Selling a subscription after checkout with Recharge or Loop

Yes, you can sell a subscription right after checkout on Shopify. The post-purchase page can add a product on a selling plan to the order the buyer just paid for, and the subscription app that owns that selling plan, Recharge or Loop for example, picks up the new contract like any other. There are three conditions: the original order can’t already contain a subscription, the buyer has to tick an explicit consent box, and the offer has to state its shipping costs. Everything else is how you word the offer.

What Shopify allows and what it doesn’t

Shopify’s guide to post-purchase subscriptions is short on this point. You can’t create a post-purchase subscription that (Shopify, Create a post-purchase subscription):

modifies a subscription on an order that already has one
adds a subscription to an order that already has one
converts the one-time item the buyer just bought into a subscription

So the offer is always a new product, or a new line of the same product, on a selling plan, added to an order that had no subscription in it. A buyer who just subscribed at checkout can’t be sold a second subscription on that page. Making an existing subscription longer is a different problem, covered in our article on upgrades.

The usual post-purchase limits apply on top. The page only shows when the first payment was a credit card, so wallet and PayPal buyers won’t see it (the list is here).

Shopify requires explicit consent for a subscription added after checkout: a checkbox and a link to your subscription policy. Without that consent the change is rejected and nothing is added. In our app the accept button stays disabled until the box is ticked, and it’s never pre-ticked. A subscription accepted by surprise turns into a refund, a chargeback or a one-star review, usually all three.

Shipping has to be stated

A subscription offer carries two shipping amounts: one for the first delivery and one for each renewal. Shopify’s change has a field for each, and we require both. We don’t guess them. If you haven’t set them on the offer, the offer isn’t shown. A missing shipping price isn’t free shipping, and treating it that way would have your next renewal surprise someone.

Which store setups this works with

The selling plan belongs to your subscription app. Recharge and Loop both create their plans as Shopify selling plans, so any product you’ve set up for subscription in either one can be offered after checkout. Our app doesn’t need a connection to either for this part. It works on every plan, the free one included.

You do need a connection for one thing: fixed-length subscriptions.

Fixed-length subscriptions need one more step

Say you sell “3 months, billed monthly”. On Shopify, a 3-month monthly plan and an open-ended monthly plan have the same cadence. The length lives in the subscription app, not in the selling plan. A contract created from the post-purchase page arrives with no length at all, so Recharge would renew it forever.

That has two consequences. The buyer who accepted “3 months” ends up on an open-ended subscription. And you can never offer them “6 months instead” later, because forever can’t be made longer.

With a Recharge connection, the app sets the length on the new subscription once Recharge has picked it up, using Recharge’s own field for subscriptions that stop after a number of charges (Recharge docs, auto-expire subscriptions). The pickup isn’t instant, so the app retries in the background for a while, and if it gives up it says so instead of pretending. It also only sets a length on a subscription that has none. If someone already decided a length, we leave it.

The length step exists for Recharge only.

Writing the offer

The offer is the only thing the buyer reads before ticking the box, so state the terms in it, plainly:

what arrives and how often
what each renewal costs, before shipping
how long it lasts, if it isn’t open-ended
that they can cancel, and where

Shopify’s own guidance is to note that the recurring price “doesn’t include shipping, tax, duties, or any applicable discounts”. Leave it in.

A practical tip: the products that work here are consumables the buyer already understands, because they just bought one. Coffee after coffee. Wax after a board. A second scent of the same candle. A subscription to something they’ve never tried is a much harder sell on a page they’ll look at for a few seconds.

What to test before going live

Place an order with a test card and a one-time product.
Accept the subscription offer, tick the box, confirm.
Check the Shopify order: two lines, one of them on a selling plan.
Check your subscription app: a new subscriber, with the right product, cadence and shipping, and the right length if you sell a fixed one.

The subscriptions chapter of our guide shows the offer settings. Post Purchase Upsell Abakira is on the Shopify App Store; the listing says which plan includes the Recharge and Loop connections.

Sources: Shopify, Create a post-purchase subscription (limitations, consent, shipping). Recharge, Auto-expire subscriptions. Checked on October 6, 2026.

Written by Abakira. We make small software: Shopify apps, web tools and iPhone apps. This article is about Post Purchase Upsell Abakira.