Subscription Migration Checklist

Work through this in order. The steps before the migration matter more than the migration.

Before — establish the facts

• Confirm the contract model of the current app. Native Shopify subscription contracts, or the app’s own database? Get it in writing.
• Confirm the contract model of the new app. Same question.
• Confirm who holds the payment method. Shopify, or the app’s own vault? This decides whether subscribers must re-authorise.
• Export active subscriptions — customer, products, quantities, frequency, next charge date, discount, cycle count, address, status.
• Record baseline metrics — active count, MRR, renewal success rate, churn rate for the last 90 days. You cannot tell whether the migration hurt without this.

Before — inventory the dependencies

• Metafields written by the old app, and anything reading them
• Order tags, and the automations keyed on them
• Webhooks to 3PLs, ERPs, email platforms
• Theme code referencing the old app’s assets or snippets
• Shipping and fulfilment rules that depend on subscription data
• Reports and dashboards built on the old app’s data
• Shopify Flow automations triggered by subscription events

Build

• Recreate plans — frequency, billing policy, delivery policy
• Recreate discounts — and verify the type matches, not just today’s price
• Recreate tiered or tenure discounts, and confirm cycle counts carry over
• Rebuild build-a-box rules — item count, eligible list, price bands, choice deadline
• Configure the portal — branding, permitted actions
• Set up emails — renewal reminder, dunning sequence, cancellation confirmation
• Configure retries — attempts, spacing, behaviour by decline reason
• India: confirm e-mandate registration, pre-debit notification, UPI Autopay, GST invoicing

Test

• Place a real subscription on the new app, with a real payment method
• Let it renew. Do not skip this. Most subscription bugs appear at the second charge.
• Test the portal on a phone — skip, pause, address change, cancel
• Test a failed payment and confirm the dunning email arrives and its link works
• Test cancellation end to end
• Migrate ten subscribers including yourself, and let one renew

Migrate

• Stop new signups on the old app — you cannot reconcile a moving target
• Migrate remaining subscriptions
• Reconcile counts — active before equals active after
• Reconcile next charge dates — every contract, not a sample
• Reconcile discounts — next renewal amount matches the last one
• Reconcile cycle counts — tenure benefits intact
• Repoint webhooks and integrations
• Update order tag automations
• Keep the old app installed for one full billing cycle

After — watch for two weeks

• Renewal success rate against baseline
• Failed payments by decline reason — a spike in mandate or vault errors means the migration broke something that only shows at renewal
• Support tickets — volume and themes
• Cancellations against the prior period
• Portal usage — if skips drop to zero, the portal is broken or unreachable

Only then

• Uninstall the old app
• Archive the export you made at the start. Keep it — it is your only record of the pre-migration state.

General guide · Moving to Super Subscription