Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Subscriptions or recurring orders are when your customers or shoppers checkout a product or products from your store, but instead of it just being a one-time sale, the product is sold and delivered to them on a recurring basis. Their billing and shipping information are pre-saved (on Shopify) when they first checkout, and you get recurring revenue from the sales.

Subscriptions or recurring orders can be for multiple periods – weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc based on your store, products, and customer needs! We, at Appstle support all!

We, as a subscription app on Shopify and Shopify plus, integrate with Shopify to automatically process an order on recurring basis, and charge customers on pre-set intervals (set by merchants).

For example, if a customer is signed up for a Weekly subscription plan on your online store, our system will place orders on the customer’s behalf (through Shopify) every week, and charge them for each order automatically 🙂

Yes, Appstle supports Shopify Theme Extension and is hence Shopify OS 2.0 compatible.

Appstle Subscriptions is a Shopify V2 (version 2) subscription app. We are deeply and seamlessly integrated with Shopify checkout and operate according to Shopify guidelines. Given that, the payment gateways currently supported by Shopify for subscriptions, and hence supported by Appstle are:

• Shopify Payments
• PayPal Express
• Authorize.net
• Stripe
• ShopPay
• Apple Pay

For more information on Shopify payment payment guidelines, please review – https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments

Yes! Our subscription widget can be integrated to your homepage/collection pages. The core need for the integration, is to have the ADD TO CART button enabled for the products in the product page. Once this is availabel, please contact our team (available 24/7/365). We will do a quick manual addition of script from our end, and you will be all set.

We have a demo store built just for merchants to preview the look and feel, and some key functionalities that Appstle Subscription provides, before they install the app!  You can visit – demo-appstle-subscription.myshopify.com (the password is 123456).

Also, our tech engineers and product support team provide 1:1 live demos of our product, on request. Please contact us at subscription-support@appstle.com, to schedule a meeting!

Yes, the shipping profiles created in Appstle Subscriptions can be edited! If you want to update the shipping rates or make name any other changes, you can do so by editing the existing shipping profiles from the Appstle dashboard.

Yes, the price of products will be updated automatically in subscriptions orders IF the auto sync feature is enabled. If this feature is not enabled, the prices will not be automatically synced, and would have to be done manually. Appstle also offers other ways such as Bulk Automations and manage/edit subscriptions, to update pricing.

Ofcourse! Customers can buy subscriptions as a gift 🙂

For example, if I am a customer and want to buy a subscription plan for a product/products for one of my friends, I will enter my billing details and my friend’s shipping details at the time of checkout 🙂

Appstle offers three types of billing – a) Pay as you Go b) Prepaid One Time and c) Prepaid Auto Renew. The core functionality of all plan types is the same, to charge customers upfront for their upcoming subscription order or orders. The difference lies in how many upcoming orders the customer is charged for at the time of payment processing.

The Pay as you Go type charges just for the ‘immediately next’ recurring order or delivery. In other words, it covers just 1 order cycle. It is the most commonly used billing type.

For example, when you provide ‘pay as you go’ billing for your subscription orders, and offer monthly subscriptions, your customers will be charged on a monthly basis, for their orders. The payment will be processed before their product is shipped every month.  

The Prepaid One Time billing type goes a few notches above the pay as you go model, and allows the merchant to receive the payment for multiple periods of future orders at the same time. For example, Instacart, a well known delivery subscription service operates on monthly subscription (pay as you go) payment model. But it also offers the option to customers, to pay for a full year (12 months) at one time, for a small discount (prepaid billing). 

Please note that in ‘Prepaid One time Billing’, the contract pauses at the end of the billing cycle (in this example, 12 months), and needs to be manually renewed by the customer.

The Prepaid Auto Renew plan is very similar to the prepaid billing type, except that the contract does not pause at the end of the billing cycle (in the above example, 12 months), and auto renews, until the customer expressly cancels the subscription 🙂

We have a dedicated section in Settings (More) > Email Settings where you can do this.

Yes. We have a dedicated section to bundling in Settings (More) > Bundles. You will need to be on a Business-tier or higher plan to use this feature.

