How to Set Up Recharge Subscriptions on Shopify

Subscriptions transform one-time buyers into predictable, recurring revenue. Recharge is the market-leading subscription platform for Shopify, processing billions in subscription revenue annually. A well-configured Recharge setup can fundamentally change your business model — but the configuration details matter enormously for both conversion and subscriber retention.

Initial Recharge Setup

1. 1Install Recharge from the Shopify App Store
2. 2Connect Recharge to your payment gateway (Shopify Payments or Stripe recommended)
3. 3Configure your subscription plans — delivery frequency options per product
4. 4Set your subscriber discount (typically 10–15% for subscribe-and-save)
5. 5Customise the subscriber portal branding to match your store
6. 6Configure churn prevention flows — offers displayed when subscribers attempt to cancel

Configuring Subscription Products

Enable subscriptions on specific products or variants via the Recharge product management interface. Consider whether you want subscription-only products (not available for one-time purchase), subscription-preferred products (subscriptions prominently featured with one-time purchase as secondary option), or flexible products where both options are equally presented.

The Subscriber Portal

Recharge's subscriber portal is where customers manage their subscriptions — skipping deliveries, changing frequency, swapping products, or cancelling. A well-configured portal reduces customer service contacts significantly. Customise the portal to match your brand, ensure it's easily accessible from order confirmation emails, and use Recharge's Affinity theme for a more polished portal experience.

Churn Prevention Configuration

• Configure cancellation flows with targeted retention offers
• Offer a skip delivery option prominently to prevent cancellations due to over-stocking
• Set up delivery date change capability for flexibility
• Configure pause subscription option as an alternative to cancellation
• Use Klaviyo integration to trigger win-back flows for lapsed subscribers

Klaviyo Integration for Subscriber Lifecycle

Recharge's Klaviyo integration enables sophisticated lifecycle automation. Build flows for: new subscriber welcome series, upcoming renewal reminders, failed payment recovery, subscription anniversary offers, and cross-sell recommendations for complementary products. Subscriber-specific Klaviyo segments enable highly targeted communications unavailable through standard purchase-based segmentation.

Measuring Subscription Performance

Track monthly recurring revenue (MRR), subscriber count, average subscription lifetime, and monthly churn rate as your core subscription metrics. Recharge's analytics dashboard provides these natively. Set up a Klaviyo dashboard that tracks subscriber lifecycle metrics alongside your standard ecommerce KPIs for a holistic view of your subscription programme's health.