App Setup
How to Set Up Recharge Subscriptions on Your Shopify Store
By Patrick · Founder, Virtual Freelance Solutions · 10+ years in eCommerce customer support
What Recharge does and why it matters for customer service
Recharge replaces Shopify's standard one-time checkout with a recurring billing system. Customers subscribe to your product, get charged automatically each cycle, and can manage their subscription through a Recharge customer portal.
Getting the portal set up correctly is the single most important step for reducing subscription-related support tickets. A customer who can pause, skip, or cancel their own subscription without emailing you is a customer who does not create a ticket.
Step 1 — Install Recharge from the Shopify App Store
Search for Recharge Subscriptions in the Shopify App Store and click Install. You will be guided through a setup flow that connects Recharge to your Shopify store and replaces your checkout with Recharge's subscription-enabled version.
Choose your plan based on order volume. Most starting stores use the Standard plan. Move to Pro when you need advanced save-desk flows and retention tools.
Step 2 — Set up your subscription products
From the Recharge dashboard:
- Go to Products and select the items you want to offer as subscriptions
- Set your subscription intervals (weekly, monthly, every 6 weeks, etc.)
- Set your subscription discount if you offer one (e.g. 10% off for subscribe-and-save)
- Publish the subscription offering to your Shopify product page
Recharge adds a subscription toggle to your product page automatically once the product is configured.
Step 3 — Configure the customer portal
The customer portal is where subscribers manage their account. A well-configured portal reduces your support tickets by giving customers self-service options.
Enable these features in the portal settings:
- Pause subscription
- Skip next order
- Swap product
- Update shipping address
- Cancel subscription
Enabling cancellation in the portal feels counterintuitive but it is the right move. Customers who cannot cancel easily file chargebacks instead — which is far more damaging than a cancellation.
Step 4 — Set up a save-desk cancellation flow
A save-desk flow is a cancellation retention sequence that appears when a customer tries to cancel. Recharge's Pro plan includes built-in save-desk tools. On Standard, you can create a basic flow manually.
A simple save-desk flow:
- Ask the reason for cancellation (too expensive, not using it, product issue, pausing)
- Offer the relevant retention option — a discount for price objections, a skip for the "not using it" response, a swap for product issues
- Only show the cancel button after the retention offer is declined
A good save-desk flow retains 15 to 30 percent of customers who attempt to cancel.
Step 5 — Brief your support agents on Recharge workflows
Your support team needs to know how to handle the three most common Recharge subscription support tickets:
- Failed payment — how to resend the payment link and update card details in the Recharge admin
- Cancellation request via email — how to cancel manually in Recharge without creating a billing dispute
- Subscription pause request — how to pause for a set number of cycles
We work inside Gorgias and Zendesk alongside Recharge so subscription tickets get the same workflow treatment as the rest of your inbox.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need Recharge Pro to have a cancellation save-desk?
- A basic save-desk flow can be set up on Standard, but Recharge Pro gives you the full cancellation flow builder with analytics.
- Can customers manage their subscription without contacting support?
- Yes — if the customer portal is fully configured. Enabling self-service pause, skip, and swap options eliminates the majority of subscription tickets.
- What happens to the subscription if a customer files a chargeback?
- Recharge does not automatically cancel subscriptions on a chargeback. You need to cancel manually to prevent future charges, which would generate additional disputes.
People Also Ask
- Basic subscription product setup takes a few hours; full configuration including customer portal customization, dunning management, and email flows typically takes a few days to get right.
- Yes, it has built-in dunning management that retries failed payments on a schedule, but you should still monitor and follow up manually on repeated failures before the subscription cancels.
- Yes — the customer portal lets them skip, pause, swap products, or cancel without contacting support, which significantly reduces subscription-related ticket volume.
Related resources
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