Subscription box: how to sell subscriptions and memberships online

In short: a subscription box is a product the customer orders once and then receives and pays for on a schedule, for example every month. In CloudCart you sell it with the Subscriptions app (Apps → Subscriptions): a plan with an option such as "every month, 10% off" attached to the product. On each date the platform creates a new order and charges the saved card, and with CloudCart Pay this works on every plan.

This guide from the CloudCart team is written for stores selling anywhere in Europe.

Subscriptions, memberships and a private store: the difference

CloudCart has three separate apps for recurring sales and restricted access. Subscriptions sell a physical product on a schedule, Membership sells access to gated pages for a set number of days, and Private Store puts the whole store behind a login.

	Subscriptions	Membership	Private Store
In the admin	Apps → Subscriptions	Apps → Membership	Apps → Private Store
What you sell	A product delivered and paid for on a schedule	Access to selected pages for N days	Access to the whole catalog after login
Automatic payment	Yes: the saved card, with CloudCart Pay	No: the customer buys again to extend	No: the app only controls access
Typical example	Coffee, cosmetics or dog food every month	Video lessons, recipes, a members' club	A wholesale store, a members-only club
Visibility in Google	Normal	Gated pages are hidden	The catalog is not indexed

The three combine. Private Store decides whether the customer sees the catalog at all, Membership decides which pages they see, and Subscriptions decide what they receive every month.

Subscription box: who it suits and when it pays

A subscription box suits any store whose product runs out and gets bought again: coffee and tea, cosmetics, pet food and supplies, vitamins, books, nappies, cleaning products. That is why it sits among the online store business ideas that need little starting capital.

For the store, the benefit is predictable revenue. The first sale costs advertising, and every delivery after that arrives on its own. An example with a coffee box: the product is €30, the "every month" option has 10% off and the customer pays €27 per delivery. With 150 subscribers that is €4,050 a month in orders you do not have to win again. More on repeat buyers is in the article on loyalty programs and repeat purchases.

Types of subscription box and how to build each in CloudCart

There are three subscription box models, and all three are built with the Subscriptions app. The difference lies in the product and in the Stop after N payments field.

Model	Example	How to build it in CloudCart
Replenishment box (subscribe and save)	Coffee, dog food, vitamins	A plan attached to the products or their category. The customer picks the schedule on the product page.
Box of the month (curated box)	Beauty box, book of the month	One "Box of the month" product with a plan. Each month you change the description and photos, and subscriber orders arrive on their own dates.
Fixed-term subscription	6 months of cosmetics as a gift	An option with Stop after N payments = 6. After the sixth payment the subscription expires by itself.

Important: a box prepaid for 3, 6 or 12 months in one payment cannot be built as a plan, because each delivery is paid separately. You set the term with the number of payments: the customer pays €27 per delivery instead of €162 at once.

How to price a subscription box

The price of a box is built from four costs: the products inside, the packaging, the delivery and the payment fee. Buyers of curated boxes compare the price with the retail value inside, so that value should clearly exceed the price. An example with a €19 monthly box:

Line	Per box	Note
Price for the customer	€19.00	The "every month" option
Products (at cost)	−€8.00	Retail value above €19
Packaging	−€1.50	Box, filler, card
Delivery, if included	−€3.50	Depends on carrier, size and destination country
CloudCart Pay fee	€0.00	0% through Dec 31, 2026
Platform commission	€0.00	0% on every plan
Left before ads and plan costs	€6.00	With 100 subscribers, €600 a month

The figures illustrate the calculation and are not market averages. Use your own cost prices and carrier rates from shipping in CloudCart. If you ship to several countries, calculate the margin per country.

How to sell a product as a subscription: step by step

A subscription goes live in five steps. The app has no on/off switch: once installed, it works.

1. Install the app. Open Apps → Subscriptions (/admin/apps/subscriptions). It has two tabs, Plans and Subscriptions, plus Settings.
2. Choose the payment method. In Settings → Payment methods tick CloudCart Pay, badged Included.
3. Create a plan. On Plans click New plan, fill in Name shown to customers (for example "Coffee every month") and leave Active on.
4. Add the options. Fill in Option name, Deliver and charge every (a number plus days, weeks, months or years), Discount (%) and Stop after N payments (0 means no end). Add option adds a second one, for example "every 2 weeks, 5%".
5. Attach the plan and set the product page. Choose one target type: specific products, a category, a collection or a brand (Manufacturer). In Settings → Product page you can switch on Preselect the subscription instead of the one-time purchase, and in What customers can do themselves you allow Skip a delivery, Pause the subscription, Cancel the subscription and Change the delivery address.

