How to Create a Subscription app Campaign

A subscription campaign defines the offer customers see on your product pages — which products it applies to, how often orders are delivered and billed, the discount they get, and how the widget looks. You can run multiple campaigns for different products or offers.

The editor has three tabs: Settings for the offer, Widget for what customers see and how it looks, and Products for which products it applies to.

This article covers setting up the offer itself. For styling the widget, see How to Customise the Subscription Widget.

The Campaigns List

Open Subscription campaigns in the sidebar. You'll see all your campaigns with their Name, Status, and the Products they're assigned to.

Status is either Unpublished (not live) or Published (live on the storefront).
Click any campaign to edit it.
Click Create subscription campaign to start a new one.

Step 1: Name the Campaign

In the campaign editor, set:

Subscription campaign name — for your reference only. Customers never see this. (e.g. "Subscribe & Save")
Widget name — the heading shown on the widget on your product page.

Step 2: Assign Products

Open the Products tab and use the picker to choose which products, or specific variants, should offer this subscription. The widget appears on these products once the campaign is published.

Add products opens the picker. Pick whole products, or expand a product and tick single variants. A part-selected product reads 1 out of 3 variants selected, and the widget then only shows when the customer has one of those variants chosen.
Add all products assigns every active product in your store. It runs when you save, and a banner tells you it is still working. You can leave the page while it finishes.
The table shows the first 30 products. The count underneath is the real total, so a campaign with hundreds of products still lists 30 rows.

Step 3: Set Up Subscription Options

Each subscription option is one choice the customer can pick (for example, a 2-week plan and a monthly plan). Add as many as you need with Add subscription option, and drag to reorder them.

For each option, set:

Each option sits on the Settings tab. Its customer-facing text lives on the Widget tab, under Purchase options, as Option name. The app fills in a name from the schedule, such as Monthly, and rewrites it while you are still changing the frequency. Once you edit it yourself it stops changing.

Delivery policy

Deliver every How often orders ship. Enter a number and choose day(s), week(s), month(s), or year(s).

Billing policy — choose one:

Pay as you go — the customer is charged each time an order is created.

Bill every — how often to charge. It must be a multiple of the delivery frequency, so deliver every 2 weeks and bill every 2 or 4 weeks, not every 3.
Charge on — for weekly, monthly or yearly billing, optionally pin the charge to a set weekday or day of the month instead of the purchase date.
Subscription expires automatically after (optional) — end the subscription after a set number of payments.
Customers can cancel after (optional) — require a minimum number of payments before the customer can cancel. Set this and the customer sees Can't cancel yet in the portal until they reach it. It has to be lower than the expiry number.
Show price in the widget — whether the widget shows the Total price of each charge or the price Per delivery.

Prepaid — the customer pays upfront for multiple deliveries.

- Charge for — how many deliveries are paid for in one charge.

Prepaid behaves quite differently from pay as you go, and the yearly setup catches people out. Read Prepaid and Pay as You Go Subscriptions Explained before you pick it.

Pricing policy

Discount Choose percentage (%) or fixed amount off, and enter the value.

Change discount after a number of payments (Pay as you go only, optional) Reward loyalty by changing the discount after a set number of payments — for example, 10% off for the first 3 payments, then 15% after. Set Change after, Change to, and the discount type.

Option extras

Highlight subscription option — show a highlight label on this option (e.g. Best value).
Badge — show a small badge on the option (e.g. Most Popular).
Selected purchase option — preselect this option when the widget loads.
Description — an optional line under the option. Tick Show description to use it. The variables button inserts values like {price} and {cadence}.
Show strikethrough price — the crossed-out original price. On by default, and only shown when your discount actually brings the price below the product price.

Note: the highlight, badge, description and strikethrough settings live on the Widget tab, in the Purchase options card, with a tab per option. The delivery, billing and pricing fields are on the Settings tab. See Widget Wording, Translations and the Subscription Details Tooltip for the wording side.

To remove an option, click Delete subscription option.

Step 4: Offer a One-Time Purchase (Optional)

A new campaign already has a one-time purchase on it. If you removed it and want it back, click Add one-time purchase on the Settings tab. Its wording sits on the Widget tab, in the One-time purchase card, where you can also show it as a link under the subscription options instead of a full option, and choose whether that link adds to cart or goes straight to checkout.

You can have one one-time purchase option per campaign. To sell a product by subscription only, delete it: see Sell a Product by Subscription Only.

Step 5: Tags (Optional)

Scroll to the tagging section to automatically tag subscription activity for your own reporting:

Order tags — applied to orders created from this subscription.
Customer tags — applied to customers who subscribe.

Each tag can be up to 40 characters.

Step 6: Publish

Style the widget on the Widget tab — see How to Customise the Subscription Widget.
Use the live preview on the right to check your work.
Click Publish.

The widget now appears on every assigned product page.

Important: Unpublish and Delete both remove the subscription plans this campaign created in Shopify. Existing subscriptions keep billing on their own terms, but the plans are detached, and publishing again creates new ones. Customers cannot subscribe to that product while the campaign is unpublished. Use it deliberately rather than as a way to hide the widget for a moment.

Note: editing a published campaign is live straight away. Every save updates the plans on your storefront, and removing an option removes its plan. Existing subscribers are not moved onto new terms, they keep the ones they signed up on.

Tip: Changes only go live when you click Save (or Publish). A save bar appears at the top whenever you have unsaved edits.

Translations

If your store sells in more than one language, you can translate everything customers read. The Translations card is on the Widget tab, and it only appears when your store has a second published language. See Widget Wording, Translations and the Subscription Details Tooltip.