Manual

Introduction

Welcome to Seal Subscriptions - an app that offers a great subscription service to the public at a great price. The intuitive user interface allows anyone to setup a subscription based model on their Shopify store within minutes.

Dashboard

The Seal Subscriptions Dashboard provides great insight into the state of your subscriptions in your shop.
It displays the number of total, active and cancelled/paused subscriptions, as well as detailed payment calendar

Inventory forecast

You can see the forecasted inventory for each product in subscriptions for the next 7 days, next 30 days and the next 60 days if all subscriptions get renewed successfully.

Payment calendar

Here you can view completed, pending, scheduled, failed and skipped payments, along with their total price in the payment calendar in the app dashboard.

Subscription rules

The subscription rule is essentially a simple configuration, which defines which products your customers will be able to purchase as a subscription, which intervals will the customers be able to select, the discount you are willing to give your loyal subscribers and much more.

Creating subscription rules

Auto-charging subscription rules

In order to create a new auto-charging subscription rule, go to your Subscription rules -> Create rule -> Auto-charging subscription rule. From here you're able to set a name for your subscription rule as well as a label for the plan selector. In the next card you can select products to which you want to connect this subscription rule. The third section allows you to set different selling plans with various billing intervals such as daily, weekly, monthly or yearly subscriptions, a minimum number of required payments before the customer can cancel, a maximum number of payments before the subscription is cancelled automatically, the desired day of the week/month when you want to charge the customer, a subscription discount and an additional discount after a certain amount of payments.
NOTE: The auto-charging subscription rules require you to have the Shopify Payments, Authorize.net, ShopPay or at least PayPal Express set up in your shop. You can read more about requirements here.

Pre-paid subscriptions

Pre-paid selling plans have separate delivery and billing intervals. If you want your customers to get automatically charged in advance for a certain number of fulfillment orders check the This is a pre-paid selling plan option. This will allow you to set a billing interval, that will represent a multiple of a delivery interval (e.g. delivery every month, charge the customer every 3 months for all 3 deliveries). The price for the pre-paid subscriptions will be automatically increased to cover the cost of all products and deliveries included in one billing period. For example, if the product costs $5 and you offer it in pre-paid subscription where the customer pays for 3 deliveries in advance, then the cost of the product in subscription will be automatically increased to $15.

Quick Checkout Wizard

The Quick Checkout Wizard allows you to create direct checkout links for products with auto-charging subscription selling plans. You can then send this link to your customers in email campaigns, promotions or just put it anywhere on any site.

Fixed schedules

The Fixed schedules allows you to create a schedule, which will overwrite the automatically generated schedule of the subscriptions. The fixed schedules can be configured to apply to subscriptions that have a specific subscription billing interval, as well as have a cutoff period applied, where the first fixed billing attempt will be skipped, if the subscription is created within this cutoff period.

Recurring invoice subscription rules

To create a new recurring invoice subscription rule, go to your Subscription rules -> Create rule -> recurring invoice subscription rule.
Here you can set up the rule name, whether you want the products to only offer a subscription option or also a one-time purchase option and which option will be selected by default.
The next two cards allow you to select all products in your shop or only specific products to which you want to connect this subscription rule.
The third section is for setting up the subscription intervals and the day of the week/month when subscription emails should be sent out.
Last section allows us to set up a discount for recurring orders. The discount can be applied on initial order and subscequent orders or only on subsequent orders.

How does the recurring invoice mode work?

When your customers subscribe in recurring invoices mode and the time comes to pay for their next recurring order, the app will send them an automatic email reminder with the checkout link where they can pay for the recurring order. The app WON'T automatically charge your customers for subscriptions created in this mode. The customers will go to a normal checkout in your store (Shopify Checkout) and will be able to use any payment method you have configured in your store.

Editing subscription rules

To edit a subscription rule, go to Seal Subscriptions -> Subscription rules -> Click on a rule, and from here you can edit every part of the subscription rule, just as if you were creating a new rule.

Copying existing subscription rules

To create copies of your existing subscription rules, go to Seal Subscriptions -> Subscription rules -> click the "Copy" button on one of the rules. This will create a new subscription rule, with the same configuration as the rule you are copying.

