App Setup
How to Set Up Recharge Subscriptions on Your Shopify Store
Recharge is the most widely used subscription app for Shopify — used by thousands of DTC brands selling everything from coffee to skincare. Getting the setup right from day one prevents the most common subscription support headaches: failed payments, confusing cancellation flows, and customers who cannot manage their own accounts. This guide covers the full setup.
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.
Want to see how this would look for your brand?
We'll walk through your current support stack, ticket categories, and tooling — and show you what an operationalized version looks like inside Zendesk, Gorgias, or Help Scout.