Bundle Subscriptions Management in Shopify

Setting up subscription enables e-commerce businesses on Shopify to earn recurring revenue. It also ensures consistent sales, and strong customer retention. But do you know what is even better than selling subscriptions? Selling subscription bundles.

If single-item subscriptions grow revenue, bundled subscriptions multiply it. However, these bundles require extra effort to manage. Otherwise, things can get out of hand pretty quickly. Luckily, SubscriptionFlow saves businesses from this effort.

SubscriptionFlow simplifies bundle subscriptions management in Shopify, so that businesses can focus on boosting their sales confidently. In this article, let’s dive into how bundle subscriptions work on Shopify, and how SubscriptionFlow helps.

What is Bundle Subscriptions Management?

Bundle subscriptions refer to product bundles sold as subscriptions. They are different from single product subscriptions, as the latter includes the delivery of only one product. Bundle subscriptions can be thought of as subscription boxes.

Just like subscription boxes, they include an appealing mixture of products delivered to customers on a regular basis. Similar to regular subscriptions, bundle subscriptions follow standard billing cycles, such as weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc. They can also follow customized billing schedules such as bi-monthly, every 2 months, every 6 months, and more.

Examples: Popular examples of bundle subscriptions include skincare boxes, meal plans, snack boxes, etc. These bundles can be of two types: fixed and customizable. Fixed bundles feature a set of products that cannot be changed. On the other hand, customizable bundles allow customers to add the items of their choice.

Bundle subscriptions are popular with customers, as they offer more variety. Customers can get bored receiving the same single item in their subscription repeatedly. They might cancel subscription due to this reason too.

However, things are different in bundle subscriptions. Customers are offered a colorful assortment of products to always keep subscriptions fresh.

Efficient selling of bundle subscriptions requires advanced subscription management mechanisms in the background. These include easy bundle creation, billing, subscription plan changes, customer account management, and more.

Challenges of Offering Bundle Subscriptions in Shopify

Without a dedicated subscription management app, bundle subscriptions handling can get tedious. That is because Shopify’s support for setting up, and running such subscriptions is very limited. Here are some challenges Shopify businesses can face in this regard:

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Difficulty in Handling Multiple SKUs in a Single Plan

Each item that an e-commerce store sells on Shopify has its own SKU. This SKU becomes the item’s identity in the inventory. Businesses use SKUs to track their items in their inventories. Since Shopify doesn’t directly support subscription bundles, it doesn’t treat multiple SKUs as a single unit.

Due to this, businesses have to track each item in the inventory individually, rather than tracking the whole unit at once. This can get confusing and error-prone too. Moreover, it becomes a challenge to allocate flexible prices to different subscription bundles.

It’s also difficult to apply discount to the whole bundle at once, instead of just on a single item. The same goes for the billing schedule or shipping costs of the entire bundle.

In a nutshell, since Shopify supports only single-item subscriptions natively, trying to change that in-built logic is hard. Businesses require special Shopify apps, like SubscriptionFlow to do that.

Difficulty in Managing Billing for Each Item in the Bundle

Even if businesses somehow set up bundle subscriptions manually, their trial doesn’t end there. Now Shopify treats all the items included as a single unit. This means that everything is going to be billed together, as one product.

Billing for each product cannot be managed separately, reducing transparency. Suppose a customer wants to downgrade to a cheaper subscription plan. They have utilized only some products from the existing plan, and are willing to return the rest.

Businesses won’t know how to prorate their charges accurately, since billing of separate components is not easily managed.

Manual Management of Subscription Changes

Customers might want to change some products in their bundle, after their subscription is finalized. They might want to add extra items, or remove some existing ones. Shopify doesn’t allow these modifications.

As a result, businesses have to cancel the customer’s subscription entirely so that it can be built up again from scratch.

SubscriptionFlow Enables Expert Bundle Subscriptions Management in Shopify

With the SubscriptionFlow app in Shopify, businesses can avoid all the above mentioned challenges. SubscriptionFlow makes bundle subscriptions handling a breeze. It equips e-commerce businesses with expert billing capabilities, so they can give their customers a seamless subscription experience.

Here’s some of our smart features:

Dynamic Subscription Bundles

Businesses can either offer fixed subscription bundles, or personalized bundles. In personalized bundles, customers can choose the products, and product quantity of their choice. They work just like create-your-own-bundle offers.

