What are the different subscription plan types?

While creating your subscription plan, you will have the option to select from different plan types inside your store’s merchant portal. Currently, Appstle offers 4 different plan types including:

Each plan is different, so let's go over what you can expect from each one.

Pay As You Go plans charge customers at regular intervals based on order frequency and the interval of their subscription.

For example, customers who are set up with a monthly subscription will be billed once a month for the value of the order delivered. This billing occurs automatically until the subscription is canceled, either by the merchant or customer.

Prepaid One-Time plans charge the customers an upfront payment for multiple upcoming orders that are part of a subscription.

For example, below we see the current billing period is 12 with a fulfillment frequency of 1 month. The customer will be charged for 12 months of orders upfront, paying for 12 deliveries in advance.

The payment will automatically create an order with 12 fulfillments in your Shopify’s order section. The Prepaid plan only charges customers once and the subscription is terminated after the fulfillments are completed.

Prepaid Auto-Renew plans are similar to Prepaid One-Time plans but can be extended to continue charging the customer upfront based on your defined configurations.

For example, the configuration below will charge the customer every 12 months for the next 12 months of orders. This will create 12 order fulfilments in your Shopify Admin. The subscription will not terminate after the first upfront payment and will instead continue until cancelled.

Prepaid (Separate Orders) plans allow merchants to set the Billing Frequency and Order Fulfilment Frequency for a subscription contract. The system will automatically manage the repeating billing cycles and discounts (loyalty), reducing the need for manual setup.

For example, if you set the delivery interval to once per month and the billing interval to every three months, customers will receive their products monthly while being billed only once per quarter.

The plan automatically manages cycles and loyalty discounts, ensuring seamless subscription experiences without manual adjustments. Free trials are not available for Prepaid (Separate Orders) plan types.

If you have any questions regarding plan types, please contact us at subscription-support@appstle.com. You can also chat with a live agent 24/7 using our chat widget.