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Discount codes for subscription purchases
Discount codes for subscription purchases

How to create a Shopify discount code for subscription purchases

Updated over 9 months ago

Offering discounts can be a marketing strategy that you use to drive sales in your Shopify store. You can create automatic discounts and discount codes to offer to your customers. You might want to use discounts as a way to promote sales, special offers, or as customer loyalty rewards. Discount codes are codes you can create and share individually, and automatic discounts are applied automatically at checkout and on the cart.

You can update and manage existing discounts from the Discounts page in Shopify.

Shopify automatic discounts are only supported with one-time purchases. You can only use Shopify discount codes for subscription purchases.


In this Article:


Shopify discount code types

There are different discount classes and types of discounts that you can create. Discount classes are like the categories of discounts. Discount classes that you can create are:

  • Order discounts

  • Product discounts

  • Shipping discounts

Discount types are more specific, like:

Buy X get Y discounts are only supported with one-time purchases.


How to create Shopify discount codes for subscription purchases?

If you are new to Shopify discounts, please check the Shopify help center articles first.

To make your discount codes applicable to subscription purchases, please follow these steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin panel, go to Discounts.

  2. Click on Create Discount.

  3. Choose any discount code type that you like.
    (except for Buy X get Y, because it is only supported with one-time purchases).

  4. From the Method section, choose Discount code.
    ​

  5. From the Purchase Type section, select Subscription or Both.
    ​

  6. When you select the "Subscription" or "Both" purchase type, a new section will be added to your discount code setting, called "Recurring payments for subscriptions". From this section, you can define to how many recurring orders of a subscription the discount should be applied.
    ​

Now your customers can apply this Shopify discount code to their subscription orders.


How to limit Shopify discount codes to only apply to one subscription order?

In your Shopify discount code settings, when you select the "Subscription" or "Both" purchase type, a new section will be added to your discount code setting, called "Recurring payments for subscriptions". From this section, you can define to how many recurring orders of a subscription the discount should be applied.

If you set the Recurring payments for subscriptions to "Limit discount to the first payment", then the discount code will be applied to the first order of the subscription only.

If the customer applied this code to their existing subscription from the customer subscription portal, then it will only be applied to the first upcoming order of that subscription.


How can my subscribers apply a Shopify discount code to their existing subscriptions?

You can share any Shopify discount code that can be applied to a subscription purchase type and share it with your subscriber to apply it to their existing subscriptions from their subscription customer portal:
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Shopify free shipping discount codes are also supported.

You can set this discount code to only apply to the next upcoming order of the subscription or set a rule in the discount code that can be used once by each customer.

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