Shopify Subscription Box: How to Set Up, Price and Ship It
A Shopify subscription box is a product that your customers buy once and receive again every week, month or year, charged automatically. For a curated box, where you choose what goes inside, you need nothing beyond Shopify’s free Shopify Subscriptions app: create the box as one product, attach a monthly plan, and add the subscription widget to the product page. A build-a-box, where the customer picks the contents, needs a third-party subscription app.
Shopify facts come from the Shopify Help Center on Shopify Subscriptions, read on October 23, 2026. The prices in the costing example are ours, for illustration.
Curated box or build-a-box
| Curated box | Build-a-box | |
|---|---|---|
| Who picks the items | You, the same box for every subscriber | The customer, from a list you set |
| What it is in Shopify | One product with its own SKU and stock | A set of products combined at checkout by an app |
| App you need | Shopify Subscriptions (free) | A third-party app; Appstle and Seal list build-a-box on their listings |
| Inventory | Count of boxes you can pack | Each item’s own stock |
| Works for | Themed boxes, samplers, “surprise” boxes, gift subscriptions | Coffee, snacks, pet food, refills where taste differs |
Start curated unless your customers have strong preferences. You plan one box a month, buy in bulk for it, and pack identical orders, which keeps the first months simple. Our guide to Shopify recurring payments compares six subscription apps by price, including the two that list build-a-box.
One limit decides how you build the curated box: the Shopify Bundles app is not compatible with Shopify Subscriptions. Create the box as an ordinary product (for example “Monthly tea box”) rather than as a bundle of your existing products.
Set up the box in Shopify
Before you start, check your payment provider. Subscriptions charge a stored card, and third-party subscription apps work only with Shopify Payments, PayPal Express, Authorize.net, Adyen or Stripe, depending on your region.
- Create the box product. Go to Products > Add product. Write what a subscriber gets each month, the box size and the shipping cadence in the description. Add photos of a real packed box. Set the inventory to the number of boxes you can fill for the next shipment.
- Install Shopify Subscriptions from the Shopify App Store. It is free and made by Shopify.
- Create a plan. Go to Apps > Subscriptions > Plans > Create plan. Enter a Title that customers will see (for example “Monthly, cancel anytime”) and an Internal description for yourself.
- Set discount and frequency. Under Discount and frequency options, pick a Discount type (Percentage off, Amount off or Fixed price) if subscribers should pay less than one-time buyers, and set the Delivery frequency, for example 1 month.
- Fix the billing day. Select Set a specific billing day and choose a date of the month. Every subscriber is then charged on the same date, so you pack all boxes in one run instead of every day.
- Add a gift option. Add a second option with End after a set number of orders, for example 3. The first order counts, skipped orders do not, and after the last one the subscription status becomes Expired. This is how you sell a “3-month gift box” without a reminder to cancel.
- Add the product to the plan in the Products section and click Save. You can also start from the product page: Purchase options > + Subscriptions.
- Show the widget. Go to Online Store, click Edit theme, open the product template, and under Product information click Add block > Subscription widget. Save. In App embeds, keep the Subscription widget embed turned off, as Shopify asks, or the widget may not display correctly. The block needs an Online Store 2.0 theme or a theme that supports theme blocks (setup steps).
- Place a test order and check what the customer sees: the plan on the product page, the delivery frequency in the cart and on the thank-you page, and the subscription in their customer account.
Subscribers manage the box themselves from their customer account: they can skip a month, cancel, resume, and update their card and shipping address. You can modify, skip, pause and cancel contracts from the app.
Price one box before you launch
Work out the margin on a single box, with real quotes from your suppliers. An example with made-up numbers:
| Line | Per box |
|---|---|
| Products inside (bought for 300 boxes) | $14.00 |
| Box, tissue, insert card | $3.20 |
| Shipping label | $7.40 |
| Payment processing (depends on your plan and provider) | $1.40 |
| Total cost | $26.00 |
| Subscription price | $39.00 |
| Margin per box | $13.00 |
Three choices change this table more than anything else:
- Shipping included or extra. If the price includes shipping, every zone you ship to needs checking, because the label cost varies. Charging shipping at checkout keeps the box price honest but shows a higher total.
- The subscriber discount. A 10% discount on $39 takes $3.90 out of a $13 margin. Price the box so the discounted price is the one you can live with.
- Prepaid plans. A 3-month plan billed once gives you cash before you buy stock. Shopify Subscriptions lists weekly, monthly and yearly renewals. Seal Subscriptions lists prepaid subscriptions on its App Store listing, so check an app’s listing before you build around prepaid billing.
Cut-off dates and shipping
A box that ships on a fixed date needs a cut-off: the last day to subscribe or change something and still get this month’s box. Put it on the product page and in the confirmation email.
How Shopify handles recurring orders affects your calendar:
- Shopify bills a renewal the day after it is due, at 10:00 in your store’s time zone, so a box due on the 1st is charged on the 2nd.
- The first order ships with the method the customer chose at checkout. Later orders use the cheapest available shipping method (subscription considerations), so your cheapest rate must be one you are happy to ship boxes with.
- Each recurring order is billed and fulfilled separately. A customer with two boxes on different plans gets two shipments.
A workable rhythm for a monthly curated box: billing on the 1st, cut-off for changes a few days earlier, packing on the 3rd and 4th, shipping by the 5th. Track how many active, paused and canceled subscriptions you have in the app’s analytics, and in your sales reports add the Subscription or one-time dimension to see how much of your revenue repeats.
Getting the first subscribers
Your existing customers are the first audience. Offer the box on the product pages of the items it contains, and send one email to customers who bought those items. A subscribe-and-save option on single products is a softer start; see subscription upsells. The box itself is a marketing channel too, since what subscribers see when they open it decides whether they post it; our guide to packaging and the unboxing experience covers inserts and box design. For channels beyond your own list, see the marketing and SEO hub.
Frequently asked questions
Is Shopify Subscriptions free? The Shopify Subscriptions app is free and made by Shopify. You still pay your normal Shopify plan and payment processing fees on each renewal.
Can customers build their own box with Shopify Subscriptions? Shopify Subscriptions alone doesn’t offer it. A build-a-box needs a third-party subscription app that lists the feature, such as Appstle or Seal.
Can I sell a subscription box as a gift? In Shopify Subscriptions, add a plan option with End after a set number of orders, for example 3 or 6, and the subscription expires after the last box.
How do I see subscription sales in reports? Shopify’s sales reports include subscription data. Add the Subscription or one-time dimension or filter to split repeat revenue from single purchases.