Recipe: Subscribe & Save product

This recipe shows how to create a subscribe & save membership that creates a traditional product subscription, for regular deliveries or fulfillments(using Counter Culture Coffee as an example).

This model works best for merchants with consumable goods that can be frequently repurchased.

Overview

• Membership type: Paid
• Billing cadence: varies
• Primary benefits:
  • Regular product deliveries
  • Optional discounts for subscribing
  • Optional discounts or other perks, like free shipping
• Best for:
  • Razors, hair dye, or other wellness products
  • Coffee, tea, supplements, or other consumable goods
  • Any replenishable products

What Members Get

• Regular deliveries of their items
• Discounts for subscribing
• Other subscriber perks like content, shipping, or discounts

Step 1: Create the product listing

1. Go to Products in the Shopify admin
2. Create a product that will offer subscriptions — bearing these tips in mind:
   1. Use variants for options that influence price, e.g. coffee bag size, razor blade refills included, etc
   2. Do not use variants for billing frequency or subscription discounts
3. Complete your listing with images or marketing copy

Step 2: Create the Membership Plan

1. Go to Zendra → Plans
2. Click Create plan
3. Configure:
   • Name: “Subscribe & save” (or similar)
   • Type: Choose “Subscribe & Save” as your membership type.
   • Merchandising: Decide if you want to offer one-off purchases, or only subscriptions.
     • The Shopify-defined price is used for one-time purchases if enabled.
   • Billing plan:
     • Add a new billing plan for each interval you want to offer, such as “every 2 weeks” or “every month”
     • If you want to offer savings for more frequent deliveries, use the discount option in the billing plan for a percent or amount off the product / variant price! Avoid overriding the price on your billing plans unless absolutely needed, so that price changes from variants are respected.
     • Feel free to add as many billing plans as you’d like — escalating discounts are a great way to encourage more frequent deliveries

You can also decide if customers must complete a minimum number of cycles before cancelling — be sure your product pages clearly communicate this requirement if so!

Step 3 (Optional): Perks > Member offers

If you want to sweeten the deal to encourage subscription rather than one-time purchase, you can consider adding perks for subscribers:

• Add members-only products for exclusivity
• Create exclusive sales visible only to members by adding time-limited purchasing discounts
• Offer member discounts for other purchases
• Give subscribers free shipping on other purchases

Common variations

• Add a signup fee
  • Useful if your first delivery has additional costs, such as a set up kit
  • Charged immediately on signup, then recurring fee uses product price
  • Can be configured as a billing plan option!

Summary

This membership configuration succeeds because it:

• incentivizes automatic replenishment so customers don’t need to “remember” to order.
• makes it easy to see the value of subscribing (cheaper deliveries).
• gives merchants more predictable cash flow.

It’s one of the lowest-friction membership models you can launch with Zendra! This is a great starting point for a new program.