Widgets

Subscription widgets are automatically generated by Seal Subscriptions on products that you have included in a subscription rule. Widgets are generally automatically injected into your shop by the app. In case you experience any issues with the widget or it's location on your product or collection pages, then it is recommended to install the widget via our manual installation guides, which are accessible here:

Enabling/Disabling

You can enable or disable the subscription widgets from the Subscription rule menu OR by going to Settings -> Subscription widget, and clicking the "Enable subscription widgets in your shop". The widgets are disabled by default and when you install the app, which means that you have to enable them to start showing them in your shop.
This feature is useful if you want to temporarily stop accepting new subscribers and don't want to delete your subscription rules.

You can also use this feature to disable the widgets after you have created your first auto-charging subscription rule to start the process of getting approval from PayPal Express to start using PayPal for subscription payments and you can't use any other payment gateway for subscriptions. After you get approved by PayPal, just enable the widgets and start accepting your first subscribers.

Subscriptions

Your subscriptions list is a list of all your customers' active, paused and cancelled subscriptions. Once a customer subscribes to a subscription product in your shop, their subscription will appear in the subscription list. You are able to filter the subscriptions by upcoming, failed and pending payments, as well as active, paused and cancelled subscriptions. You can pause, resume or delete subscriptions on the subscriptions list, by marking the checkboxes in front of them and then clicking the Pause, Resume or Delete button.

Creation by customer

The customer can create a subscription by selecting the subscription option in the subscription widget, adding the product to the cart and completing the order in your shop.

Creation by shop owner

The shop owner can create a subscription from the subscriptions list, by clicking the Add subscription manually button and selecting the subscription mode: auto-charging or recurring invoices mode. From here you can set the initial order date, payment method, shipping address, next billing date, etc.

Importing subscriptions from other platforms

There are three main ways to migrate subscriptions:

Migrating subscriptions manually
Migrating subscriptions in bulk via a csv import file
Migrating subscriptions automatically via the API

Migrating subscriptions manually involves manually re-creating the subscriptions in the app. You can re-create auto-charging subscriptions for customers in your shop that already have the subscription credit card (payment method) linked to their account.
In case your customers don't yet have a payment method linked to their account, you can also migrate their payment method if your old subscription provider is using Stripe, Braintree, Authorize.net or PayPal Express for processing subscription payments.
If you are migrating subscriptions from a newer subscription app, then your customers most likely already have the payment method linked to their profile, so you don't have to migrate it :) You just create a subscription for them.

You can migrate payment methods of your customers by going into our Seal Subscriptions app > Subscriptions > Add subscription manually > select auto-charging subscription > click on the Migrate customers from other platforms button in the Select customers card.
Follow the steps described in the migration screen, as it will guide you through the whole process.

Migrating subscriptions in bulk via a csv import file requires you to essentially export your subscriptions from your previous subscription provider, reformat the export file to match our own Seal Subscriptions import format, and upload it into the app. The instructions and walk-through guide for this can be found in Seal Subscriptions > Subscriptions > Bulk import subscriptions.

Migrating subscriptions automatically via the API (this works only if your previous subscription platform was Recharge or Bold) is the simplest method, as it requires you to input an API key and start the migration process. If you have a mixed set of subscriptions that were created from both the Shopify Checkout and the Recharge/Bold Checkout, where you you were using Stripe as the main payment gateway, then you can successfully migrate all subscriptions at once, otherwise, you will only be able to use the API migration if all your subscriptions were created through Shopify Checkout. This allows our system to automatically access the subscriptions in your Recharge/Bold and recreate them in our app. All you need is the Recharge/Bold API key (and in case you are also migrating from Stripe, the Stripe API key).

Editing by customer

A customer can edit their subscription through the customer portal, which they can access by clicking a magic link in each subscription email they receive, or by going to their subscriptions list through their account menu in your shop; if, of course, you have enabled them to edit their subscriptions at all. You can turn on and control the features which allow your customers to edit their subscriptions in Seal Subscriptions -> Settings -> Customer portal.

Editing by shop owner

A shop owner can edit subscriptions by going to the Subscriptions list -> Clicking on a subscription, and clicking on the Edit subscription button. From here you can edit the subscription interval, when the customer should get charged for the subscription, the minimum and maximum number of payments, the subscription products, subscription price, shipping cost, etc.

Subsequent orders for recurring invoices and auto-charging

All subsequent orders for auto-charging subscriptions charge the customer automatically based according to the billing schedule, which is created based on the subscription interval, initial order date and desired billing days.

