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This guide walks through building a Subscription Upgrade offer with the setup wizard. New to the feature? Start with the Overview first. For provider-specific API token steps see Integrations, and for the detailed pricing, timing, and trigger rules see the Configuration reference.

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Creating a Subscription Upgrade offer

You build a Subscription Upgrade in the post-purchase funnel editor. The setup wizard walks you through four steps: connecting your subscription provider, picking the trigger product, configuring the upgrade, and choosing the offer product the customer sees. To open the wizard:
  1. In your Aftersell dashboard, go to Post-purchase funnels.
  2. Click Add Funnel.
  3. Select the Subscription Upgrade template.
The starter screen shows three ready-made templates and two manual options. Each template card shows a before/after diagram; hover a card title for a short description. Select a template to pre-fill the wizard, or choose Start from scratch or Copy an existing funnel. The available templates are:
  • Prepay for 3 months keeps monthly delivery but moves billing to every 3 months (prepaid). Not available on Loop stores, which bill on every delivery.
  • Replace subscription product swaps the subscribed product for a different one.
  • Upgrade to a 3-month supply swaps the product and moves both delivery and billing to every 3 months.
After you select a template or a manual option, the Set up a subscription upgrade wizard opens with four steps.

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Step 1: Connect provider

Selecting a subscription provider and entering an API token in the setup wizard
  1. From the Subscription provider dropdown, select Recharge, Skio, or Loop. The API token field and helper text update to match.
  2. Generate an API token in your subscription platform if you don’t have one. Each provider has different scopes and steps:
  3. Paste your token into the API token field and click Test API key.
  4. Once the test passes (green tick, “API key verified”), click Continue.
Continue stays disabled until the test comes back green, and editing the provider or token clears the result, so re-test after any change. If the test fails, read the message: it tells you whether the token was rejected or the check just couldn’t complete. See API key verification states for the details.
Loop prerequisite. Loop does not support prepaid subscriptions through this integration; billing frequency is locked to delivery frequency. When using Use an existing selling plan, the plan must already exist in your Loop dashboard. See Subscription upgrades with Loop.

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Step 2: Trigger product

Pick the subscription customers will be upgrading from.
  1. Click Choose subscription product. Only products with active subscription plans appear.
  2. Select the product and variant.
  3. Click Select product.
The trigger card confirms whether the selected variant has an active selling plan in Shopify: a green checkmark means it’s sold as a subscription and the funnel can fire; a red warning means the variant has no selling plan, so add one in Shopify or pick a different variant. A funnel whose trigger variant has no selling plan cannot be activated.
Choosing the trigger subscription product in the setup wizard
Subscription Upgrades target a single variant. The trigger and replacement pickers select one variant each, and the funnel fires on a variant-scoped trigger, so selling plans that differ per variant are handled directly, with no need for a funnel per variant.
Click Continue to move to Step 3.

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Step 3: Subscription upgrade

Choose what happens when a customer accepts. Pick a Subscription upgrade type from the dropdown; the fields below it change with your choice.
Configuring the subscription upgrade type and frequency in the wizard
  • Change delivery or billing frequency. Keep the product, change how often the customer is billed or shipped to. Then choose Use an existing selling plan (pick a plan already configured in your provider) or Set the frequency manually (enter delivery and billing frequencies yourself). For a prepaid upgrade, set billing longer than delivery (for example, bill every 6 months, deliver monthly). Loop does not support prepaid, so its billing frequency syncs to delivery.
  • Replace with a different subscription product. Keep the frequency, swap the product. Click Choose replacement product (only products with active selling plans appear). Optionally enable Override subscription quantity to set the quantity applied on renewals (off by default keeps the existing quantity).
  • Both, change frequency and replace subscription product. Both sets of fields appear; fill in both.
  • Add another subscribable item to subscription. Leave the existing subscription as is and add a new product on its existing cadence. Click Choose item to add (only products with active selling plans appear). There are no frequency fields; the cadence is inherited. See Adding an item to an existing subscription for how this differs by provider.
You can also set an optional Recurring discount applied to every future renewal (not available on the add-item type). If your selling plan has stepped discount tiers, you pick a tier instead of entering an amount. And if upgrade-timing is enabled for your store, a checkbox lets you start the new billing interval immediately rather than at the next renewal.
The Recurring subtotal shown to the customer, the upgrade-timing checkbox, and the recurring-discount tiers each follow specific rules. See the Configuration reference before relying on the displayed prices.
Click Continue to move to Step 4.

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Step 4: Offer product

The offer product is a visual placeholder only, not a real product the customer buys (Shopify won’t show a subscription product as a post-purchase upsell after a subscription order). A What changes on their subscription panel at the bottom shows a live before/after preview as you fill in the details. Choose one of two options:
  • Create new. Aftersell creates an unpublished placeholder product for you. Set the Product image, Product title, the One-time upgrade price (what the customer pays on this order), and an optional First-order discount.
  • Pick existing. Choose a non-subscription product you already have in Shopify; the customer is shown it at its existing Shopify price. Subscription-only products are filtered out.
Selecting the offer product with Create new and Pick existing options
What to put in One-time upgrade price depends on the upgrade type (and it is locked at 0 for frequency/both upgrades unless upgrade-timing is on). See One-time upgrade price, by upgrade type.
When Step 4 is complete, click Create offer.

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Additional triggers

The wizard automatically adds the eligibility trigger (a Variant on subscription trigger set to your target variant), so you don’t need to set it up by hand. After the wizard completes, you can layer optional triggers in the funnel editor’s Triggers step, grouped under a collapsible Additional triggers section.
Don’t replace the wizard’s Variant on subscription trigger with a separate Product trigger plus Subscription trigger; that older combination can fire on the wrong orders and fail downstream. See The eligibility trigger.

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Editing an offer after it’s been created

A Subscription Upgrade funnel keeps a permanent Setup step in the funnel editor, which re-opens the same wizard pre-filled from the saved offer (its button reads Save offer). You can also edit the offer’s fields directly:
  1. In your Aftersell dashboard, go to Post-purchase funnels.
  2. Open the funnel that contains your Subscription Upgrade offer.
  3. Select the offer to open its settings, then edit the fields inline: trigger product, upgrade type, frequency and recurring discount, and the offer product’s image, title, or price.
  4. Save.
If the offer uses an existing selling plan for its frequency, those fields are set by the plan and can’t be edited here (if the plan has stepped tiers, pick the tier for renewals). Switch to setting the frequency manually if you need a custom discount amount instead.
Edits only affect orders placed after you save. Existing accepted upgrades, including subscriptions already modified in Recharge, Skio, or Loop, are not retroactively changed.

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Next steps

Once your offer is live, test and verify it before relying on it. Also review the limitations and important notes and set up fulfillment and 3PL mapping.