With Combine with other discounts off, the subscription line gets only the option's discount (see promo codes and discounts).

Which payment methods work with subscriptions

A subscription needs a method that can charge a saved card while the customer is away, with card saving switched on. CloudCart Pay does this on every plan at no extra cost. Every other method, Stripe and cash on delivery included, needs a separate Subscriptions plan feature that is currently not on sale, so in practice a subscription box is sold with CloudCart Pay. Business onboarding for CloudCart Pay is open to companies from 30 European countries: the EU member states, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. All supported methods are on the Payments page and in the guide to payment methods in CloudCart.

How the monthly subscription payment works

The platform checks subscriptions every hour and charges those due today, without the merchant pressing anything. A successful payment creates a new ordinary order: it appears in orders, is invoiced by the same rules, takes stock and ships like any other. Each turn of the schedule is logged as a cycle (Scheduled, Paid, Skipped or Payment failed). Payments without an immediate answer are checked again every 2 hours, so a renewal that looks stuck is usually still being confirmed.

What happens when the customer's card is declined

A declined card does not end the subscription at once. It moves to past_due, stays live, and the platform retries at widening intervals: 2 days after the first decline, then 3, 4 and 5 days. You set 1 to 5 attempts in Settings → Failed payments (Attempts before the subscription is cancelled), so a failing card survives about two to three weeks. The customer is emailed only on the first decline, and Notify me about every failed payment alerts you on each one. If the order cannot be created through the store's fault (the product is hidden or unavailable), it does not count against the customer.

EU rules for subscription boxes: withdrawal, cancellation and VAT

A subscription box sold to consumers in the EU is a distance contract, so EU consumer law applies in every member state. Three rules matter most.

• 14 days to withdraw, counted from the first box. For the regular delivery of goods, the withdrawal period starts when the consumer receives the first good (Article 9(2)(b)(iii) of the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU). Exceptions such as perishable food with a short use-by date and personalised items are listed on Your Europe: returns and refunds.
• A withdrawal button on the website. From 19 June 2026, a trader selling online must offer a withdrawal function labelled "withdraw from contract here" or an unambiguous equivalent (Article 11a, added by Directive (EU) 2023/2673). In CloudCart this is the Withdraw from contract app, which adds the button, the form and an inbox for requests.
• The customer's VAT above €10,000. Once your distance sales of goods to consumers in other EU countries pass €10,000 a year, you charge the VAT of the customer's country (Your Europe: cross-border VAT). Every renewal is a sale, and you declare it in one place through the One Stop Shop (OSS), in place since 1 July 2021. Details are in the article on OSS and EU VAT.

Withdrawal is the right to back out in the first 14 days, and cancellation ends a running subscription later. Keep Cancel the subscription on in the customer's account: a customer who cannot cancel there will email you, and you still have to end it. The wider consumer rules are in the guide to returns and consumer rights.

Important: this section describes EU rules and is not legal or tax advice. National law can add requirements, so check your terms with a lawyer in your country.

How you manage subscriptions from the admin

All subscriptions are under Apps → Subscriptions → Subscriptions with five statuses: active, paused, past_due, cancelled and expired. Each has five actions: Pause, Resume, Skip, Cancel and Charge now. Charge now is for recovery after the customer fixes their card. Charging a healthy subscription early can lead to a chargeback, because the customer agreed to the schedule.

The app sends four emails, each switchable in Settings → Customer notifications: Subscription started, Renewed, Upcoming renewal (0 to 30 days ahead) and Payment failed. Keep the upcoming renewal reminder on: a customer warned 3 days ahead lets it run or skips the delivery instead of disputing the charge. Templates are per store language, so check each one in a multilingual store.

How to set up a membership and members-only pages

A membership in CloudCart is access to selected pages for a set number of days, bought as a digital product. Tiers ("Silver", "Gold") are digital products with different prices, pages and terms.

