How To Setup WooCommerce Subscriptions On Your Store

Retaining a customer is more profitable than acquiring a new one. And subscription services do a tremendous job in keeping your loyal customers engaged.

In fact, 70% of business leaders say subscription business models will be key to their prospects in the years ahead.

Think about it.

A system where you can keep earning from a customer on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, and as a business owner, your only job is to maintain the quality of the offered service.

Tein Tzou(Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zuora), mentions in his book that…

“Subscriptions are the only business model that is entirely based on the happiness of your customers. Think about it—when your customers are happy, then they’re using more of your service, and telling their friends, and you’re growing.”

– Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future – and What to Do About It

This will blow your mind:

“According to a report by Zion Market Group, the global subscription and billing management market was valued at USD 3.8 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach USD 10.5 billion by 2025, at a rate of 15.5% between 2019 and 2025.”

Every major online business is adapting this model of success and if your online store is on WooCommerce, then you are in the right place. The WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin can help you implement subscriptions successfully on your eCommerce store. More on this later.

In this article, I will further discuss the importance of subscription products and services and how to set up WooCommerce subscriptions.

Table of Contents

Let’s get on with it.

Importance of Subscription Products And Services

Subscription business models have been implemented by sellers of tangible products and virtual goods alike.

But it is slightly difficult in the case of tangible products due to their dependency on physical distribution. Which, as we all know, has been severely affected by the pandemic.

However, when it comes to the digital distribution of goods and services; there is no such hurdle. You can provide a seamless experience to your customer with ease.

By providing quality content and maintaining the level of services, they have created such huge subscriber bases. And those millions of loyal subscribers keep on paying monthly. This monthly recurring revenue keeps the business running smoothly.

The same goes for SaaS businesses, as they too rely on subscription models for the sale of their software programs. The subscription model lowers customer acquisition costs and increases customer retention. 

And it’s not a surprise that the subscription economy grew more than 350% over the last 7.5 years.

If you are looking to sell subscriptions services and products, you need…

The WooCommerce Subscriptions Pro Plugin.

WooCommerce Subscriptions Pro plugin allows you to create, sell, and manage subscription-based products and services. You can sell simple as well as variable subscriptions for physical and digital goods. 

Powerful features of our plugin:

1. Create WooCommerce Variable Subscription Product
2. WooCommerce Payment Gateway Compatible
3. Allow Customers To Select Subscriptions Expiry Date
4. Automatic Retrying For Failed Payments
5. Set Number of Failed Attempts for WooCommerce Recurring Payments
6. Automated WooCommerce Subscriptions Cancellation
7. Exclusive Coupon Types With WooCommerce Subscriptions Pro
8. Handle WooCommerce Subscriptions Proration
9. WooCommerce Pause Subscription Plans
10. Notifications and Reminders Emails for Subscription Related Actions
11. API of Course For Details On Mobile App
12. Active WooCommerce Subscription Export Function
13. Configure More WooCommerce Subscription Services
14. WooCommerce Upgrade Subscriptions/Downgrade Plans
15. Subscriptions Start Date and Expiration Date By User or Admin
16. Subscription Plans Details
17. Change Button Text 

Every feature is placed so that you can design and provide the most flexible subscription plans to your customers. 

I understand if you are skeptical because our plugin promises a lot. We have a free version called Subscriptions for WooCommerce plugin that you can use to take the test run. 

Dear readers, now we are on the technical part of this article and here you will learn the ways to create subscription products and services for your WooCommerce store.

How to Set Up WooCommerce Subscriptions PRO

WooCommerce Subscriptions PRO is fairly simple to set up. Follow every step as I describe in this section. 

Note: The pro plugin will only work if you have installed the Subscription for WooCommerce plugin. 

