How to Create Your First Subscription Plan in Force Subscriptions

If you sell products people reorder — coffee, skincare, supplements, pet food, apparel restocks — turning that repeat behavior into a subscription is one of the easiest ways to add predictable revenue to a Shopify store. Force Subscriptions is one of the apps built to do exactly that: it lets you set up recurring orders, choose how customers get billed, and control how the subscription option looks on your product page, all without touching code.
In this guide, we'll walk through creating your very first subscription plan in Force Subscriptions, from opening the app to publishing the subscription widget on your storefront.

Step 1: Get to Know the Dashboard

Once the app is installed, you'll land on the Force Subscriptions Dashboard inside your Shopify admin. This is your control center — before creating anything, it's worth a quick look around.
On a fresh store, most of this will read zero, which is normal. Here's what you'll see:
• A revenue trend chart tracking subscription income over time
• Plan distribution, broken down by Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly plans
• Latest subscriptions, showing new subscribers as they come in
• Product performance, ranking your top subscription products once sales start rolling in

Once your first plan is live and customers start subscribing, this dashboard becomes genuinely useful for tracking which products and billing frequencies perform best.

Step 2: Open the Plans Section

In the left-hand menu, click into Plans under Force Subscriptions. This is where subscription plans actually live — think of a plan as a rulebook that defines which products are subscribable, how often they bill, and what payment method is used.
On the Plans page you'll also see four summary cards at the top:
• Total plans: how many plans exist across your store
• Auto charge: plans that bill customers automatically
• Recurring invoice: plans that send an invoice instead of auto-charging
• Total subscribers: active subscribers across every plan

To start building your first plan, click Create plan in the top-right corner.

Step 3: Choose a Subscription Rule Type

Before you get into the details, Force Subscriptions asks you to choose how the plan should handle billing. This decision matters, so it's worth understanding both options:

Auto-charging subscription

This is the most common setup, and the app even flags it as the "most popular choice." With auto-charging, the customer's card is billed automatically on each billing cycle, provided you're using a supported payment method such as Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Stripe, PayPal Express, Bankful or Authorize.net.

Recurring invoice

This is the more manual, gateway-flexible option. Instead of auto-charging, the app sends the customer a recurring invoice on each cycle, and they complete payment themselves. Because it doesn't rely on auto-charging, it can work with payment gateways outside the auto-charge list.

Tip: If you're just starting out and use Shopify Payments or Shop Pay, auto-charging is usually the simpler choice — customers don't need to take any action each cycle, which means fewer missed or late payments.

Step 4: Fill In Your Plan Details

After picking a rule type, you'll land on the Create Subscription Plan screen. This is where the actual plan takes shape. Here's what to fill in:

1. Title — the name customers see at checkout, e.g. "Subscribe and save."
2. Internal description (optional) — a private note for your own reference; customers never see this.
3. Products Selection — click Browse products to attach the specific products this plan applies to. A plan isn't usable until at least one product is added.
4. Delivery options — set the delivery frequency and interval (for example, every 1 month or every 2 weeks).
5. Billing type — choose how the customer is billed within the chosen rule type, such as Pay as You Go.
6. Subscription orders — set a minimum required number of payments (how many billing cycles must pass before a customer can cancel or pause) and a maximum allowed number of payments (after which the subscription cancels automatically).
7. Subscription discount — optionally toggle this on to offer subscribers a discount over the one-time price.

On the right-hand side, a live Summary panel updates as you go, showing the plan name, number of selected products, and the delivery/billing details for each option you've configured. It's a handy way to sanity-check your setup before publishing.
When everything looks right, click Create in the top-right corner (or Create subscription plan at the bottom of the form) to save your plan.

You're Ready to Go Live

At this point, you've covered the full loop: reviewed the dashboard, created a subscription plan with products and billing rules attached, chosen how it appears on your storefront, and activated the widget block in your theme editor so it actually shows up. From here, it's worth previewing your product page as a customer would see it, placing a test order if your payment setup allows it, and keeping an eye on the Subscriptions tab as real subscribers start coming in.
Once your first plan is running smoothly, you can build on it — try Force Subscriptions' Build-A-Box feature to let customers create their own custom subscription bundles or add a second plan with a different billing frequency to see which one your customers prefer.

Updated on: 15/07/2026