1. Install Membership from Apps → Membership and build the pages you want to gate.
2. Create the product. Choose Digital product, the Landing pages mode, the pages in Select pages and the term in Access days (0 means no end).
3. Sell it. When the order is paid or completed, the customer gets access. A repeat purchase adds days to the current term, and a cancelled or refunded order takes them back.

Important: Membership does not charge a card automatically. Renewal is a new order, so send the reminder as an email campaign to a segment with a membership expiry condition. How is in the guide to an email campaign in CloudCart step by step.

How to build a members-only store (Private Store)

Private Store hides the entire catalog behind a login and redirects visitors without an account to the sign-in page or a page you choose. It suits wholesale stores, members-only clubs and stores before launch. Open Apps → Private Store, switch on required registration in Settings and decide whether you approve each new account. Pages such as About us and the Privacy policy can stay public, and contact, sign-in and registration are always open.

Access is all or nothing, so for different prices per customer combine it with customer groups, described in the guide to customers, groups and fields and on the B2B page. Google cannot index content behind a login, so keep the home page, the blog and one page explaining your offer public (Google Search Central: paywalled content). Private Store depends on your plan (see B2B online stores).

Which subscription box metrics to track

The six metrics of a subscription box are active subscriptions, monthly recurring revenue (MRR), churn, failed payments, skipped deliveries and subscriber lifetime value (LTV). Revenue comes from orders, because every renewal is an ordinary order.

Metric	How it is calculated	Coffee box, 150 subscribers at €27
Active subscriptions	active + past_due	150
MRR	Sum of renewals in the month	150 × €27 = €4,050
Churn	Cancelled in the month ÷ active at its start	12 ÷ 150 = 8%
Failed payments	past_due ÷ active	6 ÷ 150 = 4%
Skipped deliveries	Skipped cycles ÷ all cycles	9 ÷ 150 = 6%
Subscriber LTV	Price per delivery × (1 ÷ churn)	€27 × 12.5 months ≈ €338

Churn decides the profit. At 8% monthly churn the average subscriber stays about 12.5 months and brings €338, at 5% they stay 20 months and bring €540. The store's other metrics are in the article on the 10 ecommerce KPIs.

How to get the metrics through an AI agent without opening reports

An AI assistant connected to the store with a PAT token reads orders, customers and stock, so Claude Code, ChatGPT/Codex, Gemini CLI or Cursor see the box revenue with the rest of your sales. You ask in plain English: "Which products in the subscription box will run out before the end of the month?" or "Which customers buy the same product every month but have no subscription yet?" The second list is the first group to offer the subscription to. Subscription statuses themselves stay in the admin list. Why this saves time is in the article on running your store through an AI agent.

How to win subscribers: email, ads, Google and mobile

The first subscribers come from customers who already buy. Send a "Ordered in the last 30 days" segment an email with the subscription offer: plans include from 50 (Baby Pack) to 1,000 (CC Master) campaign subscribers, and Web Push is unlimited on every plan (email, SMS and Viber campaigns). New subscribers come from unboxing videos on Meta ads and TikTok, and from Search campaigns for themed terms such as "vegan snack subscription box" in Google Ads. UTM tracking, which shows the channel that brought each subscriber, is included in CC Pro and CC Master.

Preselect the subscription and test the product page on a phone (mobile version checklist).

Best practices for a subscription box

1. Show the saving in euros. "€27 instead of €30 every month" in the product description.
2. Start with 2 options. "Every month" and "every 2 months" are easy to compare.
3. Allow skipping a delivery. Skipping keeps the subscription active, while a pause that nobody resumes is a lost customer.
4. Keep self-service cancellation on. Easy cancellation builds the trust that brings the first sign-up.
5. Reserve stock for subscribers. A renewal of an out-of-stock product does not go through.

Mistakes that hide or stop a subscription

• No suitable payment method. If no method can charge a saved card, or none is ticked, the product page shows no subscription and no error.
• Card saving is off in the method. Without a saved card there is nothing to charge at renewal.
• No plan covers the product directly or through a category, collection or brand.
• A deactivated plan. It disappears from the product page, but existing subscribers keep paying. Stop a subscription with Cancel.

Subscriptions with CloudCart Pay and Membership need no higher plan. Plans start from €14/month billed annually, excluding VAT, on CloudCart pricing.

Frequently asked questions

Questions about setting up subscriptions in your store: write to support@cloudcart.com.