Installation

Automatic installation is the easiest option as WordPress handles the file transfers itself. To get your purchased plugin, follow these steps:

1. After completing your plugin purchase, Go To My Account.
2. From My Account, go to the “Download” section. [Here, you can easily find all your purchased MWB plugins].
3. Click on the “Download” button present across your purchased plugin to download it. 
4. Now, log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
5. From the sidebar, click on Plugins.
6. Click on Add New.
7. Click the Choose File button and choose your downloaded plugin’s .zip file, and click on Install.
8. Now, click on the Activate button.
9. You’re all set to use the WooCommerce Subscriptions PRO. 

To start creating simple and variable subscription products, go to the General Settings and Click on the Enable Subscriptions checkbox. 

Now that you are ready to use the plugin, let’s explore and configure various settings. 

1. Easily Create Simple Subscription Product

No matter what subscription plugin you use. The process of creating a subscription product is manual. We just make it far easier. Here’s how: 

• Go to “Products” and click on “Add New”.
• Type in the product name and from the Product data drop-down list, select “Simple Subscription”.

Note: This option is only available after the activation of the WooCommerce Subscriptions PRO plugin. 

You can set the subscription price of your product and its payment cycle. For example, if my subscription product is green tea, I want to set a monthly subscription period for 10 dollars.

You can set the “Expire Date” on your subscription and also decide the signup fee if you want to.

You can also offer a free trial period for subscription products. Trial periods are common for virtual products like software programs, plugins, etc.

Now, you have to add a product image by clicking on the “Set Product Image”

After setting up the product image, click on “Publish” to post your subscription product.

2. Effective Management of Subscription Plans

Creating a simple subscription product is easy compared to its management and marketing. Our subscription plugin takes care of the former, and you can focus on the latter. WooCommerce Subscriptions Pro provides a subscription tab to monitor the subscriptions plans. 

The table presents the following information:

• Order
• Subscription Status (active, canceled, or expired)
• Subscription Product Name
• Recurring Amount
• User Name
• Next Recurring Payment Date

Here, you can view & download active subscriptions plans, delete or cancel subscriptions plans, and view subscription renewal orders. 

3. Allowing Effortless Subscription Cancellation

As a store owner, I’m sure you would love your customers to keep renewing their subscriptions for as long as you are in business. But customers don’t share the same sentiment.  

They may come across cheaper subscription providers, they don’t have the money to sustain their subscription plans, and so on. The reasons for cancellation can be many. 

Follow these steps to enable subscription cancellation:

• Go to Dashboard > MakeWebBetter > Subscriptions for WooCommerce > General Settings > Allow Customers to Cancel Subscription.
• Select the checkbox, ‘Allow Customers To Cancel Subscriptions’. 

With this subscription plugin, you can ensure that the customers can easily cancel their WooCommerce subscription plans whenever they wish to do so.  

4. Customize Add to Cart Button And Place Order Text 

You can edit and update the “Add-to-Cart” button text according to your liking. Place Order text can also be customized.

5. Creating Variable Subscription Products 

Variable subscription products are a bit more complicated to create. There can be multiple variations of a product based on attributes such as color, height, weight, etc. So, let’s see how to set up variable subscription products: 

• Go to Products > Add New. 
• Select Variable Product from the Product Data.
• Go to Attributes and Click “Add” to add new attributes 

• After updating the Attributes, go to Variations. 
• Click on the “Add variation” drop-down, select “create from all attributes” and click Add.

• Click on the menu button to change subscriptions settings for variable products.
• Tick the subscription checkbox for enabling subscriptions on variable products. The variable products will now be available for subscriptions.

You can enter several important details about your variable subscription product such as sales price, subscription expiry interval, free trial interval, subscriptions per interval, and much more. 

The best thing is that you can configure different subscriptions settings for different variations. 

6. Flexible and Fair Subscription Pricing 

The biggest concern your users have is not getting a fair subscription rate on subscribing to a product on an irregular billing period. Being fair to your customers will earn you their respect and loyalty. 

Keeping that in mind, we have provided prorated billing for variable subscription products in our plugin. 

