Glossary
Subscription terms, in plain English
B
- Billing attempt
- Shopify's record of one try at charging a subscription contract. A successful attempt creates an order; a failed one returns an error code. Read more
- Build-a-box
- A subscription where the customer chooses the items in each delivery from an eligible list, within a minimum and maximum count. Read more
C
- CAC payback
- How many months of contribution margin it takes to recover the cost of acquiring a subscriber. Read more
- Cadence
- How often a subscription delivers — every two weeks, every month. Also called frequency or interval. Read more
- Chargeback
- A payment reversed by the customer's card issuer after a dispute. Costs you the payment, a fee and a mark against your processing account. Read more
- Churn rate
- The share of subscribers who leave in a period. Most useful measured by signup cohort and cycle number rather than as one blended figure. Read more
- Cohort
- A group of subscribers who started in the same period, tracked together to see how many remain over time. Read more
- Contribution margin
- What one delivery earns after every variable cost — goods, packaging, shipping, fees and pick-and-pack. Read more
- Curated box
- A subscription box whose contents the merchant chooses, different each cycle. Read more
- Customer portal
- Where subscribers manage their own subscriptions — skipping, pausing, swapping, changing address or cancelling. Read more
- Cycle
- One billing and delivery period of a subscription. The fourth cycle is the fourth delivery. Read more
D
- Dunning
- The process of recovering a failed payment: retrying the charge and asking the customer to fix their payment method. Read more
I
- Involuntary churn
- Subscribers lost to a failed payment rather than a decision to leave. Often 20–40% of all churn, and the cheapest to fix. Read more
L
- Lifetime value (LTV)
- The expected contribution margin from a subscriber over their whole subscription. Read more
M
N
- Net revenue retention
- Recurring revenue kept from existing subscribers after expansion, contraction and churn, as a share of where it started. Read more
P
- Pause
- Stopping deliveries for a set period, then resuming automatically. Keeps a subscriber who would otherwise cancel. Read more
- Pay as you go
- A subscription billed one delivery at a time. Read more
- Pre-renewal reminder
- A message sent before a renewal charge, stating the amount and date and how to skip or cancel. Required in some markets. Read more
- Prepaid subscription
- A subscription where the customer pays for several deliveries up front. Read more
R
S
- Selling plan
- Shopify's object for one way to buy a product on subscription: its delivery, billing and pricing policies. Read more
- Selling plan group
- A set of selling plans shown together on a product page — for example every 2, 4 and 8 weeks. Read more
- Skip
- Missing one delivery while staying subscribed. The cheapest retention feature a subscription can offer. Read more
- Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)
- A European requirement for customers to confirm certain online payments, usually through their bank app. It can cause a renewal to come back asking the customer to authenticate. Read more
- Subscribe and save
- A subscription offer that discounts every repeat order in exchange for automatic delivery. Read more
- Subscription contract
- Shopify's record of one customer's subscription: products, address, payment method, schedule and status. An object in the merchant's store. Read more
V
W
- Win-back
- Contacting cancelled subscribers later with a reason and an easy way to return. Read more