How to Setup WooCommerce Subscriptions (Simple and Advanced)

Setting up a subscription product in WooCommerce is easy.

Running subscriptions without turning your store into an operational mess is the real challenge.

Some stores just want to sell one simple product every month and let it run quietly in the background.

Other stores run subscription businesses where customers upgrade, pause, retry failed payments, switch plans, or follow special shipping and billing rules.

Both types of stores use subscriptions. But they require very different setups in WooCommerce.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

• What a subscription actually means in store operations
• The two ways to set up subscriptions in WooCommerce: simple vs advanced
• And how to choose the one that fits your store right now

Let’s start with the basics most guides skip.

What does it really mean to set up WooCommerce subscriptions?

When most store owners search “how to set up WooCommerce subscriptions”, they are not looking for a plugin comparison.

They are looking for a system where all of this just works:

• Recurring billing: Customers are charged automatically every week, month, or year
• Automatic renewals: WooCommerce keeps creating renewal orders in the background without you doing anything
• Failed payment handling: If a card fails, the system can retry, notify the customer, or pause the subscription instead of breaking everything
• Customer control: Customers can cancel or pause their subscription on their own, without emailing you or opening support tickets
• Admin control: You can see, manage, fix, cancel, or restart subscriptions from your dashboard

This is what people actually mean when they ask how WooCommerce subscriptions work.

If your setup does these five things reliably, you don’t have “a subscription product”. You have a subscription system.

And this is exactly where most stores get confused.

Because there are two very different ways to build this system in WooCommerce:

• A simple setup that covers the basics and stays easy to run.
• An advanced setup that handles complex rules, but needs more time and care.

Let’s start with the simple one.

The simple subscription setup (for most WooCommerce stores)

For most small and growing WooCommerce stores, the goal is not to build a complex subscription system.

The goal is to run simple subscriptions that work reliably without extra work.

• You set it up once and rarely have to think about it again.
• Most days, nothing breaks and nothing needs manual intervention.
• When something does need fixing, it’s obvious where to look.
• Day-to-day work stays the same as a normal WooCommerce store.
• Subscriptions add predictable revenue, not daily maintenance work.
• The system stays boring and that’s exactly what you want.

This is the level of setup most real businesses need for their first few hundred and often first few thousand subscribers.

You’re not trying to run a telecom billing platform.

You’re trying to sell coffee, skincare, memberships, boxes, or services, reliably, every week or every month, without creating a second business just to manage subscriptions.

This is exactly the problem Smart Subscriptions for WooCommerce is designed to solve.

It gives you a clean, WooCommerce-native subscription system that covers everything a growing store actually needs, without forcing you into a complex, overengineered setup.

How to create a subscription product in WooCommerce (simple setup)

Let’s say you run a small yoga studio in Austin, Texas, and you want to sell online class access.

You want to offer: Unlimited online yoga classes for $29 per month.

No tiers. No complicated plans. Just one simple monthly membership.

Here’s how you set it up using Smart Subscriptions for WooCommerce:

• Install and activate Smart Subscriptions for WooCommerce.
• Note: It currently supports automatic renewals via Stripe, so make sure WooCommerce Stripe Gateway is installed and connected.
• Now configure the general setting. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Smart Subscriptions and then follow these steps.

Now here’s how to add subscription product in WooCommerce:

• Go to Products > Add New and create a product named “Online Yoga Classes – Monthly Membership”.
• In the Product Data dropdown, select Simple Subscription.
• Set:
  • Subscription price to 29.
  • Billing period to Month.
  • Billing interval to 1.
  • Trial to 0 (or add a trial if you want).
• Write a short product description clearly stating that this is a recurring monthly subscription, not a one-time purchase.
• Save and publish the product.

Do one test purchase in Stripe test mode to make sure:

• The order is created.
• The subscription appears in WooCommerce.
• The next renewal date is scheduled.

That’s it.

You now have a fully working subscription system that charges customers automatically every month and lets them manage their membership from their account page.