There are three options for proration: 

• Charge Prorated Amount for Subscription
• Do Not Charge Prorated Amount
• Charge Prorated Amount For Subscription Even Free Trial

So, these were the ways to set up the WooCommerce Subscriptions PRO plugin to expand your subscription business and provide value to your customers. 

Advanced Features of WooCommerce Subscriptions PRO

We have got the basics done. Now, it’s time to scale up.

WooCommerce Subscriptions PRO plugin is in a class of its own. It has 29+ features that offer several benefits over the average WooCommerce subscription plugins of the same kind. 

Advance settings introduce the features that will drive your subscription program to the next level.

1. Allow Customers To Select Subscription Expiry Date

Our plugin is tailored to provide customer-centric subscriptions. Using the advanced setting, you can allow your customers to select the expiration date of their selected subscriptions. 

2. Enable Automatic Retry Subscription On Failed Attempts

if any subscription renewal order fails due to some error then it will automatically retry for a certain time.

3. Allowed Number of Failed Subscription Payment Attempts 

You can decide how many failed subscription renewal attempts are allowed. After the attempts are exhausted, the subscription will be canceled. 

4. Allow Customers to Pause Subscriptions 

As a merchant, you have to provide absolute flexibility to customers and be empathic towards their issues. 

Customers might not be able to always continue their subscriptions. For reasons, you might never know. In this situation, outright dismissing them is rude and harmful for your business. 

With the WooCommerce Subscriptions Pro plugin, you can allow your customers to pause their subscriptions for a certain period. 

5. Let Customers Restart Their Subscriptions

You can also allow your customers/subscribers to restart their subscriptions whenever they want. This adds another level of convenience to your subscription model. 

6. Manual Payment for Subscriptions

The more, the merrier. This holds for online payment methods. Adding to that, you can provide customers with a manual payment option for subscriptions. Send the payment link via email to accept manual payment from customers.  

7. Subscription Expiry Reminder Email 

Humans are forgetful in general. It’s common to forget passwords, important dates, where you kept your keys, and subscription renewal. So, we rely on reminders to jog our memory. 

With WooCommerce subscriptions, you can send an email to remind your customers when their subscriptions are going to expire. 

8. Schedule Subscription Expiry Email

As a WooCommerce store owner, you will have the ultimate control over your subscription models. You can set the number of days after which the reminder email for subscription expiry will be sent to subscribers/customers.

9. Upgrade/Downgrade Variable Subscriptions

When customers Upgrade or Downgrade their variable subscriptions plans in the middle of their subscription period the cost calculations become all the more challenging. 

10. Upgrade/Downgrade Button Customization

Subscriptions for WooCommerce plugin offers a small customization option for the Upgrade/Downgrade button. It allows you to customize the button text. 

11. Accept Prorate Sign-up Fee On Upgrade/Downgrade Variable Subscription

Variable subscription signup on a non-standard billing period can create problems for fair pricing. But WooCommerce Subscriptions Pro accepts prorate billing for variable subscription products and charges on the fair billing amount. 

12. Accept Prorate Price On upgrade/Downgrade Variable Subscription

Accept a prorate price when your subscribers/customers upgrade or downgrade the variable subscription plans. 

13. Start Subscription From the Certain Date of the Month for Subscription

Flexible subscription settings are good for both you and your customers. Adding to that, you can allow your customers to select the date of starting their subscription plan. 

14. Prorate Amount for Certain Date of Month Subscription

The proration is applied to allow customers to pay for their subscriptions based on the period of use and duration of their subscription. Using our plugin, you can apply the following three types of proration to your subscription plans: 

a) Charge Prorated Amount for Subscription

The purpose of this option is to prorate the initial payment. If the start of the subscription plan and payment submission day is separated by several days, you have the option of accepting or rejecting payment for the remaining days. 

b) Do Not Charge Prorated Amount

Customers will not be charged a prorated amount if this option is selected. You will not be allowed to accept payments for the subscription plan’s remaining days.

c) Charge Prorated Amount For Subscription Even Free Trial

The subscription plan will be charged at a prorated rate if you choose this option. It will also cover the costs of the free trial.