Every subsequent order for recurring invoice subscriptions is a draft order with the subscription products. It is created automatically by the Seal Subscriptions app and the link to the checkout (where the customer pays for the order) is sent to the customer by email, based on the invoice schedule. The invoice schedule is created based on the subscription interval, initial order data and the desired day of the week/month when the invoices should be sent out.

Billing and invoice schedule

Billing and invoice schedules are schedules that the app follows to send invoices and charge customers. You can see the billing/invoice schedule by clicking on any subscription. Billing/invoice schedules are usually generated a few minutes after the subscription is created and are recreated when the subscription interval is modified (either by the customer or by the shop owner).

Rescheduling billing attempts

By clicking on Reschedule next to a scheduled payment in the billing schedule, you can reschedule the payment to any day or time through a date and time popup selector.

Skipping billing attempts

By clicking on Skip next to a scheduled payment in the billing schedule, you can skip any future payments and reactivate them at any time. Skipping a scheduled payment means the customer will not get charged for that billing attempt and the order won't be created in the shop.

General settings

This page contains every setting or configuration which didn't fit into any of the other settings pages.

Billing settings or dunning management

Here you can set how many times will the app retry to bill the customer before cancelling their subscription. You can also set the delay between these retries.

Auto-charging subscriptions settings

This section allows you to configure whether to propagate or transfer price changes to your existing auto-charging subscriptions.

Automatically propagate price changes to products in subscriptions

When you change the price of a product in your shop, the system will also change the price in all subscriptions containing this product. The price in subscriptions will be automatically updated a few minutes after you modify it in your shop.

Apply subscription discounts on each price change propagation

Discounts configured in your subscription rules will be applied on each updated price if the delivery and billing intervals match those in subscription rule.

Match products by their SKU and variant IDs when propagating price changes

By default, the system will update prices on variants with the same variant ID. This functionality will allow the system to also update prices on variants with the same SKU as the recently updated product variant.

Recurring invoice settings

Use the newest product prices OR Keep prices from initial order

In this section you can pick the option to use the newest product prices or keep the prices from initial orders on subsequent orders for recurring invoice subscriptions. If you choose to always use the newest product prices, then the products in subsequent orders will always have the newest product prices.

Always bypass inventory

Enabling the option to Always bypass inventory will prevent the subsequent recurring invoice subscription orders from decreasin your stock (inventory) levels.

Keep initial discount in recurring orders

The option Keep initial discounts in recurring orders will keep discounts from the initial order in recurring orders. The discounts from initial orders can be discounts from discount codes, bundle discounts, etc. The total applied discount amount might differ for a few cents because each item's discount has to be rounded to cents. This option can only be used if you turned on the setting to keep the inital prices in recurring orders.

Apply subscription discounts on initial orders

Apply subscription discounts on initial orders will apply discounts defined in the subscription rule on initial orders and recurring orders. The discount can only be applied if the customer checks out through Shopify Checkout. The discount can't be applied if the customer uses any of the dynamic checkout buttons (accelerated checkout buttons) to complete the initial order.

Shipping for auto-charging subscriptions

Choose when you want the system to automatically update the delivery cost in your subscriptions according to the shipping rates set up in your shop. The delivery cost will be automatically updated a few minutes after the change was applied to the subscription.

Update delivery cost for auto-charging subscriptions after they get created

Turn this on if you want the app to automatically update the delivery cost of subscription according to your shipping rates after the subscription gets created. This resolves the issue if the customer got free shipping because they bought enough to get free shipping, but the subscription doesn't have enough products to have free shipping rate.

Update delivery cost for auto-charging subscription if the customer edits, adds or removes products from the subscription

The system will automatically update the delivery cost after the customer edits the products in the customer portal.

Update delivery cost for auto-charging subscription if the customer edits the delivery address in customer portal

The system will automatically update the delivery cost after the customer edits the delivery address in the customer portal.

Update delivery cost for auto-charging subscription after a successful product swap

The system will automatically update the delivery cost after a successful automated product swap.

Update delivery cost for auto-charging subscriptions after a shipping profile was added or edited in your shop

The system will automatically update the delivery cost if you edit or add a shipping rate in your shop.

Always set the shipping to FREE shipping when updating it, no matter what is configured in delivery profiles

Turn this on only if you want to remove the shipping cost on each shipping cost update. This will override your shipping rates configuration.

Update delivery cost for auto-charging subscription only if the new cost is higher than the current one

The system will only update the delivery cost if the new cost will charge customer more than the current one.