The advanced subscription setup (for complex or scaling WooCommerce stores)

Some WooCommerce businesses outgrow simple subscriptions.

This usually happens when:

• You have multiple plans and tiers.
• Customers want to upgrade, downgrade, or switch plans.
• You need proration, aligned renewals, or complex billing rules.
• You sell one-time and subscription products together.
• You use multiple payment gateways.

At this point, subscriptions are no longer “set it and forget it”. There are just more things to think about and more cases to handle.

This is the kind of complexity WooCommerce Subscriptions is built for.

It’s the official WooCommerce plugin for running advanced subscription businesses.

It supports flexible billing intervals, automatic and manual renewals, failed payment recovery, plan switching, proration, trials, coupons, sign-up fees, and multiple payment gateways.

It also gives you reporting for recurring revenue and subscribers.

It’s powerful. But that power comes with more settings, more configuration, and more operational responsibility.

How to set up an advanced subscription in WooCommerce?

Purchase and install WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin

• Go to the WooCommerce marketplace and purchase the above WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin.
• In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin
• Upload the plugin .zip file, install, and activate it.

Configure subscription plugin settings

Go to: WooCommerce → Settings → Subscriptions

Here are some key options to configure:

• Button text – Customize Add to Cart / Place Order buttons.
• Roles – Assign user roles for new and inactive subscribers.
• Renewals – Choose between manual and automatic renewals.
• Switching – Allow customers to upgrade or downgrade subscriptions.
• Miscellaneous – Enable features like:
  • Suspending subscriptions
  • Mixed checkout (one-time + recurring)
  • Free initial checkout
  • Dripping downloadable content
  • Auto-retry for failed payments

Refer to the official documentation for better settings.

Create a subscription product

Let’s create a simple subscription product:

• Go to: WooCommerce → Products → Add Product
• Enter product title, description, and other details.
• In the Product Data section, choose:
  • Simple subscription
• Fill in:
  • Subscription Price: e.g., $10/month
  • Billing Interval and Period: e.g., every 1 month
  • Sign-Up Fee: optional
  • Free Trial Period: optional
  • Expiration: e.g., ends after 12 months

You can also:

• Set a sale price
• Limit the subscription to one per customer
• Add subscription coupons

Click Publish — and your subscription product is live.

Set up subscription payment gateways

WooCommerce Subscriptions supports both automatic and manual payments.

Not all gateways support recurring billing, so choose wisely.

Popular supported gateways:

• Stripe
• PayPal
• Square
• Amazon Pay

Note: Payment gateways that save customer details can handle automatic renewals.

Manage subscriptions easily

Go to: WooCommerce → Subscriptions

From here, you can:

• View all active/inactive subscriptions
• Edit individual subscriptions (pause, cancel, change plans, etc.)
• Track subscriber details, billing cycles, and payment status

Refer to WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin documentation for more details.

This works well if you’re managing a small number of subscriptions.

But what if you have 500+ subscribers?

Managing them one by one isn’t practical.
That’s where subscription management tools come in. These tools let you:

• Bulk edit subscription details
• View subscription data in a spreadsheet-like view
• Automate admin tasks and reduce operational workload

Simple vs Advanced WooCommerce subscription setup

At this point, the difference should be clear.

One approach is built for speed and simplicity. The other is built for power and control.

Both can work. Just not for the same job.

Here’s a simple comparison to make the trade-offs obvious:

Important reality check:

• Most stores starting subscriptions don’t fail because features are missing.
• They fail because the setup is too complex to maintain.
• This is not a technical problem.
• It is an operational problem.

Which approach should you choose?

Use this as a quick decision filter.

Once subscriptions are live, the real work becomes managing and scaling them.

That’s where the right tools help.

5 must-have WooCommerce subscription management tools

Here are five must-have tools that make running WooCommerce subscriptions simpler, faster, and more scalable.

Smart Manager- Bulk manage subscriptions and orders

Smart Manager gives you a spreadsheet-style view of your WooCommerce data, including subscriptions, orders, and customers.

