box produces something to pack.
Yes — set the interval to Monthly + yearly and the customer chooses on your site before checkout. Pricing the year below twelve months is what usually makes people take it.
Tiers are levels of the same plan, like Standard and Premium, each with its own price. Add-ons are extras a subscriber puts on top of whichever tier they're on.
Nothing — they stay on the price they signed up for. A new price is created for new sign-ups instead. If you want to move existing subscribers, that's a deliberate conversation with them, not an edit here.
Set its Status to Archived. New sign-ups stop immediately and everyone already on it carries on exactly as before.
Yes, from the manage page linked in their emails. Canceling normally takes effect at the end of the period they've already paid for, and they can resume before that date if they change their mind.
They'll show as Past due while the payment is retried, and we email them right away with a button to update their card. If that doesn't do it, a short personal note usually will — an expired card is the usual cause.
Only if you turn it on for the plan. When it's on, it applies at checkout and on every renewal after that.
Yes — each cycle produces the shipment for that subscriber, and the tier tells you what goes in it. Memberships don't, by design.
Not directly. You can import your plans — tiers, add-ons and prices — from a spreadsheet, but a subscriber is created when someone checks out on your site, because the billing itself lives with Stripe. Ask existing members to subscribe on your site, then cancel their old plan. You can export your subscribers anytime.