Subscription Upsells

Subscription upsells add a Subscribe & Save option to your offer, so a shopper who is already choosing a bundle can turn it into a recurring order in one tap. The one-time and subscription choices sit side by side in the same offer — you control the layout, the wording, and which option is pre-selected.

This feature lives inside the Volume discount offer type.

Which subscriptions app do I need?

The subscription option is powered by a product's selling plan — the subscription plan attached to it in Shopify. Subscription upsells read that plan, so any subscriptions app that creates standard Shopify selling plans will work.

It works best with Essential Subscriptions, our own subscriptions app, because the two apps are built to work together:

• The subscribe subtitle (delivery frequency) and the cancellation policy line are read directly from the plan. Only Essential Subscriptions plans provide this policy text.
• We automatically hide the Essential Subscriptions storefront widget while your offer is showing, so customers never see two competing plan pickers.

With any other subscriptions app the subscribe option still works, but some plan details (like the policy line) may not be available, and you may need to hide that app's own widget yourself.

Before you start

1. Install a subscriptions app — we recommend Essential Subscriptions for the reasons above.
2. Create at least one subscription plan on the product you'll be upselling (for example Subscribe & Save 20%, delivered every month). If you want customers to choose between more than one delivery frequency, create one plan per frequency — see How to show Subscriptions as an Upsell.

Step 1: Create a Volume discount offer

1. Open Essential Upsell.
2. Create a new offer, or open an existing one.
3. Go to the Content tab and set Offer type to Volume discount.

Step 2: Turn on the subscription option

1. Open the Offer tab.
2. Scroll to the Subscription section and switch it on. The section expands to show all its settings, and the live preview on the right updates as you edit.

Step 3: Choose a display style

Pick how the one-time and subscription choices are laid out:

• Checkbox — a single "Subscribe & Save" checkbox added to the offer. The simplest, lowest-friction style. Works with one plan or several — with more than one, a frequency dropdown appears inside the card.
• Horizontal — one-time and subscribe shown as cards, side by side.
• Vertical — one-time and subscribe stacked as full-width cards.

Step 4: Set position and order

• Position — show the subscription block Above offer or Below offer (the offer being your volume-discount tiers).
• Display order (Horizontal and Vertical styles only) — put the Subscription option(s) first or second relative to the one-time option.

Step 5: Write the wording

Customise the text customers see:

• Subscription offer title — the heading above the subscription block, for example Save more with subscription. You can insert the {selling_plan_discount} variable to show the plan's discount automatically.
• Subscribe title — the label on the subscribe choice, for example Subscribe & Save 20%. With multiple plans, each plan gets its own title.
• Subscribe subtitle and Subscription policy — these are read from the product's selling plan and can't be typed here. To change them, edit the plan in your subscriptions app. (Only Essential Subscriptions plans supply the policy line.)
• One time purchase title / subtitle (Horizontal and Vertical styles only) — the label for the non-subscription choice, for example One-time purchase.

Step 6: Pre-select the option you want to push

Turn on Pre-select the subscription option to have the subscribe choice selected by default when the offer loads. With multiple plans, this determines which single plan is pre-selected. Leave it off to default to a one-time purchase.

Step 7: Save and publish

Save the offer and confirm it's published. Then open the trigger product on your live storefront and check that:

• the subscribe option (or each plan, if you have more than one) appears,
• the price and policy read correctly for every plan, and
• switching between one-time and subscribe — and between plans — updates the price.

Best practice: setting up the best subscription + Volume discount offer

• One plan, occasional subscribers: use Checkbox. It's the lowest-friction add-on and works well when subscribing is a nice-to-have next to a one-time purchase.
• Subscription-first products or collections (for example, a dedicated "subscribe" collection where every visitor already intends to subscribe): turn on Pre-select the subscription option (Step 6) so it's chosen by default, and add two or three plans so the shopper's main decision is which frequency, not whether to subscribe. Horizontal or Vertical suit this well since they give the subscribe card equal visual weight to the one-time choice.
• Keep the frequency list short — two or three plans (e.g. monthly / every 2 months) read faster than five. Escalate the discount with the commitment (a bigger saving on the longer frequency) to nudge customers toward it, and pre-select the frequency you want to promote.
• Match your Volume discount tiers to your plans — if a 4-pack only makes sense on a 2-month cadence, say so in the tier or subscription wording so customers don't pick a mismatched combination.
• Keep the two apps' styling in sync. Essential Upsell controls its own offer styling; Essential Subscriptions' widget styling (Design tab) only matters on products where the standalone widget still shows. On products with an active subscription upsell, that widget is hidden automatically, so style the offer here to match your theme.
• Always test on the live product page before pointing customers to it — see the checks in Step 7.

Troubleshooting

• No subscribe subtitle or policy text showing — the product has no selling plan, or its plan wasn't created with Essential Subscriptions. Add a plan to the product; the policy line requires Essential Subscriptions.
• "We detected multiple selling plans" warning — the product (or products) use plans from more than one subscriptions provider. This can display, but test the storefront to confirm the right plan shows.
• Only one plan shows even though the product has several — check that every plan is published and assigned to this product (or the right variant) in your subscriptions app. A working setup shows every plan in the frequency dropdown inside the subscribe card, regardless of display style.
• Two plan pickers on the page — the automatic hiding of the Essential Subscriptions widget only runs on the live storefront, not in the theme editor or preview. Check the real product page. If you use a different subscriptions app, hide its widget on these products yourself.
• Preview subtitle/policy look generic — the live previews only fill with real plan data when the offer is triggered on a single specific product. With multiple trigger products you'll see example text; the storefront still uses each product's own plan.