What is a selling plan in Shopify?
What’s inside a selling plan?
According to Shopify’s developer documentation, a selling plan has four policies:
- Billing policy: how often the customer is charged, for example every 4 weeks.
- Delivery policy: how often they receive an order, for example every 4 weeks too, or more often on a prepaid plan.
- Pricing policy: the discount, fixed or changing after a number of orders.
- Inventory policy: when inventory is reserved.
Example (made up): a coffee roaster creates a group “Subscribe & Save” with three selling plans: every 2 weeks at 10% off, every 4 weeks at 10% off, and every 4 weeks prepaid for 3 deliveries at 15% off. A customer picks “every 4 weeks” on the product page, and at checkout Shopify creates a subscription contract from that selling plan.
Why do selling plans matter for subscriptions?
They’re what makes a subscription possible in Shopify’s checkout: a product or variant without a selling plan has no subscribe option. Selling plans also decide what customers see on the product page and what the subscription contract starts with, so a clear set of them is the foundation of every subscription offer.
How does Zubs handle selling plans?
In Zubs you create subscription plans, and Zubs saves each one in Shopify as a selling plan group, with a selling plan for each delivery interval. Per interval you choose the discount and, if you like, prepaid billing or a billing anchor. What each option does is on the subscription plans page.
Bottom line
A selling plan is the rulebook for one way of buying a product on repeat: billing, delivery, price. Zubs creates and manages them for you as subscription plans.
Frequently asked questions
- What's the difference between a selling plan and a selling plan group?
- A selling plan is one way to buy on repeat, such as "every 4 weeks, 10% off". A selling plan group bundles several of these options for one product or a collection of products, such as "Subscribe & Save" with a 2-week and a 4-week plan.
- Can a product have several selling plans?
- Yes. That's how customers choose between delivery intervals on the product page.
- Does changing a plan's discount affect existing subscribers?
- Not in Zubs. A changed discount applies only to subscriptions created afterwards; existing subscriptions keep their original rates.
- How do I create selling plans?
- Selling plans are created through Shopify's API, usually by a subscription app. Zubs creates them when you save a subscription plan.