Restricting Subscriptions Explained
Restricting how many subscriptions an email can have allows you to control how many ongoing subscription orders a customer can process.
Controlling subscription numbers may help maintain an exclusive product, mitigate the risk of spam, and keep the subscription process simple.
Setting Up Subscriptions Restrictions
To access the Subscription Number Restrictions, navigate to the More section and click on Shop Settings. Scroll down to the Subscription Settings section and enable the Allow Subscription per customer toggle.
You will now be able to choose between four behaviors for subscription purchase:
One Overall - Customers can only have one subscription per account, regardless of status
One Active Overall - Customers can only have one active subscription per account, but can have any number of paused or cancelled subscriptions.
One Per Frequency - Customers can have more than one subscription but each one needs to be on a different frequency plan, and status does not affect this limit.
One Active Per Frequency - Customers can have more than one subscription for each frequency, but only one can be active for each frequency.
After selecting your restriction behavior and clicking Save at the top of the page, select Click here to turn on the extension to add checkout validation rules to your Shopify store. This ensures that the subscription behaviors are followed by the Shopify Checkout.
From the checkout settings menu, scroll to the Checkout Rules section and select Add Rule. Select Appstle Subscriptions to add the checkout rules and click Save on the following page.
Lastly, select Turn On to activate the rule in your checkout process.
Example Use Cases for Subscription Restriction
Only Allowing Swaps or Additions - Merchants can use the One Overall behavior to make sure that customers don't buy more than one subscription. This rule would block checkout if customers tried to buy another subscription item instead of using the customer portal
Limiting Exclusive Purchases - Using the One Overall behavior also helps merchants ensure that products are fairly distributed and blocks one customer from buying all exclusive subscriptions.
Avoiding Duplicate Subscriptions - Merchants may utilize any of the behaviors to avoid accidental purchase of duplicate subscriptions and catch any customers need to make adjustments instead of purchasing.