A Subscription Plan is a set of subscription rules that can be applied to one or more products or services in your catalog. If you have a hundred products in your catalog that can all be subscribed to on the same terms, this allows you to create one plan and add those hundred products to the plan rather than recreating the terms on each of those hundred products.
You can create as many Subscription Plans as are needed to accommodate each of the unique combinations of rules that would apply to different types of products in your catalog.
In this article you will learn how to:
- View a list of subscription plans
- Create a subscription plan
- Edit an existing subscription plan
- Delete a subscription plan
- View subscription products on the WordPress frontend
View a list of subscription plans
To view a list of existing subscription plans for your store, navigate to Subscriptions -> Subscription Plans on the left menu.
You will then see a list of all of your subscription plans.
Create a subscription plan
To create a new subscription plan, navigate to the Subscription Plans list and click the Create Plan button at the top right of the screen.
On the Create Subscription Plan page, the first section is General Information and includes the name of the plan and a checkbox indicating if the plan allows one-time purchases. The Name is for your use only and is not displayed anywhere on the customer-facing frontend of your website.
The Allow one-time purchase field indicates if the products associated with the plan can be purchased on a one-time basis or if they are only available as a subscription. If the products are only available as a subscription, this should be unchecked.
In the next section, you will create one or more Conditions that determine the subscription options that are available for products that belong to this plan.
The Interval and Period fields work together to determine the frequency that new orders will be generated for this condition. The Interval field can be set to any positive integer and the Period field can be set to Day, Week, Month, or Year. As an example, if the interval is set to 2 and the period is set to month, a subscription using this condition would generate new orders every 2 months.
The Duration field determines how long the subscription will continue. If set to Valid until canceled, the subscription will continue indefinitely unless it is canceled.
The duration can also be set to end after a specific number of charges.
The Discount fields can be used to provide an incentive to customers to purchase the subscription. This is commonly used for products that allow one-time purchases and/or have multiple subscription conditions. The discounts can be used to drive consumers to the most frequent subscription option. To add a discount to a condition, click on the Discount switch to enable it. You can then add either a percentage or a fixed dollar amount discount.
You can add additional conditions to the plan by clicking the Add Another Condition link at the bottom of the Conditions section. Adding more than one condition to a plan will allow for the customer to select from multiple options on the product detail page. You can add an unlimited number of conditions to each plan.
You can remove a Condition by clicking on the trash can icon on the right side of the section.
The Products section is where you will select the products that are associated with this Subscription Plan.
If you know the names of the products that you want to add, you can use the search box to type the product's name and you will see the matches appear as you type. Click on the row of the product that you are looking for and it will be added to the plan.
Alternatively, you can use the Browse Catalog button to navigate through your store's category structure to find the products that you want to add.
When you click on a specific category, you will then see a list of the products in that category. You can use the checkboxes next to each product to add the ones that you want. When you are done selecting, click the Add button at the bottom of the modal window to add the selected product(s). Each product in your catalog can only be associated with one subscription plan. Products that are already associated with another plan will be clearly marked as shown below.
Edit an existing subscription plan
To edit an existing subscription plan, navigate to the Subscription Plans list and click on the Name link of the plan that you want to edit.
You will then see the current values of all of the fields from when you created the plan. You can change the values of any of the fields, add new conditions, delete existing conditions, add products, or remove products. See the section above on creating new subscription plans for details on each of these fields. When you are done making changes, click the Update button at the top right of the screen.
Delete a subscription plan
To delete a subscription plan, navigate to Subscriptions -> Subscription Plans to view the list of your existing plans. Then click on the Name link of the plan that you want to delete. Click the Delete button that is at the top right of the screen as shown below.
You will then see a modal window asking you to confirm that you want to delete the subscription plan. Click the Delete button to confirm and complete the action.
View subscription products on the WordPress frontend
After you have created a Subscription Plan and assigned products to it, the appearance of those products on the frontend of your WordPress wesbite will change slightly.
If the subscription plan does not allow one-time purchases and has only one condition, the product detail page on the frontend of your website will look something like this:
If the subscription plan allows one-time purchases and has multiple conditions, the product detail page will look like the following:
Like all templates on the WordPress frontend, they can be customized using template overrides and custom CSS to achieve the exact look that you desire.
In the next article, you will learn more about searching and filtering subscriptions.