Add the thing being subscribed to
Create it as a normal product, with its photos and its outright price. It stays sellable as a one off, so you are not choosing between the two.
Subscriptions
Charge once, then keep charging, without chasing anybody.
Set the billing period and the price on a plan, attach it to a product, and every renewal after the first is taken on schedule by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or bank transfer. Automatic payouts to your bank.
14-day free trial. No card required.
Renews monthly$65
Payment received$420
How do I sell subscriptions online?
Selling a subscription online means charging the same customer on a repeating schedule instead of once. In Crate you build a selling plan that sets the billing period, the price on that plan and how long the commitment runs, then attach it to a product, so the same item can be bought outright or subscribed to. The customer checks out normally and every renewal after that is taken automatically on the schedule you set. You can pause a subscription, resume it, move the next billing date or cancel it from the same order screen you use for one off sales. When a renewal payment fails the subscription is flagged and retried rather than quietly dropped, so you find out while the customer is still yours.
How to start selling a subscription.
Getting started
Four steps, in order. Each one is a screen you can open on the first day, not a project.
Build a selling plan
Set the billing period, the price on that plan, and how long it runs. The plan is reusable, so a second product joins it later without being set up again.
Attach it and publish
Attach the plan and the subscribe option appears at checkout beside the outright price. Buyers pick which they want instead of you guessing for them.
Watch the first renewal land
The first renewal is what proves the schedule is right. It arrives as an order like any other, so nothing new has to be learned to fulfil it.
What is different about selling a subscription.
What is different here
Every kind of product has a detail that decides whether the software fits. These are the ones that decide it here.
The billing period is the product
Weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual changes what the thing is, not merely when it is paid for. The period lives on the plan rather than on each customer, so every subscriber on it renews on terms you can reason about.
Pausing is not cancelling
Somebody travelling for a month wants to stop and start again, and a platform that only offers cancel turns a pause into a lost customer. A paused subscription keeps its history and its next date, and resumes where it stopped.
A failed renewal is a deadline, not an error
Cards expire and balances run out. A renewal that fails silently is a customer who has already gone before anybody notices, so a failed billing period is flagged and retried while the relationship still exists.
Your buyers are already in a thread.
Where you sell
A subscription is nearly always sold to somebody who already bought from you once, and that second conversation usually happens in a thread rather than on a website.
In your market that usually means Your store, Instagram and In person.
Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and bank transfer.
Getting paid
The first payment and every renewal are taken by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or bank transfer, using the method the customer chose at the start. Automatic payouts to your bank.
Money from card sales lands in your bank account on a rolling two-day schedule. Nothing to claim, nothing to withdraw.
- Card
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
- Bank transfer
How it reaches the buyer.
Delivery
A renewal creates a real order on the day it is charged, so a subscription box is packed and sent exactly like a one off order and nothing about your routine changes.
- Set your shipping rates by zone, by weight or as one flat rate, and the checkout works them out for the buyer instead of you quoting in a thread.
- Offer pickup beside delivery. A buyer who is nearby collects, and the order still goes through the same queue and the same stock count.
- Print the order, mark it packed, mark it sent. The buyer gets the update without you writing a message.
- Every order from every channel lands in one queue, so nothing is fulfilled twice and nothing is missed.
What it costs.
One subscription covers the store, the catalog, the order queue, the customer records and the counter. There is no separate charge for selling in chat, and no charge per kind of product.
Priced and paid in US dollars. Every plan opens with a free trial and no card.
What you would actually use.
The product
Named plainly, and each one has a page of its own if you want the detail.
Payments and payouts
Take card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and bank transfer, the ways your customers actually pay....
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Customers
Every customer and their full order history land on file automatically. Group them into...
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Analytics
See your best sellers, your top customers and the channels bringing the most orders. Real...
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Selling subscriptions, answered.
Can I sell the same product outright and as a subscription?
Yes. A selling plan attaches to a product rather than replacing it, so the product can offer both and the buyer chooses at checkout.
What billing periods can I set?
The period is set on the selling plan, so weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual are all possible. Everybody on that plan renews on the same period.
Can a customer pause instead of cancelling?
Yes. A subscription can be paused and resumed, and it keeps its history and its place in the schedule rather than starting over.
What happens when a renewal payment fails?
That billing period is marked failed and retried rather than dropped silently, so you can see which subscriptions need attention instead of finding out from the takings.
Do renewals become normal orders?
Yes. Each renewal creates an order in the same queue as everything else, so it is picked, packed and marked sent the same way.
Can I change the price of a running subscription?
Price lives on the selling plan, so changing the plan changes what renews on it. Subscribers sit on a plan you can see rather than on a hidden per customer arrangement.
Where does the money land?
In your own payout account, in US dollars. Money from card sales lands in your bank account on a rolling two-day schedule. Nothing to claim, nothing to withdraw.
Selling something else?
Nearby
The same platform underneath, told in the language of the thing you make.