Once customers make their custom bundles, they can choose to keep them unchanged for the following billing cycles too. They can also flexibly change items in their bundles when they feel it. SubscriptionFlow adjusts billing accordingly.

Moreover, businesses can also easily offer discounts on select bundles. Our billing system is built to handle complex payment scenarios. In addition, the billing cycles for bundle subscriptions can also be customized according to customer preferences.

Easy Subscription Modifications

SubscriptionFlow allows your customers to change their subscription plans flexibly. After all, no customer likes to be locked up in a plan they have no control over. That is not the right way to retain customers either.

We allow your customers to upgrade and downgrade their plan with ease. In the event of such changes, we allow accurate proration of customers’ charges. SubscriptionFlow enables hassle-free billing adjustment, as the system tracks each product’s pricing within the bundle.

In addition, we simplify plan editing as well. If customers want to switch some items in their bundle with other items, businesses can do that for them effortlessly. They don’t have to cancel subscription, and set it up from scratch.

Automated Recurring Billing

Automation is key for streamlined billing cycles. Manually tracking each customer’s billing date is nothing short of a nightmare. If you have a considerable customer volume, things can get messy real fast.

SubscriptionFlow simplifies subscription bundle payments by auto-tracking billing cycles. It also automates the key processes involved in billing. It generates invoices, processes payments, tracks unpaid invoices, carries out dunning, renews subscriptions—all on autopilot.

This not only reduces your administrative burden, but also accelerates your payments, and greatly reduces the margin for billing errors.

Unified Invoicing

No need to create a separate invoice for each item in the bundle. SubscriptionFlow auto-generates unified invoices that carry details and pricing of all the products in the bundle.

Customers can easily pay for everything at once. Businesses can also easily track the total payment, instead of tracking its multiple smaller parts.

Seamless Shopify Integration

This is another compelling reason why businesses should use SubscriptionFlow with Shopify. SubscriptionFlow integrates with Shopify seamlessly, and enables real-time data sharing between the two platforms.

All of a Shopify store’s products can easily be synced with SubscriptionFlow, and orders from SubscriptionFlow can be synced with Shopify. This bi-directional data flow keeps subscription operations unified, eliminating discrepancies.

Businesses can easily set up subscriptions for Shopify customers in SubscriptionFlow. They can also manage customer accounts, subscription modifications, and inventory, as well as track payments in SubscriptionFlow.

Smooth Shopify Checkouts

SubscriptionFlow enables businesses to embed its custom checkout within their Shopify carts. This facilitates direct transactions. Customers do not have to be redirected to external payment pages to complete their purchase.

Businesses can also benefit from our hosted checkouts without paying extra. When users confirm a purchase, they are taken to SubscriptionFlow’s checkout. This checkout can be completely customized and adapted to the needs of each business.

Shopify stores can use both of these in accordance with their subscription requirements. They can utilize embedded checkouts for simpler and more direct payments. Or, they can opt for hosted checkouts for advanced customizations, and more personalized customer experience.

Advantages of Efficient Bundle Subscriptions Management

Managing bundle subscriptions with specialized apps like SubscriptionFlow offers these benefits:

Higher Customer Retention

Customers like to be in control of their subscriptions. Bundle subscriptions allow them just that. Customers flexibly create their own subscription bundles willingly—it doesn’t involve marketing that feels forced.

They can also easily modify their plans, fostering trust and transparency. All of these factors combined with smooth recurring billing ultimately lead to stronger customer relationships.

Increased AOV

Average order value (AOV) is lower for single-item subscriptions. Bundle subscriptions improve order value by bringing multiple products into the equation. They automatically enable businesses to sell more. This strengthens their predictable revenue streams.

Easy Cross-Selling

SubscriptionFlow enables automatic product recommendations in customers’ carts, or at the point of checkout. These products are recommended intelligently, based on customer’s preferences, and the existing items in their cart.

This increases the chances of additional sales. Customers might find items in recommendations that they did not view before. Cross-selling strategies also sometimes allow businesses to sell their less popular items, increasing their visibility.

Ready to level up your Shopify bundle subscriptions? Book a demo with SubscriptionFlow.