Subscriptions

Create free and paid subscriptions for gated digital content or physical products and services.

With subscriptions you can offer free or paid recurring memberships for exclusive content, physical products, and services on your Webflow Ecommerce store — for example, online courses, subscription boxes, or virtual fitness classes.

How to create a subscription

To offer subscriptions to your customers, you must:

1. Enable Ecommerce and User Accounts
2. Add an Ecommerce Site plan
3. Connect Stripe as a payment provider
4. Enable checkout

Once Ecommerce and User Accounts are enabled on your site, you can create products with a “subscription” billing method and set the billing period. Customers who purchase a subscription are charged automatically after each billing period until the subscription is cancelled. Add the subscriptions element to your User account page to allow customers to manage their subscriptions.

To create a subscription in the Designer:

1. Click the “cart” icon in the left toolbar and click Products
2. Choose an existing product or create a new one by clicking New Product‍
3. Choose the Product type (e.g., physical, digital, etc.)
4. Scroll to the Billing section and choose Subscription as the billing method
5. Choose the Billing period (e.g., day, week, month, or year)
6. Complete the other product fields
7. Click Save to update an existing product or click Create to create your new product

Add and customize the “Add to cart” element for subscriptions

You can add an Add to cart element to Collection lists connected to your “Products” Collection and on your “Products” Collection page.

For subscription products, the Add to cart button is automatically hidden and the text of the Buy now button text is automatically changed to “Subscribe now” when you publish your site.

To customize the Buy now button text:

1. Select the Buy now button on the canvas or in the Navigator
2. Open Element settings panel > Buy now button settings
3. Choose “Subscription text”
4. Click the “pencil” icon
5. Edit the text
6. Save your changes

You can revert to the default button text by clicking “Restore default” at the bottom of the “Edit text” modal.

How to add the subscriptions element to your User account page

The subscriptions element allows your customers to view which subscriptions (if any) are active for their account, the purchase date, and the next billing date. Customers can also cancel active subscriptions and are provided with a record of that change in their account.

To add the subscriptions element to the User account page:

1. Go to Pages panel > User pages > User Account
2. Open the Add panel and scroll down to the Ecommerce section
3. Drag the subscriptions element onto the canvas

You must have the User account page open in the Designer to access the subscriptions element. Only one subscriptions element can be added to the User account page.

Understand the subscription purchase flow for users

When a user clicks the “Subscribe now” button to buy a subscription, the purchase flow will vary depending on whether:

• the user is logged in to your site
• the user has an account but isn’t logged in to your site
• the user hasn’t yet signed up for an account on your site

The user is logged into your site

After clicking the “Subscribe now” button, if the user is logged in to your site, they‘ll enter the checkout flow to complete their purchase.

The user has an account but isn‘t logged in to your site

After clicking the “Subscribe now” button, if the user has an account but isn’t logged in to your site, they’ll be redirected to the “sign up” page, where they can log in to their account.

Once they’ve logged in, they’ll be redirected back to the previous page, where they’ll need to click “Subscribe now” again to enter the checkout flow and complete their purchase.

The user has not yet signed up for an account on your site

After clicking the “Subscribe now” button, if the user doesn’t yet have an account on your site, they’ll be redirected to the “sign up” page, where they’ll need to sign up for an account before they can complete their purchase.

After they’ve signed up for an account on your site, they’ll be prompted to verify their account via the verification email that‘s automatically sent to the email address they signed up with. Learn more about customizing User Accounts emails.

Once they’ve verified their account, they’ll be notified their account was created successfully and will be automatically logged in.

Once they’re logged in, they’ll be redirected to the page with the subscription product they wanted to purchase, where they’ll need to click “Subscribe now” again to enter the checkout flow and complete their purchase.

How to customize subscriptions emails

To customize subscriptions emails in the Designer:

1. Click the “cog” icon in the left toolbar
2. Choose Email in the Settings panel
3. Scroll to Ecommerce emails > Subscription in the Email panel
4. Click Payment failed, Payment successful, Subscription canceled, or Verify payment, and make your edits

You can add dynamic fields to subscription emails to pull information from your Products Collection and the customer’s user account:

• Customer name
• Store name
• Subscription name
• Subscription price
• Purchased on
• Subscription canceled on
• Current billing date
• Next billing date
• Credit card failed date

How to manage subscriptions in the Designer

When a customer purchases a subscription product, details of the subscription are added to Ecommerce panel > subscriptions. Here you can view a list of all of the subscriptions that have been purchased and their status. You can filter the list of subscriptions by status, including:

• Active
• Past due
• Unpaid
• Canceled

To further narrow down the subscriptions list, you can also search subscriptions by order number.

You can view the following details for each subscription:

• Order number
• Status
• Customer
• Purchased on
• Last billing
• Next billing
• Total

How to cancel a subscription

You may need to cancel a subscription for several reasons (e.g., at a user’s request or after deleting an access group). You can cancel subscriptions, either individually or in bulk.

To cancel an individual subscription:

1. Open Ecommerce panel > subscriptions
2. Click the subscription you want to cancel
3. Click “Cancel subscription” and confirm your choice  

To cancel subscriptions in bulk:

1. Open Ecommerce panel > subscriptions
2. Click Select and check the checkbox next to each subscription you’d like to cancel, or check the checkbox next to Order Number to select all subscriptions
3. Click “Cancel subscriptions” and confirm your choice

Your customers can also cancel their subscription(s) themselves if you’ve added a subscriptions element to the User account page.

Additional resources:

• User Accounts overview
• User pages overview
• Customize User Accounts emails
• Add and manage products and categories