All Single product Build-a-box orders contain the individual products as the line items and will affect inventory accordingly.
The order will show both the Parent product with the full price and the box items (child products) at $0.00, so they do not count toward the order total.

In their customer portal, which can be accessed via magic links (delivered through emails) or from their customer account in your store. There will be a ‘Manage Subscription’ button they can click on to be taken to the portal.

In the merchant portal, accessible in the Customers section. Click on the ID of the customer in question to be taken to the portal where you can cancel their subscription.

If you need to do this on a larger scale, you can also use our Update Subscription Status bulk automation in Settings (More) > Subscription Management > Automation Settings. You will need to be on a Business Premium-tier or higher plan to use this feature.

Yes, our app can automatically charge your customers. You can use the auto-charging feature if you are using Shopify Payments, ShopPay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Authorize.net, Stripe or PayPal Express as your payment gateway. For more information, please refer to Shopify’s help doc here: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/subscriptions/setup#eligibility-requirements.

Same as with canceling subscriptions: their customer portal. It can be accessed via magic links (delivered through emails) or from their customer account in your store. There will be a ‘Manage Subscription’ button they can click on to be taken to the portal.

Yes, inside their customer portals. They can do so as long as you provide them the proper permissions to add products/edit subscriptions in Settings (More) > Customer Portal > Permission.

Any Shopify gateway that supports auto-charging. Currently that list is Shopify Payments, ShopPay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Authorize.net, Stripe or PayPal Express. For more information, please refer to Shopify’s help doc here: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/subscriptions/setup#eligibility-requirements.

Yes, you can set a discount for your subscription products when configuring your plans.

You can also provide a discount for a customer retroactively by adjusting the pricing policy of an existing subscription in your merchant portal, accessible in the Customers section. Click on the ID of the customer in question to be taken to the portal to do this.

As Appstle is built on Shopify, displaying our subscription widget on third-party websites (WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, etc.) is not possible.

Whenever a customer places a subscription order, they will receive a confirmation email containing a magic link. They can click this link (in the form of a button) to be taken directly to their customer portal to view their subscription.

Our app operates on a flat-rate model with no transaction fees. For the first $500 of monthly subscription revenue, Appstle is free to use. After that, you can unlock higher monthly revenue and additional features with our higher-tier plans. For more information, please view our pricing options on our Shopify app listing page: https://apps.shopify.com/subscriptions-by-appstle.

Yes, this is possible through shipping profiles. We have a dedicated section for these in Settings (More) > Shipping Profile – Add/Manage, where you can be redirected to Shopify to create a shipping profile that can offer your customers free shipping (set the cost of shipping to 0).

Appstle itself does not handle any tax. As every subscription order goes through Shopify Checkout, any tax rates that you set for your store will apply.

If you simply want to keep Appstle Subscriptions off in your store, you can do this by toggling it off in your App Embeds section of your Shopify theme settings.

If you wish to remove it entirely, simply uninstall our app form your Apps and Sales Channels section in your Shopify Settings. If you choose to do so, we recommend you first pause/cancel any active subscriptions you may have. If you require assistance with this, please reach out to our support team.

As recurring invoice subscriptions do not have credit card info and authorization linked to them, this is not possible. As such, customers will need to make a new auto-charging subscription purchase.

Alternatively, you can use our Quick Checkout feature in Settings (More) > Revenue Boosters > Quick Checkout to create a link with subscription products to send to a customer. They’d simply need to open this link to be taken to Shopify Checkout so that they can place their order.

In your Shopify Admin, navigate to  Settings > Policies > Purchase options cancellation policy.

In your Shopify Admin, navigate to Products > select a product > scroll down to the Subscriptions card > toggle the “Only show this product with these purchase options” label.

This is due to a Shopify limitation where when one-time purchases and subscriptions are in the same delivery profile, come from the same location, and you do not have any specific charge dates set in the subscription rule, shipping for one-time purchases is calculated with the subscription purchases. But if not, the shipping costs will be calculated separately. 

For more information, please refer to Shopify’s help doc here: https://shopify.dev/apps/subscriptions/shipping-delivery#shipping-rates-displayed-at-checkout.