Think of it as Excel… but cooler and made just for managing and bulk editing WooCommerce subscriptions.

With it, you can:

• Edit many subscriptions at once
• Extend trials or change dates in bulk
• Cancel, pause, or reactivate subscriptions without opening them one by one
• Search, filter, and update large datasets quickly

If you ever find yourself thinking “this should be a bulk action”, Smart Manager is usually the right tool.

More about Smart Manager

Putler – Your subscriptions’ crystal ball

Putler turns your WooCommerce data into a clean, easy-to-read dashboard.

It helps you:

• Track recurring revenue, churn, and growth
• See which plans and customers matter most
• Monitor trends across time (and across stores, if you run more than one)
• Spot problems before they show up as support tickets

This is not for daily operations. It’s for making better decisions.

Start your free trial

Smart Offers – Increase AOV per subscriber

Smart Offers helps you show relevant upsells and cross-sells at the right moment.

For example:

• Move customers to higher plans
• Offer add-ons during checkout or after purchase
• Show different offers to different types of customers

This is useful when subscriptions are already working and you want to increase revenue per customer, not just sign up more customers.

More about Smart Offers

Affiliate for WooCommerce – Turn subscriptions into commission machines

Affiliate for WooCommerce is a total fan-favorite on the WooCommerce marketplace and for good reason.

When paired with WooCommerce Subscriptions, it lets your affiliates earn sweet recurring commissions like clockwork.

But wait, it gets better.

You can:

• Pay commission on sign-up and renewals (for example: 15% on sign-up, then 10% on the next 9 renewals)
• Set different rules per product, plan, or affiliate (for example: higher commission on annual plans, lower on monthly)
• Control how long commissions continue (for example: only for the first 12 months of a subscription)

Plus, you can set flexible commission rules by product, category, affiliate, user role, referral method, you name it.

This is useful when subscriptions become a long-term growth channel, not just a product feature.

More about Affiliate for WooCommerce

Smart Coupons — Control discounts, trials, and renewal incentives

Smart Coupons gives you more control over how discounts work with subscriptions.

You can:

• Create sign-up offers and renewal discounts
• Let customers pay renewals using store credit or gift cards
• Bulk-generate coupons for campaigns

This becomes useful once you start running real campaigns, not just occasional discounts.

More about Smart Coupons

A simple rule of thumb
If you have 10 subscribers, you probably don’t need any of this.

If you have 500+ subscribers, you will almost certainly need at least one or two.

Tools don’t grow your business.

They prevent growth from breaking your operations.

Final thoughts

WooCommerce supports both simple and advanced subscription models.

The real decision is not about choosing the most powerful system.

It’s about choosing the one that fits your current stage of business.

Many successful stores start with a simple setup, validate demand, learn how their customers behave, and only move to advanced subscription systems when complexity truly becomes necessary.

If you’re a small or growing store, starting simple often means you’ll launch faster and actually stick with subscriptions long enough for them to become a real growth channel.

That’s usually the part that matters most.

FAQs

How do I enable free shipping with WooCommerce subscriptions?

You can offer free shipping on subscriptions by using a free shipping method or a coupon that applies to renewal orders, not just the first purchase.
Always test one renewal to make sure customers don’t get surprised with shipping charges later.

How do I cancel a WooCommerce subscription?

Customers can cancel from their account page if you allow it. As a store owner, you can also cancel, pause, or restart any subscription directly from your WooCommerce dashboard.

How do I sell a subscription service with WooCommerce?

Instead of selling a one-time product, you create a subscription product.

WooCommerce then charges customers automatically every month (or year) and handles renewals for you.

How do WooCommerce subscriptions work in real stores?

Customers sign up once and save their payment method.

After that, WooCommerce creates renewal orders and charges them automatically in the background. You just manage things from your dashboard.

What happens if a renewal payment fails?A good setup will retry the payment automatically and notify the customer. This way, you don’t lose subscribers just because a card failed once.