Subscriptions add a recurring way to buy your products. Instead of a single checkout, a customer agrees to receive a product on a repeating schedule and be charged each time. Understanding two ideas — the purchase option and the subscription contract — makes everything else in the app easier to follow.

A purchase option is the offer a customer subscribes to. It defines how often the product is delivered, any discount, and the rules around it (whether they can pause, how long they’re committed, and so on). You attach a purchase option to one or more products, and it shows up on those product pages as a “subscribe” choice.

A single option can offer several frequencies — for example “every month” or “every 2 weeks” — and the customer picks one when they subscribe.

When a shopper chooses the subscribe option and checks out, two things happen: they pay for the first order, and a recurring agreement is created for future orders. From then on, the app places each renewal order automatically on schedule.

Once a customer subscribes, their ongoing agreement is called a subscription contract. It holds the products, the frequency, the price, and the next order date. A contract moves through a few states over its life:

Both you (from your admin) and the customer (from their account) can manage a contract — pausing, skipping a delivery, changing frequency, swapping a product, or cancelling.

It helps to separate two schedules that are usually the same but don’t have to be:

For most plans these match (charged monthly, delivered monthly). Some models — like Prepaid — deliberately bill less often than they deliver.