Create Your First Subscription Plan

Let's build a classic "subscribe & save" plan as a worked example: customers subscribing to any coffee product get a delivery every month and save 15% on each order. You can adapt every step to your own products.

Go to Subscription plans and click Create new plan. The plan builder opens with a setup sidebar showing three steps:

• Select products (required)
• Plans — the actual subscription option(s)
• Shipping profile (optional)

A preview panel on the right shows the plan exactly as customers will see it in the widget, updating as you type.

Choose which items can be subscribed to:

• Specific selected products — pick individual products (and, if you want, only certain variants). Best when you're starting with a few hero products.
• Product in selected collections — every product in the chosen collections is subscribable. Best for whole categories like "Coffee" — new products added to the collection are covered automatically.

For our example, we select the Coffee collection. At least one product is required — the builder won't save without it.

Click Add subscription plan and fill in:

1. Plan name — this is the text customers see in the widget. Write it from their perspective: "Deliver every month — save 15%".
2. Payment type — choose Pay as you go (billed at each delivery — right for our example) or Auto-renew prepaid (customer pays several deliveries upfront). Details in Payment Types & Delivery Frequency.
3. Delivery frequency — 1 month for our example. Any combination of a number + days/weeks/months/years works.
4. Offer incentives — enable it, choose Percentage, enter 15. The preview now shows a "Save 15%" badge and the discounted price.

Optionally enable Show frequency description to add your own explanatory line under the plan name.

You can add several plans to the same group — e.g. "Every 2 weeks — save 10%" and "Every month — save 15%". Customers pick their frequency in the widget dropdown.

Save the plan and check its status in the plan list — it must be Active (a Draft plan is saved but invisible to customers). The list shows every plan with its products/variants count, purchase type, and quick actions to Duplicate, Delete, or toggle status.

Open any product from the selected collection on your storefront. You should see the purchase options widget with:

• One-time purchase at the normal price, and
• your plan ("Deliver every month — save 15%") at the discounted price.

Select the subscription, add to cart, and check out — Shopify will ask for a subscription-capable payment method. The new contract then appears under Subscriptions in the app.

If the widget doesn't appear, walk through Widget Not Showing on Product Pages — it's almost always the app embed, plan status, or payment gateway.