Order status page settings

When an auto-charging subscription is purchased, the app can show a box with a description of the subscription, a link to the subscriptions and a button to resend the initial email.

Show subscription box with link to the account

When the order contains an auto-charging subscription product, the app will add a box with instructions on how to access the subscription to the order status page.

Show subscription box with an option to resend the initial email with a magic link

When the order contains an auto-charging subscription product, the app will add a box with option to resend the 'New Subsription' email to the order status pag

Customers

The functionality in this section allows you to tag your active and inactive subscribers with a specific tag. You can set a custom tag for active subscribers and a different one for customers with inactive subscription.

Orders

The orders section allows you to tag your new orders with subscription products with a specific tag. You can also tag subsequent subscription orders with a different tag.

Integrations

Google Analytics

Adding your Google Analytics tracking ID into the textbox and enabling the Google Analytics integration will turn on the functionality, which sends an Enhanced Ecommerce event to Google Analytics whenever a charge is processed successfully. The event sent to Google Analytics will be names Seal Subscriptions Charge.

Klaviyo

Turning on the Klaviyo integration will allow Seal Subscriptions to send events and related customer data (including email address) to Klaviyo to the account connected to the public API key.

Include magic link in data sent to Klaviyo

The magic link allows customers to access their subscription without being logged in. By turning this on, you can include this link in your emails sent from Klaviyo. The link will be sent in the metric as 'SubscriptionMagicUrl'

Gorgias

The Gorgias integration with Seal Subscriptions works by allowing your support team to access subscription details directly within Gorgias tickets.

API

The Seal Subscriptions Merchant API allows you to retrieve details about your subscriptions with REST API calls. You can access the API documentation here. To make your development easier, we also published a sample API client under the MIT license.
And don't forget to also check our Javascript API documentation and Customer Portal API documentation.

Advanced settings

Here you can exclude the widget from being displayed on certain URLs, customize the look of the widget and customer portal with custom CSS code, change the date and time format in the app, etc.

Unchecking this option will disable automatic injection of the auto-charging subscription widget. It is recommended to not turn this off, if your theme doesn't have a native support for displaying selling plans in your shop.

Data retention

You have the option to automatically delete cancelled subscriptions 7 days after it was cancelled. This will also remove all customer's data related to the subscription.

Enable subscription widgets in your shop

Checking this box will enable the displaying of subscription widgets in your shop. If you want to configure subscription rules before publishing them, you can temporarily uncheck it.

Change colors

This section allows you to change the text color, interval selector border color, interval selector background color, interval selector text color and other colors in your subscription widgets.

Show one-time purchase option above the subscription options

This option allows you to display the one-time purchase option above the subscription options.

This section allows you to pick between different subscription widget design presets, such as "Default" and "Arctic Seal".

Option selected by default in the auto-charging widget

Here, you can select whether or not you want the widget to have the subscription option selected by default.

Price color

This option allows you to set the color of the price, shown on the right side of the widget.

Show savings badge in the widget

This option allows you to display a savings badge in the subscription widget, which shows how much the customer saves by selecting the subscription option.

Keep subscription rules in the same order as how they were created

When this option is enabled, the subscription rules will appear in the widget in the same order as they were created in the app.

When this option is enabled, the widget will stay hidden if only one subscription option is available. This is useful if you offer your product as subscription only with only 1 interval option.

Hide interval/plan selector line if only one interval is available for selection

When this option is enabled, the option selector for the intervals will be hidden if only one interval is available.

Show the interval as plain text if only one interval is available

When this option is enabled, if only one interval is available, it will be shown as plain text instead of a dropdown menu.

Try to update product price on the product page

Turn this off if you don't want to update the original product price on the product page with the discounted subscription price.

Show original crossed out price next to the discounted subscription price

Turn this on to show the original or compare at price next to the discounted subscription price in the widget.

Keep this on if you want to show the 'compare at price' as the original price in the widget.

This section allows you to change the selected option border color, discount description text color, the details text color, gives you the option to always show the subscription details and others.

Customer portal

Product editing

In this section you can allow and restrict if and which products the customer can add and remove.

Apply bundle discounts from Bundler when customer edits their subscription

The app will find applicable bundle discounts configured in Bundler - Product Bundles app and apply them whenever a customer edits their subscription.

Subscription editing

In this section you can allow customers to change the subscription interval, change their e-mail address, change their shipping and billing address from the customer portal, pause their subscription, if they can cancel their subscription or not, if they can skip their upcoming payments, etc.

