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Subscription commerce development

For subscription box and recurring product brands who need plans, cycle billing, dunning, per-cycle contents and batch fulfilment designed around their own cadence and product rules, rather than a recurring-payment plugin on a shop that was built for one-off orders.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A coffee subscription or a monthly craft box usually starts on an ordinary shop with a recurring-payment add-on.

  • The add-on charges cards on a date, and that is nearly all it does.
  • Subscribers who want to skip a month email in, and someone edits the next charge by hand; subscribers who want a different blend or a larger box are cancelled and re-subscribed, losing their history.
  • When a card fails, the add-on retries once and gives up, and the subscriber is quietly lost without anyone emailing them.
  • The founder finds out at month end when the number of boxes shipped does not match the number of payments received.

Where it gets harder

Fulfilment is worse.

  • On dispatch day the team exports every active subscription to a spreadsheet, works out who is due, what each box contains this month, removes the people who paused, adds the gifts bought in the last fortnight and prints labels one by one.
  • A subscriber whose address changed last week gets the box sent to the old one.
  • Nobody knows why people cancel because the cancel button has no reason attached, and win-back offers are sent to a list that includes people who are still subscribed.
  • The brand has a loyal base and a fulfilment process that breaks a little more every cycle.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom subscription commerce build normally covers plans, billing, contents and fulfilment as one system. Plans carry a frequency, a price, what is included and the rules you set for skipping, pausing, swapping products and changing plan, with prorating and effective dates handled by the system rather than by hand. Recurring billing runs through the payment adapter on each subscriber's cycle date, with configurable retry schedules, dunning emails, a grace period and a final state you decide, and with card updates handled through the provider. Box contents are defined per cycle, with a customisation window during which subscribers choose from the options you allow; after the window closes, contents are locked and the cycle's pick quantities are known. Fulfilment produces shipment batches per cycle, with labels created through the carrier you use, address changes cut off at a point you set and tracking written back. Gift subscriptions carry a recipient and a fixed number of cycles. Cancellation captures a reason and can offer a pause or a win-back offer defined by you. A subscriber portal covers every self-service action, and reporting covers active subscribers, churn by reason, failed payments and recovery, and revenue by plan. Configurable VAT rules apply per line, and customer accounts with order history run alongside one-off purchases where you sell both.

We map your cadence first: how cycles are timed, what happens to someone who joins mid-cycle, what can be changed and until when, how failed payments have been handled, how a dispatch day actually runs and what the warehouse needs. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Your accounting, which we connect to
  • The physical packing process beyond pick quantities and labels
  • The choice of payment provider, which is made with you and named in the scope document

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A pet food brand sells plans sized by the animal's weight, wants the quantity and cycle length recalculated when a subscriber updates the weight, allows a one-off extra item to ride along in the next box, and ships from two warehouses by region with cut-off times that differ. The recalculated plans, ride-along items and regional warehouses make this a custom build, and the scope document says so plainly.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from walking through a sign-up, a failed payment, a customisation window and a dispatch day
  • A written scope document naming each workflow stage, the plan rules, the dunning schedule, the batch process and what is left out
  • Designs of the plan chooser and sign-up, the subscriber portal, the cycle contents and batch screens and the dunning emails
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours, with the payment provider and carrier connected
  • Migration of subscribers, plans, payment methods through the provider and order history from your current platform
  • Training for the subscriptions manager, fulfilment and customer service, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to your current shop, recurring-payment tool, payment provider and carrier; a look at how a dispatch day runs and how failed payments are handled today.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the founder, fulfilment lead and customer service; the plan rules, cycle timing, dunning schedule, customisation window and batch process are written into the scope document.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Plan chooser and subscriber portal designed for the phones subscribers use; cycle contents, batch and dunning views designed for your team.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in layers: plans and sign-up first, then cycle billing and dunning, then contents and customisation, then batches, gifts, cancellation reasons and reporting.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Your team runs a full cycle on test subscribers with the payment provider in test mode, including a failed card, a skip, a swap and a dispatch batch, and tells us what does not match.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Changes from the review are made and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Subscribers and payment methods migrated through the provider, the first live billing run rehearsed, carrier labels verified, launch checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    Cycles bill and ship through the platform; hosting and maintenance continue under their own agreement if taken.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Card payment providers that support stored payment methods and recurring charges through the provider-independent payment layer
  • Parcel carriers for batch label creation, tracking and collection bookings
  • Email and SMS providers for cycle reminders, dunning messages and dispatch notices
  • Accounting software for recurring revenue, refunds and provider settlement
  • Warehouse and fulfilment partners that receive batch files and return tracking
  • Mailing list and customer messaging platforms for segments by plan and status
  • Review and referral platforms the brand already uses

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A pet food brand with weight-based plans and two warehouses

In this scoping scenario, a pet food brand sells plans whose quantity and cycle length depend on the animal's weight, wants both recalculated when a subscriber updates the weight, allows a one-off treat or accessory to ride along in the next scheduled box, and ships from two regional warehouses with different cut-off times. The scope we would propose: a plan calculator that derives quantity and frequency from profile fields and reschedules the next cycle with a prorated adjustment, a ride-along item added to the next cycle's contents and charged with it, warehouse assignment by delivery region with a cut-off per warehouse that locks the batch, and reporting on churn by reason split by warehouse.

The custom route is needed because of the calculated plans, ride-along items and regional warehouses, which go beyond the fixed plans with skip, pause and swap and single-batch fulfilment the package assumes.

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of plans and the rules for skipping, pausing, swapping and changing plan
  • Cycle timing model: fixed dispatch dates or rolling from each sign-up
  • Dunning schedule and grace period rules
  • Customisation window and how contents vary per cycle
  • Carriers, warehouses and whether a fulfilment partner receives batch files
  • Payment provider and migration of stored payment methods through it
  • Volume of subscribers and order history to migrate
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Subscription box package

Subscription plans with skip, pause and swap, cycle billing with retry and dunning, box contents with a customisation window, gift subscriptions, shipment batches and a subscriber portal for recurring product brands.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

When is the package enough and when do we need a custom build?

If fixed plans with skip, pause and swap, cycle billing with retry and dunning, contents per cycle with a customisation window, gifts and a single batch per cycle cover your brand, the subscription box package is the right fit and we quote for that. Plans calculated from subscriber data, ride-along items, several warehouses with their own cut-offs or usage-based billing point to the custom route.

Can subscribers and their cards be moved from our current platform?

Subscribers, plans and history are migrated by us. Stored payment methods move only through the payment provider's own migration process, which depends on your current and new providers; the scope document states what is possible once we have confirmed both.

How are failed payments handled?

By a dunning schedule you configure: the retry dates, the emails sent at each step, the grace period during which boxes still ship or are held, and the final state. The system runs the schedule and records every attempt; you decide the rules.

How does VAT work on a subscription?

Through tax rules configured per plan and destination and applied to each cycle's charge and invoice. The platform applies the rules you set and does not decide which rate applies to a box of mixed contents; that remains with you and your accountant.

Who owns the platform afterwards?

You do. The source code, subscriber records and order history are handed over at delivery. Hosting and maintenance are optional and agreed separately, and the platform can be moved to another provider.

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Answer a few questions about your business, your current systems and what should change. We reply with a clear, competitive proposal.

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