How to use the Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions plugin

Sub­scrip­tions enable you to build solid, loyal clientele in your online store. The Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions plugin provides useful features which allow users to integrate sub­scrip­tion offers into a website with a Woo­Com­merce store.

What is Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions?

Paid sub­scrip­tions are one of the most important sources of revenue for many companies. Sub­scrip­tions grant sub­scribers exclusive access to services, premium services or unlimited content. Offering different sub­scrip­tion models caters to the needs and wishes of your customers. There should be offers for trial sub­scrip­tions, monthly sub­scrip­tions and annual sub­scrip­tions as well as sub­scrip­tion models based on the basic, standard and premium principle.

Woo­Com­merce plugins offer the optimal sub­scrip­tion solution for your online store on WordPress: Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions. Download the plugin in a few clicks, install it in your store and create paid Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions for products, services or content. You can choose from a variety of sub­scrip­tion plans, automatic payment options, renewals, and sub­scrip­tion upgrades and down­grades, ef­fect­ively strength­en­ing customer loyalty and be­ne­fit­ting from gen­er­at­ing regular, pre­dict­able profits.

What are the benefits of Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions?

The Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions plugin is a practical solution Woo­Com­merce retailers who want to integrate sub­scrip­tion features into their shop. The tool not only in­teg­rates smoothly into the website, but it also offers com­pre­hens­ive sub­scrip­tion features for man­age­ment and sub­scribers.

Key features and benefits include:

• Seamless in­teg­ra­tion with Woo­Com­merce stores
• Man­age­ment via a dashboard
• Multiple sub­scrip­tion and billing models for physical and virtual products, services or content
• Easily manages automated recurring sub­scrip­tion payments with over 25 payment methods
• Manually and auto­mat­ic­ally renews sub­scrip­tions
• Auto­mat­ic­ally emails invoices and receipts
• Member pages for changing sub­scrip­tion, address, payment method or upgrades and down­grades
• Creates new invoice for failed payments
• Reminder functions for manual renewals or out­stand­ing payments
• Automatic payment con­firm­a­tions
• Discount and coupon options
• Optional syn­chron­isa­tion of sub­scrip­tion terms or shipping periods
• Con­fig­ur­a­tions for re­gis­tra­tion fees
• Free trial sub­scrip­tions
• Trans­par­ent reports on sub­scribers, profits and payments

What does Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions cost?

WordPress and Woo­Com­merce do not cost anything. You create a func­tion­al website for free with WordPress and integrate a modern online shop with Woo­Com­merce. However, a suc­cess­ful shop usually requires ad­di­tion­al functions, user-friendly features and an appealing design. This may lead to ad­di­tion­al Woo­Com­merce costs and WordPress costs.

Using paid plugins like Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions and cus­tom­ising your shop with premium Woo­Com­merce themes will increase your costs. Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions currently costs about £180 annually (as of November 2022). This may seem expensive, but the com­pre­hens­ive features and Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions’ seamless in­teg­ra­tion make the in­vest­ment worth­while.

How do I add Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions?

Begin by creating an online shop with WordPress and install the free store plugin Woo­Com­merce. Or al­tern­at­ively, go straight to setting up the sub­scrip­tions plugin if you already have a Woo­Com­merce store.

Stick to the following two methods to install Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions.

Method 1: Download as ZIP file and add

Step 1: Buy the plugin Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions directly from the Woo­Com­merce website. Click on ‘Buy now’ and follow the steps. This requires logging into your Woo­Com­merce account be­fore­hand.

Step 2: Click ‘Download’ to download the plugin as a ZIP file after com­plet­ing the purchase.

Step 3: Access your WordPress dashboard and go to ‘Plugins’.

Step 4: Upload the ZIP file by clicking on ‘Upload Plugin’. Select ‘Install now’ and ‘Activate’ to activate the plugin for your shop.

Method 2: Add using Woo­Com­merce dashboard

This method offers the advantage of in­teg­rat­ing the Sub­scrip­tions plugin directly into the shop using the Dashboard and Woo­Com­merce ex­ten­sions. This creates a better overview if you use other Woo­Com­merce ex­ten­sions, as all plugins are visible in one area and can be updated and activated or de­ac­tiv­ated.

