📍 Bolt Help / Add-On Products / Bolt Subscriptions

Bolt Subscriptions

Bolt Subscriptions lets you move away from the one-and-done transaction model to invite ongoing, frictionless purchasing relationships with shoppers.

About

Bolt Subscriptions solves the replenishment use case for shoppers looking to stock up on a given product on a consistent basis. This type of product-level subscription allows shoppers to receive a product at the frequency of their choosing.

Benefits

For Merchants

Benefit Details
Business performance
  • Predictable, recurring revenue
  • Deeper customer insight
  • Increased customer lifetime value (LTV)
Team capabilities
  • Automatic product catalog ingestion
  • Easy configuration for offers, discounts, and frequencies
  • Subscriber management tools
Powerful subscription engine core
  • Subscriber enrollment via product detail pages
  • Subscriber lifecycle emails
  • Out-of-stock management
  • Automatic rebilling and retry logic to solve for failed payments

For Shoppers

Benefit Details
Convenience
  • More convenient method of paying for regularly used products, services, or content
  • Self-service subscription management directly from your storefront
Personalization Personalized shopping experience
Financial incentives Savings through promotions or discounts at enrollment

Read more about the shopper experience with Bolt Subscriptions.

Definitions

Term Definition
Subscription offer A product that has subscription-specific information attached to it, such as frequency and price. The merchant configures a subscription offering, which enables shoppers to add a subscription to their cart and purchase it.
Subscription An instance of a subscription offer tied to a specific shopper. The subscription includes information about the start date, billing period, and discount. A shopper may choose to subscribe to multiple offerings.
Subscription order One occurrence of a subscription; i.e., one transaction in which the shopper is billed for receiving goods at a regular interval. The subscription order includes data about the payment method, billing date, and shipping address (if applicable).

Availability

Our dashboard experience for Bolt Subscriptions supports merchants with the following:

  • Checkout type: Checkout
  • Platform: Adobe Commerce/M2
  • Credit card transactions only

Continue to Installation.

Alternative Subscription Solutions

If you do not meet these criteria, check out our other implementation options:

Model Description Implementation Recommended for
3rd Party Integration Provide recurring orders in our one-click checkout with shopping experiences, checkout details, and subscription management powered by a 3rd party partner. Integrate with Ordergroove Merchants who have a complex or enterprise-scale use case
Custom Solution Integrate a custom or bespoke subscription solution via our robust APIs and reusable components. Custom Subscriptions Implementation Merchants who want to use an in-house storefront UI and subscription solution to offer digital or physical goods

Platform Integration Flows

Initial and Recurring Order Placement

sequenceDiagram Bolt API->>+Cart platform: Initial order placement Bolt API->>+Bolt subscription engine: Create a subscription record Bolt subscription engine->>-Cart platform: Fetch product price & inventory Cart platform-->>+Bolt subscription engine: Product is in stock Bolt subscription engine->>+Shopper: Rebilling notification Bolt subscription engine->>-Cart platform: Create rebill cart Cart platform-->>+Bolt subscription engine: Success Bolt subscription engine->>+Bolt API: Payment method authorization Bolt API-->>-Bolt subscription engine: Success Bolt subscription engine->>+Cart platform: Create rebill order Cart platform-->>+Bolt subscription engine: Success Bolt subscription engine->>-Shopper: Order placement notification

Out of Stock

When an item is out of stock, we’ll skip the order and notify the shopper.

sequenceDiagram Bolt API->>+Cart platform: Initial order placement Bolt API->>+Bolt subscription engine: Create a subscription record Bolt subscription engine->>-Cart platform: Fetch product price & inventory Cart platform-->>+Bolt subscription engine: Product is out of stock Bolt subscription engine->>+Shopper: Out of stock notification Bolt subscription engine->+Bolt subscription engine: Wait until next billing period

Failed Payment

When a payment fails authorization, we’ll automatically retry at the configured intervals. We’ll also notify the shopper so they can provide a new payment method. If the payment continues to fail after the number of allowed attempts, we’ll cancel the order.

sequenceDiagram Bolt API->>+Cart platform: Initial order placement Bolt API->>+Bolt subscription engine: Create a subscription record Bolt subscription engine->>-Cart platform: Fetch product price & inventory Cart platform-->>+Bolt subscription engine: Product is in stock Bolt subscription engine->>+Shopper: Rebilling notification Bolt subscription engine->>-Cart platform: Create rebill cart Cart platform-->>+Bolt subscription engine: Success Bolt subscription engine->>+Bolt API: Payment method authorization Bolt API-->>-Bolt subscription engine: Failure Bolt subscription engine->>+Shopper: Payment failed notification Bolt subscription engine->>+Bolt API: Retry payment method authorization

FAQs

Shopper Experience

Can shoppers use coupon codes on subscription orders?

What shipping options are available?

Is a Bolt account required to subscribe?

Can a shopper have multiple subscriptions to the same product?

Offer Management

How do I update the price, image, or description of an offer?

What happens when I update my product catalog in the commerce platform?

What happens to existing subscriptions when I change the offer settings?

Can I skip or pause an offer instead of deactivating it?

Set Up Bolt Subscriptions

Select a New Payment Method for a Shopper's Account
Learn how to enable shoppers to select from saved payment methods or add a new one while managing their account through your storefront.
 Install Bolt Subscriptions
Install Bolt Subscriptions into your commerce platform.
 Configure Subscription Settings
Customize how subscriptions work in your store.
 Create and Manage Subscription Offers
Set up offers to enable shoppers to subscribe to products in your catalog.
# subscriptions # digital goods # physical goods
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