Subscription Billing

Overview

Subscription billing lets customers pay automatically on a recurring schedule — weekly, monthly, or annually. Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce each have dedicated subscription apps and plugins that handle the full lifecycle: initial checkout, recurring billing, failed payment recovery (dunning), plan changes, pausing, and cancellation. For headless storefronts, Stripe Subscriptions provides the same functionality via API with no need to build billing logic from scratch.

When to Use This Skill

• When building a subscription box, membership, or "Subscribe & Save" program
• When the current subscription logic is manual and not scaling with customer count
• When dunning (failed payment recovery) is not automated and causing unnecessary churn
• When customers need self-serve plan upgrades, downgrades, pausing, and cancellation

Core Instructions

Step 1: Determine your platform and choose the right subscription tool