Step 1: Login to your WordPress account, go to the dashboard. Follow the path Woo­Com­merce > Ex­ten­sions. Go to the tab ‘Woo­Com­merce.com Sub­scrip­tions’.

Step 2: Click on ‘Connect’ and authorize the con­nec­tion between your account at Woo­Com­merce.com and your store.

Step 3: You will see a list of future sub­scrip­tions in the Woo­Com­merce.com Sub­scrip­tions tab. However, you will need to click “Download” and set the switch to ‘Active’ to activate the plugin in your store.

How do I configure Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions?

You can set up sub­scrip­tion offers as desired after in­stalling and ac­tiv­at­ing the plugin. There are two options to choose from here:

• Simple sub­scrip­tions: You offer only one sub­scrip­tion option at a fixed price to all in­ter­ested parties.
• Variable sub­scrip­tions: You create different sub­scrip­tion rates for customers to choose from. This includes different price levels, services or product offers.

How do I create sub­scrip­tions?

Go to ‘Products’ in the dashboard to create simple or variable sub­scrip­tions and click on ‘Add new’. Scroll down and click on ‘Product data’. You will find the options for the sub­scrip­tions here. Decide on a version and fill out the following spe­cific­a­tions for the sub­scrip­tion:

• Sub­scrip­tion price
• Billing interval
• Ac­count­ing period
• Duration of the sub­scrip­tion
• Re­gis­tra­tion fee
• Pro­ba­tion­ary period

You can restrict variable sub­scrip­tions under the Advanced tab to prevent customers taking out multiple sub­scrip­tions for the same product. Upgrades and down­grades of current sub­scrip­tions are also important for variable sub­scrip­tions. Go to ‘Settings’, ‘Sub­scrip­tions’ and ‘Switch’ for this.

How do I set payment methods?

It is important to integrate payment gateways to support recurring payments. Woo­Com­merce payment methods support 34 different payment gateways, some of which are available as free plugins, others as paid plugins. Suitable plugin ex­ten­sions are:

• Amazon Pay
• Stripe
• Authorize.net
• PayPal Pro
• Apple Pay
• Square

Note that different payment gateways may offer different sub­scrip­tion payment features. For example, not every gateway supports the purchase of multiple sub­scrip­tion offers or the purchase of sub­scrip­tions and non-sub­scrip­tion products in one trans­ac­tion. However, this is not a major problem because customers can still purchase multiple sub­scrip­tions in con­sec­ut­ive trans­ac­tions.

Sub­scrip­tion features important to payment method plugins include:

• Can­cel­ling the sub­scrip­tion
• Pausing the sub­scrip­tion
• Re­act­iv­at­ing the sub­scrip­tion
• Purchase of multiple sub­scrip­tions in one trans­ac­tion
• Purchase of sub­scrip­tion and non-sub­scrip­tion products in one trans­ac­tion
• Changes to the sub­scrip­tion rates (by the shop owner)
• Change of payment method (by customers or shop owners)

What is Woo­Com­merce Mem­ber­ship?

The plugin Woo­Com­merce Mem­ber­ship is a worth­while add-on for those who use Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions. Mem­ber­ships offers exclusive options to purchase products or services for members only. If you are planning a mem­ber­ship model, we recommend the plugin Woo­Com­merce Mem­ber­ship in com­bin­a­tion with Sub­scrip­tions. These combined make it possible to release certain services or products with recurring sub­scrip­tion payments only for paying members. Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions is suf­fi­cient if your focus is just on sub­scrip­tions.

The main dif­fer­ences between the two plugins:

What are some al­tern­at­ives to Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions?

There are several other sub­scrip­tion al­tern­at­ives if you are in­ter­ested in sub­scrip­tion features. We present four in­ter­est­ing plugins which offer similar sub­scrip­tion features to Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions.

Sub­crip­tion plugins overview

All rate in­form­a­tion is as of November 2022.

Paid Mem­ber­ship Pro

The Paid Mem­ber­ship Pro plugin offers a com­bin­a­tion of sub­scrip­tions and mem­ber­ships, even for online shops which are not based on Woo­Com­merce. This enables website content, products, services or mem­ber­ship packages to be re­stric­ted to members, while other content remains publicly available.

