How to sell subscriptions and manage subscribers

In TeleportHQ, a subscription is a store product whose Payment Type is Recurring: you choose how often the buyer is billed, from weekly to yearly, and an optional free trial. Your payment provider charges the buyer every period until they cancel. You see and manage every subscriber in the editor's Growth panel, under E-Commerce → Subscriptions, and buyers manage their own on a My Subscriptions page of your site.

Before you start#

• The store must be turned on. See How to add a store to an existing project.
• Connect a payment provider that can bill subscriptions: Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, Razorpay, Square, Paddle or CoinGate. Until one is connected, Recurring is greyed out and the product form says "Add Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, Razorpay, Square, Paddle or CoinGate to sell subscriptions." See How to accept payments with Stripe or PayPal and How to set up the payment webhook (so orders are marked paid).

Create a subscription product#

1. In the editor's left sidebar, click E-commerce (the card icon). If you don't see it, click Plugins, then E-commerce, then Open next to E-commerce panel. The E-Commerce panel opens.
2. Next to Products, click + (tooltip Add Product), or click an existing product.
3. In Product Name, type the name, for example Bread Box Subscription. In Price, type what the buyer pays each period, for example 24.00.
4. In Payment Type, click Recurring. The line under it names your provider: "A recurring product is billed by Stripe at the interval you pick. The first charge is at checkout, after any free trial."
5. In Billing Interval, choose Weekly, Monthly, Every 3 months, Every 6 months or Yearly.
6. Optional: in Free trial (days), type the number of free days before the first charge, for example 14. Leave it empty for no trial.
7. Click Create Product (or Save Changes).

In the Products list, the product's card now shows Recurring · every month. When you save a recurring product, TeleportHQ makes sure your store has what subscribers need: a My Subscriptions page (address /subscriptions), a My Subscriptions item in your site's account menu, and the subscription emails. Publish your site so shoppers can subscribe.

What your buyers see#

• A Subscribe button. On the product card and page, a recurring product shows Subscribe instead of Add to Cart.
• One subscription per order. A subscription is checked out on its own, one at a time. A buyer who has other items in the cart sees "Subscriptions are checked out on their own. Finish or empty your current cart first."
• Checkout. The checkout says, for example, "Billed every month · first charge today" or "Billed every month · free for 14 days, then every month", and the button reads Subscribe now. The buyer then pays on your provider's payment page.
• Emails. Buyers get an email when the subscription starts ("Your subscription to Bread Box Subscription is active"), when it renews, when a payment fails, and when it's cancelled. See Which emails does the store send to you and your customers?.
• My Subscriptions. Signed-in buyers see each subscription with its next payment date and recent payments. They can Cancel subscription ("You keep your subscription until the end of the current billing period, and you won't be charged again after that."), Keep subscription to take a cancellation back, and Manage billing where the provider has its own billing page (Stripe, PayPal and Paddle).

Manage subscribers#

1. In the editor's left sidebar, click Growth (under Live, below Plugins).
2. In the Growth panel, under E-Commerce, click Subscriptions ("See recurring customers"). The Subscriptions page opens over the canvas, headed Recurring customers: "Everyone on one of your store's recurring plans: what they pay, their status and when they are billed next." Its Refresh button reloads the list.

Until someone subscribes, the page says No Subscriptions Yet: "Customers who buy a recurring product will appear here, with what they pay and when they are next billed."

3. Use the search box ("Search by customer, product...") or the status filter (All statuses, Pending, Trial, Active, Past due, Paused, Cancelled, Expired) to find a subscriber. The figures at the top show Active, On trial, Past due and Monthly recurring (what your subscribers pay per month).
4. Click a subscription. Its details open on the right of the page: the price, the status, the customer, the plan (Billed every, Period ends, Provider and more) and the Orders it created. Click one of those orders to open it in the same place.
5. Click an action:
   • Cancel at period end: "The customer keeps what they paid for until" the period's end. Nothing more is charged after that.
   • Cancel now: "The provider stops billing immediately and the subscription ends today." The current period isn't refunded by this action; refund the last order from Growth → E-Commerce → Orders if you need to.
   • Pause: "Collection stops until you resume it." The customer isn't emailed about a pause.
   • Resume: "The provider bills the customer again from the next period."
6. In the window that opens, add a Reason (optional), then confirm. Keep subscription (or Back) closes the window without a change.

To read the latest state from your provider, click Refresh from followed by the provider's name, for example Refresh from Stripe.

Keep a page for subscribers only#

To make a page that only paying subscribers can open, such as a members' recipe library, right-click the page in the Pages list and turn on Subscriber Access. It also turns on Require Authentication: "Only signed-in users with an active subscription can view this page." Point at Subscriber Access to choose Any active subscription or tick specific recurring products. Anyone else is sent to the product page. Subscriber Access shows when your site has both the store and user sign-in, and stays greyed out until the store has a recurring product. See How to make a page visible only to signed-in users.

Troubleshooting#

Recurring is greyed out: "Add Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, Razorpay, Square, Paddle or CoinGate to sell subscriptions." No connected payment provider can bill subscriptions. Connect and turn on one of them, then open the product again.

Shoppers don't see a Subscribe button on the live site TeleportHQ hides a recurring product's buy button when no connected provider can bill subscriptions, or when your checkout page was built before subscriptions existed. Check your provider, then rebuild the checkout: in the E-Commerce panel, click More actions (the three dots next to Products), then Recreate Checkout Page, and confirm in the window that opens. The message "The checkout page was recreated. Publish to take it live." appears. Publish again.

"Free trial must be a whole number of days, 0 or more. Leave it blank for no trial." Type a whole number, such as 7, or empty the field.

There's no Subscriptions entry, or no Subscriptions card in the E-Commerce panel Subscribers moved to the Growth panel: its E-Commerce group lists Orders and Subscriptions while your store is on. The E-Commerce panel itself holds Payment Providers and Products only.

"Subscriptions Are Not Set Up Yet" Your store was created before subscriptions existed. On the Subscriptions page (Growth → E-Commerce → Subscriptions), click Set up subscriptions. The message "Subscriptions are ready for this store." appears.

An action you expect is missing in a subscription's details The panel offers only what your provider can do. Mollie can't pause, Square can't cancel at once, and a cancelled or expired subscription can't be changed.

Good to know#

• PayPal and Mollie can't schedule a cancellation. Cancel at period end stops the subscription at the provider straight away; no further payments are taken, and the buyer keeps the period already paid.
• Free trials. Square and CoinGate don't support free trials. If a shopper checks out a recurring product that has Free trial (days) set through one of them, the order stops with "Failed to place your order. Please try again." and nothing is charged. If you sell through them, leave Free trial (days) empty.
• Paddle sells digital products only, so with Paddle alone you can sell subscriptions to digital products, not to physical ones.
• CoinGate (crypto) can't charge automatically. Your store bills each renewal itself: 3 days before a period ends it creates the renewal order and emails the buyer a link to pay it, and it ends the subscription if the renewal is still unpaid 7 days after the period ends.
• From an order to its subscription. On the Orders page, a subscription's order has a Subscription section: View subscription opens that subscription's details in place. See How to find and manage orders.
• Export your subscribers as a CSV or JSON file with Download subscriptions on the Reports & Exports tab of Growth → E-Commerce → Orders. See How to download sales reports and order exports.
• A gift card can't be recurring. The This product is a gift card switch disappears when you pick Recurring.