Access to customer portal

In this section you can control how your customers will access their subscription's customer portal page, where they can view and manage their subscription.

Colors

This section allows you to edit the colors of the elements in the customer portal.

Back button

Here you can select if you want to display the back button in the customer portal and configure its colors. The back button will only show up if the customer accessed the customer portal through the list of their subscriptions in their account.

Connect subscriptions with the same e-mail address

If a customer placed an order when they weren't logged in, you can automatically connect this subscription to the account with the same e-mail by turning on this setting. The customer will then be able to view these subscriptions when they are logged into their account.
This setting is applicable only for recurring invoice subscriptions, as auto-charging subscriptions already are connected to the account by the email.

Date and time format

Here you can select the desired date and time format for the customer portal and the subscriptions list page in your shop.

Cancellation flow

The Cancellation flow page can be used to create a flow that can help increase subscriber retention. It allows you to write pre-set cancellation reasons, which will contain a description that could contain an explanation or perhaps you could use it to offer the customer a discount for their subscription. You can also enable them to write their own cancellation reasons.

Inventory settings

The inventory settings page allows you to control what happens when a product contained within your existing subscriptions goes out of stock. For example, you can enable the app to skip the subscription renewals on out of stock, as well as get reminders for out of stock products.

Translations

The Translations page can be used to edit every piece of text on the subscription widgets. If your shop has multiple languages, you can change the language at the top of this page to edit and translate the widgets into other languages. The translations are automatically shown in your shop based on the locale that the customer selects in your shop. This functionality is compatible with Shopify's multilanguage shops.
For a full tutorial on how to translate the Seal Subscriptions app, Including your auto-charging subscription rules, refer to the guide here.

Notifications

The Notifications page is meant for editing and enabling e-mail notifications that are sent from the app. Somenotifications are sent to your customers, while others are sent only to the shop owner. To edit the e-mail notifications you will require basic knowledge of the HTML and CSS language.

Customer notifications

This section allows you to configure customer facing email notifications, such as the failed payment notifications, new subscription notifications, reminders about upcoming payments, etc.

Admin notifications

This section allows you to set up notifications specifically for the admin, whenever anything happens in the subscriptions, like when your customers edit their subscriptions

Delivery profiles

This is where you can set custom delivery profiles for your auto-charging subscriptions. You can use this functionality to give customers FREE shipping on their subscriptions.
Recurring invoice subscriptions will use the shipping profiles configured in Shopify admin > Settings > Shipping & delivery

App plans

Our app has a flat based pricing model, which means that you only get charged a flat (fixed) fee, based on the plan you choose. We don't charge any transaction fees. You can see our subscription plans on our Shopify App Store listing page: https://apps.shopify.com/seal-subscriptions.

Automations

Product swaps

The automated product swap is a very powerful functionality, which gives you more control over products in subscriptions and allows you to create subscription logic that will be interesting to your customers.

With this feature, you can add, remove or swap products in your customers' subscriptions based on the conditions that you set up.

To create a Product swap, go to Seal Subscriptions -> Product swaps -> Create product swap. From there you can configure when, under what conditions to apply the product swap and which products to swap, add or remove.

Here are a few ideas on what you can achieve with the automated product swap functionality:

swap product A with product B in all existing subscriptions (e.g. when you run out of stock),
set up a system, where the Seal Subscriptions app automatically changes the product after a specific each payment (e.g. subscription box),
add product A to the subscription when the customer buys product B (e.g. additional product for subsequent orders),
gradually remove product A from subscriptions and replace it with product B.

Loyalty discounts

This is where you can set up loyalty discounts for your subscribers. Loyalty discounts are currently implemented only on auto-charging subscriptions.

Automated interval changes

The automated interval change is a very powerful functionality, which gives you more control over delivery intervals in your subscriptions and allows you to create a subscription logic, more interesting to your customers than a standard subscription model.

Bulk actions

The Bulk actions section allows you to perform actions on multiple subscriptions at the same time.

Reschedule billing attempts

This bulk action allows you to select all billing attempts on a specific date, and then pick a new date to reschedule those billing attempts to.

Analytics

The Analytics section contains multiple different statistics and reports about your subscriptions.

GDPR & Privacy policy

Customer's privacy is very important to us and we strive to be GDPR compatible. You can read about our Privacy Policy here.