Features:

• Unlimited member levels at flexible rates
• Free mem­ber­ships or free trial periods
• Recurring payments or one-off payments
• Manual or automatic renewal of sub­scrip­tions
• In­teg­ra­tion of six popular payment gateways such as Stripe, Authorize.net and PayPal
• Mem­ber­ships and customer data ad­min­is­tra­tion and pro­cessing
• Reports on customer data and revenues
• Automated workflows through REST API in­ter­faces (with Zapier in­teg­ra­tion)
• Dashboard for member accounts
• Frontend features for login, re­gis­tra­tion, password recovery and profile editing

Sumo Sub­scrip­tions

The SUMO Sub­scrip­tions plugin presents itself as an af­ford­able al­tern­at­ive to Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions. It offers all the important features for sub­scrip­tion models, recurring payments and sub­scrip­tion account man­age­ment which Woo­Com­merce Sub­scrip­tions offers. The plugin is updated regularly and is easily com­pat­ible with WordPress and Woo­Com­merce.

Features:

• Simple sub­scrip­tions and variable sub­scrip­tions
• Sub­scrip­tions for several products or services at the same time
• Sub­scrip­tion options for selected products
• Payment methods Stripe and PayPal for automatic sub­scrip­tion renewal
• Multiple sub­scrip­tion orders in one trans­ac­tion
• Free test phase
• Report and log of all trans­ac­tions
• Optional re­gis­tra­tion fee
• Supports upgrade and downgrade of sub­scrip­tions
• User can­cel­la­tion/pause/re­sump­tion of sub­scrip­tions
• User cus­tom­isa­tion of sub­scrip­tion accounts and sub­scrip­tion payment methods

Sub­scrip­tio

Sub­scrip­tio is slightly more expensive than Sumo Sub­scrip­tions, but it offers a similar set of features. This includes everything you need, such as simple or variable sub­scrip­tion options, automatic or manual sub­scrip­tion renewals, recurring automatic payments, and popular payment gateways PayPal and Stripe. Sub­scrip­tio makes sub­scrip­tion man­age­ment very easy with a clear sub­scrip­tion man­age­ment menu. Sub­scribers also have the option of making changes to their sub­scrip­tion using their account.

Features:

• Offers flexible, simple and variable sub­scrip­tion options
• Automatic sub­scrip­tion renewals and recurring payments
• Semi-automatic or automatic payments possible
• Flexible sub­scrip­tion duration
• Optional one-time re­gis­tra­tion fee
• Order sub­scrip­tion and non-sub­scrip­tion products in one trans­ac­tion
• Pause, interrupt and resume sub­scrip­tions
• Optional free trial period
• Separate sub­scrip­tion orders or multiple sub­scrip­tions in one trans­ac­tion
• Effective, straight­for­ward sub­scrip­tion man­age­ment menu
• Records for all trans­ac­tions

S2Member

S2Member is an effective sub­scrip­tion plugin. It is also suitable for web shops and sub­scrip­tions without Woo­Com­merce. The free version offers basic features including PayPal payments to allow smaller sites to integrate a sub­scrip­tion and mem­ber­ship feature. The plugin is based on short­codes, so there is a lot of scope to customize a sub­scrip­tion setup to your liking. The paid versions offer the full range of features for sub­scrip­tion and mem­ber­ship. A special USP: Download files as well as audio and video streams can also be protected by re­stric­ted member access.

Features:

• Unlimited mem­ber­ship levels in Pro versions
• Sub­scrip­tions and mem­ber­ships op­tion­ally limited or with automatic renewal
• Optional re­gis­tra­tion fee for non-sub­scribers
• Protects content in­cre­ment­ally through re­gis­tra­tion fees and sub­scrip­tions (also for audio and video streams)
• Share content based on mem­ber­ship level
• Flexible ad­apt­a­tion according to your own ideas with short­codes
• Free version including PayPal and four mem­ber­ship levels
• Supports common payment methods in Pro versions
• Very good doc­u­ment­a­tion of trans­ac­tions and completed sub­scrip­tions