What you need before you install anything
Get your fulfillment story straight first. Decide the cadence (weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly), whether you'll discount the subscription vs one-time purchase, and how you'll handle stockouts on a renewal day. You also need Shopify Payments or another gateway that supports vaulted cards — most third-party gateways don't, and you'll find out the hard way on the first billing cycle.
- A list of products that actually make sense as subscriptions (consumables, not one-off items)
- Shopify Payments enabled, or a gateway with stored payment method support
- A clear discount policy: percentage off, free shipping, or first-order incentive
Pick an app and install it
The app is what creates selling plans, runs the cron jobs that bill customers, and gives shoppers a portal to manage their subscriptions. Loop and Recharge are the well-known options; SimpleSubscription is the leaner, cheaper alternative if you don't need the enterprise feature bloat. Whatever you pick, make sure it uses Shopify's native subscription contracts API and not the deprecated legacy billing.
Create selling plans and attach them to products
A selling plan is Shopify's term for "this product can be bought on a recurring schedule." In the app you'll define the interval, the discount, and which products it applies to. Don't attach a selling plan to every product — only the ones that genuinely renew. Customers get confused when a one-time gift item shows a "Subscribe & Save" option.
- Group products by cadence (monthly coffee, weekly produce) and use one selling plan per group
- Test the discount math against your margin before going live
- Decide if customers can switch between one-time and subscription on the same product
Add the widget and test the full checkout
Most apps drop a theme app extension block on the product page. Add it, preview it, and actually click through to checkout with a real (test mode) card. The two things that break most often: the widget price not matching the cart price, and the selling plan not being passed to checkout so the order looks like a one-off. Test both before going live.
Common mistakes that bite you in month two
Merchants get the first order working and assume the rest is automatic. It isn't. Renewals fail when cards expire, customers want to skip a delivery, and someone will inevitably email asking to change their address. Make sure your app sends dunning emails, has a customer portal, and that you've actually clicked through it yourself as a real customer would.
- Verify dunning emails actually send (check spam, check your sender domain SPF)
- Click through the customer portal as a real customer would
- Set up at least one test subscription and let it renew once before launching