Subscription upgrades

Subscription Upgrades lets you offer existing subscribers a post-purchase change to their active subscription right after checkout. You can change the delivery frequency, swap to a different subscription product, or both. The change is applied directly in Recharge, Skio, or Loop, so no refund or new charge is issued for the subscription itself.

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Which feature do you need?

Aftersell has three post-purchase features that work with subscriptions. They sound similar but behave very differently. Use this decision flow before setting anything up. Use the three questions below to find the right feature for your scenario. Work through them in order and stop at the first Yes, that is the feature you should use. Q1: Did the customer already buy a subscription in this order?

• Yes, use Subscription Upgrade. This is the feature this guide covers. Subscription Upgrade modifies the customer’s existing subscription in Recharge, Skio, or Loop, right after they complete checkout. You can change the delivery or billing frequency, swap to a different subscription product, or both at the same time. The customer’s existing subscription is updated in place. No new subscription is created, and no refund or new charge is issued for the subscription itself. A small placeholder line item (the “offer product”) is added to the Shopify order as a record of the accepted upgrade.
• No, go to Q2.

Q2: The customer bought a one-time product. Do you want to add a brand-new recurring subscription to their order, on top of what they already bought?

• Yes, use Subscription Upsell. Subscription Upsell adds a new subscription line item to the order using Shopify’s Subscription API. The one-time product they already bought stays in the order, and a recurring subscription is added alongside it. The first recurring charge for the new subscription happens on the next cycle in your subscription platform.
• No, go to Q3.

Q3: The customer bought a one-time product. Do you want to replace it with a different product, either a subscription version of the same product or an entirely different product?

• Yes, use Replacement Upsell. Replacement Upsell removes the original one-time product from the order and adds the replacement in its place. Shopify refunds the original line item and charges for the replacement. The replacement can be a subscription version of the same product (for example, the customer bought a one-time bottle and you want them on a monthly subscription instead), or a completely different product, one-time or subscription.

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At a glance

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How Subscription Upgrades work

Here is the customer’s experience end-to-end, and what happens behind the scenes. The customer journey is four short steps:

1. Buys subscription. The customer completes checkout on a product that has a subscription selling plan.
2. Sees upgrade offer. On the post-purchase page, they see the Subscription Upgrade offer you configured.
3. Post-purchase accept. They accept without re-entering payment or shipping details.
4. Plan updates. Their existing subscription is modified in Recharge, Skio, or Loop. A small placeholder line item (the “offer product”) is added to the Shopify order as a record of the acceptance.

The two systems are connected to one customer action but execute independently:

• In Shopify, the offer product is added to the order as a placeholder line item. It is required because Shopify’s post-purchase API cannot add a second subscription to an order that already contains one.
• In Recharge, Skio, or Loop, the customer’s existing subscription is updated. No new subscription is created, and no refund is issued for the original subscription.

The new plan’s pricing applies on the next recurring cycle in your subscription platform, not on the Shopify order the customer just completed. If the provider call fails after the offer product was added to the order, the offer product stays on the order and the subscription is not changed. Aftersell automatically retries failed provider calls in a background workflow. If retries do not succeed, contact support and see Troubleshooting.

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What the customer sees

The Subscription Upgrade flow touches two systems, and the customer sees different things in each. Understanding this prevents support tickets about “double charges” or “missing items”.

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On the Shopify order

When the customer accepts an upgrade, Aftersell does not remove the original subscription line item from their order. Removing it would require a refund, which causes more customer confusion (“I got double charged, what’s going on?”) than it solves. Instead, the order ends up with:

• The original subscription line item, as the customer purchased it.
• The offer product, as a separate placeholder line item that represents the upgrade.

For this reason, naming the offer product clearly is critical. The customer should be able to look at their order summary and immediately understand what the second line item represents. Good names:

• Upgrade to Quarterly
• Quarterly plan upgrade
• Switch to monthly delivery

Avoid generic names like Subscription Upgrade if you offer multiple upgrade tiers. The customer will not know which one they accepted. In Shopify Admin, also add a short description to the offer product that explains it represents the subscription upgrade and that no additional charges occur from this line.

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In the subscription provider portal

In Recharge, Skio, or Loop’s customer portal, the customer sees their updated subscription. When the change takes effect depends on whether the immediate upgrade option was used:

• By default (next billing cycle), the change applies at the customer’s next billing cycle. The current cycle is unchanged, and the new plan takes effect from the next renewal onward.
• With immediate upgrade (beta, on request), the new billing interval starts immediately instead of waiting for the next renewal. The customer’s existing subscription is still updated in place; it is not deleted and recreated.

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Works with Recharge, Skio, and Loop

Subscription Upgrades is currently only compatible with Recharge, Skio, and Loop. The upgrade is applied inside whichever of these platforms powers your subscriptions, so connecting one is a required setup step. For what an integration is, which platforms are supported, and provider-specific token setup, see Integrations. If you use a subscription app other than these three, you cannot use Subscription Upgrades at this time, but you can still use Subscription Upsell and Replacement Upsell.

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Next steps