15. Allow Customers To Add Multiple Subscriptions In Cart

According to a report by Deloitte, the average US household has nine paid subscriptions spread across videos, music, and gaming. So, it’s clear that people opt for more than one subscription. 

From a business standpoint, you can allow your customers to add multiple subscriptions to their cart and increase the recurring revenue even more. It will help you maximize the profit. 

16. Allow Shipping Cost On Subscription Products

You can impose a tax on physical subscription products and services such as subscriptions boxes for wines, soaps, tools, etc. 

17. Sell Subscriptions Coupons

Generate unique WooCommerce subscription coupons for subscription-based items using our plugin, which are valid on all WooCommerce subscription products. There are four types of discount coupons: 

a) Initial Signup Fee Discount

This type of coupon is only valid for those WooCommerce subscription products that include a signup fee.

b) Initial Signup Fee Percent Discount

You can provide percentage discounts to customers on the WooCommerce subscription sign-up fees.

c) Recurring And Subscription Product Discount

This discount coupon provides a fixed discount for both the subscription products and renewal orders. 

d) Recurring And Product Percent Discount

Customers can redeem this coupon to get a percentage discount for both the subscription products and renewal orders. 

18. WooCommerce Subscriptions Table

Subscription products and services require effective monitoring. Our plugin maintains the record of all existing subscriptions plans details in a tabular format. You can oversee the following details: 

• Order
• Status of the subscription (active, canceled, or expired)
• Subscription-based product name
• Recurring amount
• User name
• Next recurring payment date.

Now, it doesn’t just simply monitor the details. It also allows you to make the following changes:

a) Delete or Cancel Subscription Plans

Hover over the subscriptions plan and a cancel option will appear. Click on it to cancel the subscription plan. 

b) Filter the Subscriptions Table

The long lists are usually hard to sort. That’s why we have put the feature to filter the subscriptions table by order id from the search bar. 

c) Export Active Subscription Plans

Export all active subscription plan details in CSV file (Subscription ID, Parent Order ID, Status,

Product Name, Recurring Amount, User Name, Next Payment Date, Subscription Expiry Date).

d) View Subscriptions Renewal Order

Order renewal ensures the recurring payment for your subscriptions. You can see all recurring orders for any subscription.

So, these are the amazing features of the WooCommerce Subscriptions PRO plugin. There are several more that I didn’t mentation here. You can read the full feature list in the section below and compare the freemium and premium versions of our WooCommerce subscription plugin.

WooCommerce Subscriptions Free VS PRO

Let’s compare the WooCommerce Subscriptions Pro and Subscription for WooCommerce plugin to have a better understanding. The latter is free and can be downloaded from MakeWebBetter’s WordPress.org profile. 

Obviously, the paid version offers more features but the usability gained from going pro will revolutionize your subscription business. It is worth spending every dime. 

Now, let’s look at some examples of popular subscription products. 

Example of Successful Subscription-Based Business 

Birchbox: Birchbox sells beauty products such as makeup, skincare, hair products, etc. in subscription boxes. As you can see, they offer tangible products as part of their subscription programs and they have monthly and yearly subscription plans.

Dollar Shave Club: This brand has been so successful that you will find tons of case studies on it. Dollar Shave Club made a mark in time through its subscription-based business model. Its customer-centric service has resulted in high recurring revenue.

So, there were some of the most famous subscriptions products. Notice that both of these products are used daily. Similarly, you can also create and sell subscriptions for common products and build your subscriptions business. It doesn’t always have to be something fancy. 

Final Words

A successful subscription model ensures recurring revenue and generates huge amounts of profit. The recurring revenue generation makes the financial growth predictable and helps you scale your business. 

I have explained how to apply a subscription model through the WooCommerce Subscriptions PRO plugin. Plus, the free version is also available to download. 

In this article, I have also shown you how to create a simple product and variable subscription product. Follow these steps and enhance your subscription business.

And hey, check out our blogs If you want to learn more about the best eCommerce practices.