How to Set Up Recurring Payments on Shopify

Recurring payments turn one-time buyers into subscribers, giving a Shopify store predictable revenue and stronger customer retention. They're transactions that happen automatically on a set schedule — a monthly subscription box, a replenishment order, or a recurring service fee. Shopify supports them through its subscriptions system, and this guide walks through setting them up in five steps, from confirming eligibility to handing customers control of their own plans.

Understanding Shopify subscriptions and recurring payments

What are Shopify subscriptions?

Shopify Subscriptions lets customers buy a product or service on a repeating schedule — weekly, monthly, yearly, or another interval the store chooses. The customer agrees to a price and frequency, and payment is taken automatically from their saved payment method at each interval. Customers manage their own subscriptions from their account: skipping an order, pausing, resuming, updating shipping details, changing payment methods, or canceling.

How recurring payments work

Recurring billing runs on subscription plans. A plan defines the products included, the delivery frequency, the duration, and any discount. Plans are created either in the free first-party Shopify Subscriptions app or directly from a product's purchase options in the Shopify admin. Once a customer subscribes, Shopify charges their saved payment method on the schedule the plan defines — billing runs the day after the subscription is due, at 10:00 am in the store's local time. That small detail matters when you're reconciling payouts or explaining charge dates to a customer.

Benefits

Recurring revenue is more predictable than one-off sales, which makes planning easier. Subscriptions also lift retention — keeping a customer costs far less than acquiring a new one — and the automated billing removes manual work while giving customers a low-friction way to reorder what they already want.

Step 1: Confirm eligibility and create a subscription plan

Check the store is eligible

Before building a plan, confirm the store meets the requirements for the Shopify Subscriptions app:

• Theme. The theme has to support sections and blocks to display subscription options on a product page. Any Online Store 2.0 theme by Shopify qualifies, as do the Horizon family themes, Debut on version 15.0 or later, and Brooklyn on version 17.0 or later.
• Sales channel. Subscription products are supported on the online store, Shopify POS, Shop, and custom storefronts. They aren't supported through draft orders.
• Payment gateway. The store needs a gateway that supports recurring billing (covered in Step 3), and availability varies by region.
• Staff access. Anyone who needs to work in the app requires the apps and sales channels store permission.

A few features don't coexist with subscriptions, and it's cheaper to know now than to discover it after launch: bundles aren't compatible with the app, the order edits API doesn't support subscriptions, and Shopify Scripts and gift cards apply only to the first payment rather than the whole schedule.

Create the plan

To create a plan in the Subscriptions app, go to Subscriptions > Plans in the Shopify admin, click Create new plan, name it, choose the products, set the delivery frequency, add a discount if desired, and save. The same can be done from a product page: under Purchase options, choose Add purchase option > Create new option. During setup, the app adds a purchase options cancellation policy and the related email notifications to the store so customers understand the terms.

If the first-party app doesn't fit, the Shopify App Store has a mature set of third-party subscription platforms to compare on features, pricing, and reviews — our guide to Shopify subscriptions covers where the native app stops and the alternatives start.

Step 2: Customize subscription products

Once a plan exists, tune how each product is sold. A product's subscription details appear in the Subscriptions section of its page in the admin (Products > select the product), where they can be viewed and edited.

Each product can be sold as a subscription only or as both a subscription and a one-time purchase — controlled by the Sell product as a subscription only checkbox on the product page. Discounts can be targeted too: on the discount-code page, the Purchase type setting lets a discount apply to subscription purchases, one-time purchases, or both, which is a useful lever for encouraging sign-ups. Automatic discounts apply across all subscription orders, so check which behaviour you actually want before publishing one.

Step 3: Configure payment settings

Choose a supported payment gateway

Recurring billing only works with gateways that support subscriptions. For the first-party Shopify Subscriptions app that currently means Shopify Payments, PayPal Express, Authorize.net, Adyen, and Stripe for select merchants, with availability depending on region and terms of service.

Shopify Payments is the simplest option and carries two practical advantages: an automatic card updater that reduces failed payments when customers are issued new cards, and accelerated checkouts including Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. If Shopify Payments isn't activated, third-party transaction fees apply. Authorize.net supports PayPal as a wallet option but not Apple Pay or Google Pay. Local payment methods, Klarna among them, can't be used for subscriptions at all — worth checking if a meaningful share of your checkout volume runs through one.

