Introducing our new subscription features.

As we said in our latest blog post, subscriptions are a very effective way to increase customer retention and recurring revenue while saving on customer acquisition costs. Forward-thinking brands have already implemented subscriptions around their products or they’re actively looking into how to do so.

The problem with subscriptions is that they aren’t easy to implement. While the concept is simple — get a recurring order of a product into the customer’s hands — there are a ton of use cases that must be considered. This is why most ecommerce platforms do not offer subscription support out-of-the-box and often rely on third-party developers to build plugins or extensions to power subscriptions on their platforms.

That’s why we’re especially proud to announce our newest wave of subscription improvements, which will make it substantially easier to build the kind of subscription that works for you — whether it’s as simple as a recurring order of essentials for the family, or as sophisticated as a monthly order of curated snacks for you.

Our new Subscription endpoints

This release now includes a few new endpoints to supplement our existing order subscription endpoint.

These new endpoints make it much easier to build out sophisticated subscriptions that maximize its benefits. Of course, should you still require custom logic to power your specific subscription use case, it’s still possible to do so via CRUD operations on the order subscription resource directly.

Subscriptions models

Subscription models defines the frequency and split of subscriptions. Each subscription model can also be associated with a market, which makes it possible to create different subscription models for specific markets.

Setting up a subscription model allows brands to manage the frequency and payment source of the subscription, as well as apply promotions on the first order of the subscription (often used to discount first orders or provide a free trial of the product).

The subscription model endpoint also allows you to apply subscriptions at the SKU level, not just the order level. This enables orders to be split between one time purchases (e.g. a razor handle) and a subscription purchases (e.g. a monthly order of razor blades).

Order subscription items

The order subscription item endpoint determines which items are part of the subscription, making it much easier to change out items in the subscription when required.

Price frequency tiers

The price frequency tier endpoint enables specific pricing for an item if it’s part of a subscription (e.g. charging $15 for a razor pack as a one-time purchase and charging $12 for the same pack if it’s part of a subscription).

You can also provide different prices for different plans (such as charging $12 for a monthly pack of razors or $120 for a year of monthly razors).