Offering Prepaid Subscriptions

Increase customer retention, and secure a steady and predictable cash flow with prepaid subscriptions.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create prepaid subscriptions that fit your needs and brand, and offer them on your store for an easy and flexible shopping experience.

How it works

Unlike standard, ongoing subscriptions, where customers pay per subscription order, with prepaid subscriptions, customers pay upfront for all their subscription orders for the duration of their prepaid subscription period.

Prepaid subscriptions are offered on your store separately from your ongoing subscriptions, with a separate, dedicated widget. This allows you to focus on selling and promoting your prepaid subscriptions, and also offers your shoppers an easy way to navigate your offers and make a purchase.

Before you start

To start offering prepaid subscriptions, you need to add at least one dedicated active product in Shopify that you’ll only offer as part of a prepaid subscription.

Adding a prepaid product in Shopify

To start offering prepaid subscriptions, you need to first add at least one dedicated product in Shopify. 

Each dedicated product you want to offer prepaid subscriptions on needs to meet the following conditions:

• Must be a new product: Add a new product, with a new SKU, for each billing frequency. Even if you’re offering the same product as a one-time purchase, or an ongoing, regular subscription, you’ll need to create a new product page for your prepaid product.
• Product price: We recommend setting a price that reflects the price of your product multiplied by the delivery frequency and the prepaid duration.
  For example, if the price of your product is $15 and you plan on offering it once a month for 3 months, set the price to $45 or less in Shopify.
• Product title: To differentiate your product from one-time purchases, we recommend giving your product a title that indicates it’s part of a prepaid subscription. For example: Coffee Club, Prepaid Coffee Subscription, etc.

For all other product settings, see the Shopify help center on adding and updating products.

Creating a prepaid subscription plan

To create a prepaid subscription plan: 

1. From your Yotpo Subscriptions main menu, go to Plans.
2. Click + New plan.
3. Select the Prepaid plan option and click Next. 
4. Under Products, click + Add products and select the dedicated products you’ve added in Shopify.
   
   Please note:

   Products in a prepaid plan will include the same delivery frequency, prepaid durations, discounts, etc. If you wish to sell a product according to different terms, create a separate prepaid plan for that product.
5. Under Prepaid options, set the delivery and charge frequency.
   
   Please note:

   The charge frequency must be greater than the delivery frequency, and should both be set to the same period (weeks/months/years).

6. Under Renewal period, set how many times you want the prepaid period to renew. You can set it to automatically renew, or expire after a set number of charges.
7. Under Delivery schedule, decide if you want orders to be processed on the date of purchase of each subscription, or if you want all your orders to be processed on a specific date.
8. Click Save & Launch at the top of the page, and then confirm that you want your new plan to go live on your store. 

Customer portal

Any orders that are part of a prepaid plan will be marked Prepaid in the customer portal. The next charge will show as $0.00 until a new billing cycle begins.

By default, customers will be able to update their shipping address, change their payment method, skip an upcoming order, and cancel or reactivate the subscription. You can control which of these actions are available to customers by going to Store View > Customer Portal Widget > Prepaid plans.