Setup guide
Five steps, in the order the app asks for them. The same list is on your dashboard under Get your first subscriber, with buttons that open the right screens. Steps 1 and 2 are the ones that put a subscribe option in front of a shopper; the rest are about where customers manage what they signed up for.
1. Create a plan and pick its products
In your Shopify admin, open Apps → Subflow, then Plans in the app's menu.
Name the plan, then set a frequency: how often the order repeats, and the percentage discount for that frequency. Add frequency option gives shoppers a choice of cadences — up to ten per plan. Discounts are a percentage off the product price, from 0 to 99. One charge is one delivery here, so a longer gap means fewer deliveries a year, not more paid up front; the screen warns you if a longer cadence carries a bigger discount than a shorter one.
Select products opens Shopify's product picker. One plan can cover up to 250 products, and you see each one with the price a shopper will pay on every cadence before the plan exists. A product that no plan applies to never shows a subscribe option.
Create plan writes a selling plan group into Shopify against those products. Each frequency option becomes one shopper-visible choice, named like Deliver every month (10% off).
2. Add the Subscribe & Save block to your product template
The plan on its own changes nothing on your storefront. Adding the block in the theme editor is the only step that puts the choice on the product page.
On the dashboard, Get your first subscriber → Open theme editor opens your current theme on the product template with the block added, ready for you to position and save. That button stays disabled until a plan exists.
By hand: Online Store → Themes → Customize, choose the Product template from the menu at the top of the editor, then Add block → Apps → Subscribe & Save inside the product section. Drag it next to the buy buttons and save.
The block has four settings: the heading above the options ("Purchase options" by default), the label on the one-time option, whether to show a link to the customer portal, and that link's text.
3. Optional: add Subflow to customer accounts
Customer-account blocks are placed in a different editor from your theme. Go to Settings → Customer accounts → Configurations → Customize, then add the Subflow block. It gives logged-in customers the same controls inside their Shopify account.
Until it is placed, Shopify renders nothing there. That is how every app block works, not a fault in the app — and the storefront portal in step 4 needs no placement, so your customers are never left without a way in.
4. Put the portal link where customers will look
The customer portal is served on your own domain at /apps/subflow. It exists as soon as Subflow is installed and there is nothing to place. Customers have to be logged in; the page shows them a log-in link if they are not. From there they can skip the next delivery, move its date, change the frequency, pause, resume, cancel, or ask for a secure card-update email.
Places worth linking it from:
- The Subscribe & Save block itself, which shows a "Manage your existing subscriptions" link under the options. It is on by default and the wording is a block setting.
- The order-confirmation page. Subflow's block there shows a Manage subscriptions button on orders that contain a subscription, and it points at the portal. Add it under Settings → Checkout → Customize, on the Thank you page.
- A menu item — Online Store → Navigation, in your footer or account menu, pointing at
/apps/subflow. - Your order confirmation email.
5. Place a test subscription
Open one of the plan's products on your storefront. The purchase options appear where you placed the block: one-time purchase, then each cadence you configured, with its price. Choose a subscription option and check out the way a customer would.
The subscription then appears on your Subflow dashboard under Active subscriptions, with the customer, the products, the frequency and the next billing date.
Finish by logging in to your storefront as that customer and opening /apps/subflow. Skip a delivery, change the frequency, then put it back. That is the whole loop your customers will use.
If the widget doesn't appear
- No plan applies to that product yet. The block renders nothing to shoppers until a plan covers the product. In the theme editor you see a note in its place saying so — that note is merchant-only and never shown to shoppers.
- The block was never added, or added to another template. Creating a plan does not place it. Check that you customized the theme that is actually live, and the product template that product uses — a product on an alternate template needs the block added there too.
- The product is not on the plan. Plans apply per product. Open Plans and check the product list on the plan you created.
- Your theme cannot take app blocks. If the product section offers no Add block → Apps, the theme is not an Online Store 2.0 theme and no app block can be placed in it.
- The store is not set up for subscriptions. Shopify only saves a customer's payment method for future charges on an eligible gateway — Shopify Payments, PayPal Express or Authorize.net. Until one is active, everything looks configured and no customer can subscribe. Subflow checks this and warns on your dashboard. Look at Settings → Payments; which providers qualify depends on your country, so Shopify's own payments page is the reliable list.
- The plan belongs to another app. The block renders only the subscription options Subflow created. Plans left behind by another subscriptions app, and pre-order or try-before-you-buy options, stay with your theme's own picker.
What happens after the first subscriber
Subflow charges each subscription when it is due and moves the next billing date forward. Shopify does not do that on its own.
If a charge fails, it is retried three times — 2 days after the failure, then 4 days later, then 7 days later — and the customer is emailed a link to update their payment method each time. Anything still failing after that is marked Failed and waits on your Failed payments page, where you can retry it once the card is fixed.
Active subscriptions count toward your plan's limit. Free covers up to 50 of them.
Already have subscribers in another app?
A subscription contract belongs to the app that created it, so no app can hand them over. Use Migrate in the app instead: upload the export from Recharge, Appstle, Seal or Bold, or a generic CSV, and Subflow re-creates each subscription against the card the customer already has saved in your store. You see every row, and whose card was found, before anything is created.
Stuck on a step? Email support@subflow.store with your myshopify.com domain and the product URL.