How to sell subscriptions online
A subscription turns a one-time buyer into a regular one. The customer pays on a schedule, and you get predictable income. It also adds responsibilities: clear terms, easy cancellation and a plan for payments that fail. Here is how to set up the offer and what to expect afterward.
Decide what you are selling
Good subscription products have a reason to repeat. Think of a monthly supply of coffee or clay, a yearly pass, a weekly class, access to a members area, or a regular service. Ask yourself two questions: will the customer still want it next month, and can you deliver it reliably? If the answer to either is unclear, start with a shorter commitment.
Choose a billing schedule
The schedule is how often the customer is charged. In Payly, you can bill every number of days, weeks, months or years, so monthly (every 1 month), quarterly (every 3 months) and yearly (every 1 year) are all available. You can also set a length, such as 12 months, so the subscription ends by itself after that many payments, or let it run until the customer cancels.
Many stores offer both a monthly and a yearly plan on the same product. Customers who prefer to commit pay less per month, and you get cash sooner. Payly handles this as one product with plan options, each with its own price and billing schedule. See Offer monthly and yearly plans. If you plan to let customers move between plans, you can allow that from their account too.
Free trials and sign-up fees
A free trial lowers the risk for a new customer: they enter payment details but pay nothing until the trial ends. A sign-up fee covers a one-time cost, such as a welcome kit or set-up work. You can use either one, or both. Some facts to know before you choose:
- Checkout shows the date of the first payment.
- A sign-up fee is charged at checkout even during a trial. With a $39 monthly plan, a 7-day trial and a $10 fee, the customer pays $10 at checkout, then $39 seven days later and every month after.
- PayPal sends no notice before a trial ends, so PayPal subscribers get no reminder. For Stripe subscriptions, Payly emails the customer a reminder three days before the trial ends.
Keep trials short and clear. Longer trials give more people time to forget about the charge. See Free trials and sign-up fees.
Let customers manage their own subscriptions
Customers should not need to email you to pause or cancel. Hard-to-find cancellation can lead to angry messages and disputes, and it makes people hesitant to sign up. In Payly, customers sign in to My account with an emailed link or code and can:
- Pause, so billing stops until they resume.
- Cancel, which stops the next payment while they keep the subscription until the end of the period they have paid for.
- Switch plan, if you turn that on and the product has plan options, for example from Monthly to Yearly.
Cancelling and pausing are on by default, and you can switch either off under Settings, then Features. Leave pausing on if you can: a customer who would otherwise cancel may pause instead, and you keep the relationship. You can always pause or cancel a subscription yourself too. Details are in How customers manage their subscriptions.
The account page has no form for changing a card. A customer whose card has changed contacts you, or replies to the email about the failed payment.
Renewals and failed payments
Each renewal is charged by PayPal or Stripe on schedule, not by Payly. Every payment becomes a new order in your store, and the customer gets a "Subscription renewed" email. Some of them will fail, usually because a card has expired or been replaced.
When a renewal fails, the subscription becomes Past due and appears on its own tab on the Subscriptions screen. PayPal or Stripe tries again on its own schedule, because Payly does not retry payments. The customer gets an email saying the payment did not go through and nothing has been cancelled. If the retries work, the subscription returns to Active. If they run out, the subscription is cancelled and the customer is told. How many retries happen is decided by your PayPal or Stripe settings.
What you can do: open the Past due tab regularly, contact customers whose payments keep failing, and check the failed payment in PayPal or Stripe using the links on the subscription. See Renewals and failed payments.
Costs to plan for
Subscriptions are billed through your own PayPal or Stripe account, which charge their standard processing fee on each payment, including renewals. For example, a standard card payment through Stripe is 2.9% + $0.30 in the US, so on a $20 monthly plan each renewal costs about $0.88 in fees. Payly adds no fee of its own: no monthly fee, no transaction fee and no commission. By comparison, WooCommerce lists its Subscriptions extension at $279 a year, on top of hosting. One limit to know: PayPal takes one subscription per checkout, so a cart with several subscriptions can only be paid with Stripe.
Payly is free to start, and test mode lets you practice a full sign-up without real money. Create an account and build your first plan.
Questions
Can I offer a discount code on a subscription?
Yes. A discount code can be limited to subscriptions or to sign-up fees.
Do I need a membership to sell a subscription?
No. A subscription can be a plain recurring product. Membership levels are an extra you can link to a subscription if you want members-only pages.
What happens when a customer cancels?
The next payment is stopped and the subscription runs until the end of the period they have paid for. They are not refunded automatically, but you can refund a payment from its order.
Prices as published by each company for the US in October 2026. Prices can change; check each company's own pricing page.