Set the retry rules for failed payments

Recurring charges are processed automatically on the plan's schedule; there is no manual capture step to remember. What does need a decision is what happens when a charge fails or stock runs short. In the Subscriptions app settings you control the number of billing retry attempts, the days between them, and the fallback when every attempt fails — skip the order, pause the subscription, or cancel it. You can also decide whether subscription products track inventory, which determines whether a stock shortfall blocks a billing attempt.

These settings are the difference between involuntary churn quietly eating a subscriber base and a program that recovers most of its failed payments. Set them deliberately rather than leaving the defaults unexamined.

Store payment information securely

Shopify stores customers' payment details securely for future charges and applies its built-in fraud-prevention tools. Merchants can't access full card numbers after entry, which keeps recurring transactions compliant with industry standards without extra work on your side.

Step 4: Manage subscriptions

Give the right people access

Subscription plans and contracts are managed from the app in the Shopify admin. Staff need the apps and sales channels store permission before they can open it, assigned under Settings > Users and permissions. Grant it to whoever handles customer service on subscriptions, not just the store owner — a support request that has to wait for one person is the most avoidable cause of a cancellation.

Track subscription data

To see how plans are performing, add the Purchase option filter or column to sales reports. This surfaces subscription performance alongside other sales data and supports better decisions about plans and pricing.

Handle cancellations and refunds

Customers will sometimes cancel or request refunds, and Shopify makes those manageable. The important part is having clear, fair policies and communicating them up front so there are no surprises. Cancellation through the customer account is immediate and permanent, so a well-placed pause or skip option often saves a subscriber who would otherwise have left.

Before uninstalling a subscription app

Removing a subscription app is destructive. Uninstalling the Shopify Subscriptions app permanently deletes subscription plans, contracts, and related discounts, and Shopify's general guidance on uninstalling apps is that some app data can't be recovered afterwards. Export anything you need and confirm the app's own data-retention policy before you remove it — particularly if you're migrating between subscription platforms and expect contracts to carry over.

Step 5: Improve the customer experience

Show subscription details at checkout

Customers should see exactly what they're committing to. The order summary shows the subscription frequency and any discount, and the Shipping method section shows the shipping cost per delivery; with multiple subscription items, those appear under each line. Before completing the order, the customer has to agree to the cancellation policy — an important safeguard against confusion and chargebacks.

Let customers manage their own subscriptions

Customers reach their subscriptions by signing into their account through the store menu, a link in the store footer, or a "manage your subscription" link in the automated emails. From the Subscriptions tab they can view details and past orders, skip one or several upcoming orders, pause and later resume, replace a payment method, and update a shipping address.

Enabling that self-service is a setting in the app, and it's worth turning on before you take the first subscriber. Every action a customer can take themselves is a support ticket you don't handle, and a skip or a pause is a far better outcome than the cancellation a frustrated customer reaches for when there's no alternative.

Set the subscription policy and email notifications

The app adds a purchase options cancellation policy to the store, and a default template is shown to customers if you don't write your own. Replace it. The default is generic, and the cancellation policy is the one piece of text a customer reads before committing to a recurring charge — it should state plainly how to cancel, when the next charge lands, and what happens to an order already in flight.

Email notifications are configurable in the same place. You can activate or deactivate both the notifications customers receive and the ones sent to you, and edit their content under Settings > Notifications in the admin. Upcoming-charge notices are the ones worth getting right: a customer who is reminded before a charge appears is far less likely to dispute it.

Manage free-shipping discounts

Free shipping is a strong incentive for subscriptions. With a free-shipping discount, a store can apply it to the first payment only, a set number of payments, or all future subscription payments, and existing discount codes can be edited to include subscription rules.

Next steps

Set up well, recurring payments on Shopify give a store dependable revenue and customers a convenient way to reorder. The work is mostly upfront — an eligible theme and gateway, a clear plan, sensible retry rules, and a transparent checkout — after which the billing runs itself. If you're still deciding whether the model fits your catalogue, start with selling subscriptions on Shopify.

First Pier is an ecommerce agency in Portland, Maine that builds and optimizes Shopify storefronts, including subscription and recurring-payment setups. For help, get in touch.