Gifting Subscriptions Early Adopter Program

Gifting Subscriptions provides an option for your customers to gift subscriptions to their friends and families. This guide covers a general overview, how you can configure gift subscriptions for your store, and limitations.

Before you start

• Gifting Subscriptions is currently in Early Adopter Status. To request access to this feature, review the Gifting Subscriptions Roadmap card and fill out the interest form. For more information on the Early Adopter Program, previously known as the Recharge Beta Program, see Early Adopter Program. 
• Gifting Subscriptions are currently available to stores on the Recharge Pro plan or a custom pricing plan and can only be used on the Affinity customer portal theme or custom themes.
• Recipient emails are processed in Eastern Standard Time (EST) time and are based on the date selected on the product page. This can lead to a delay for customers in time zones that are earlier than EST.
  • For example, in Australia or New Zealand a customer may select September 14th and because it is the 13th in EST, the recipient won’t receive the email until midnight EST on the 14th.

Gifting Subscriptions overview

With Gifting Subscriptions, a customer can choose to gift a specific product or store credit to the recipient of their choosing, and they can select when an email will notify the gift recipient. Prepaid and ongoing subscriptions are supported.

The customer can fill in the recipient email and name with a message when purchasing a gift product or credit. Once the recipient receives an email, they can follow the link to redeem their gift in the customer portal. The gift recipient can then fill out their information, choose the quantity and frequency of the order, then select their order date to redeem the gift product or credit.

Watch the following video for an overview of Gifting Subscriptions. 

Customer portal settings

There are two settings within the customer portal you can enable when Gifting Subscriptions. 

To access these settings: 

1. Click on Storefront and select Customer Portal from the merchant portal. 
2. Gifting Subscription settings are available in the customer portal controls section under Gifting. You can enable either setting by clicking the toggle. 
   

Step 1 - Create gift product in Shopify

To configure subscription gifting, you will need to create a gift product in your Shopify admin. This new product will be the gift the sender purchases for the recipient. The gift recipient must pay for any taxes and shipping. This can be paid for by the credits that the recipient has been gifted. When creating gift products, include the price for tax and shipping in the gift product price. For example, if your product costs $25, consider making the gift product $30 to cover tax and estimated shipping costs. 

There are two types of gift products you can set up:

• Specific product: This gift will be connected to a product existing in your store. When the recipient is redeeming their gift, they will have to choose this specific product. Using this type of gifting creates a more personalized experience for the gift recipient, as the sender is choosing which product to gift. When creating the gift product, you do not need to copy over the variants/options. The sender is gifting the product, and the recipient can choose which variant of the original product they want on redemption.
• Store credit: This is a product that is not tied to any product on your store. It will just be gifting a certain monetary value to the recipient, and the recipient can redeem that gift against any product on your store. 

Setup a gift product

1. Duplicate the product you want to offer as a gift in your Shopify Admin and optionally update the title to identify that this is a gift. If your is using the Recharge Checkout on Shopify, make sure to duplicate the original product and not the auto-renew product. 
   • For example, a product titled Spice Box can be updated to Spice Box Gift. 
2. Copy the product images over and set the product to active. Confirm by selecting Duplicate product. 
3. Make sure that the duplicated product is not charging tax or shipping. Additionally, ensure that the product has inventory or the do not track inventory setting in Shopify is enabled. 
4. Remove any existing variants as you will set the gift amount in the Variants section. 
5. Configure variants to allow the sender to choose how many orders they are buying for the recipient. Make sure you are accounting for tax and shipping the sender will pay for the gift order by pricing the gift product to cover these. 
   • You must update both the price and variant name.  
   • For example, if the original Spices Box product is priced at $20, then the Spices Box Gift product can be priced at $25 to include tax and estimated shipping. The variants can be set up as the following: $50 (processes up to 2 orders), $75 (processes up to 3 orders), and $125 (processes up to five orders). 
6. Update your description to highlight that this is a gift product and communicate that even though they may be paying extra for tax and shipping, any additional gift credits can be used on the store as store credit. 

Create a store credit gift product

1. In the Shopify Admin, click Add product to create a new product and title it to indicate that this product is a Store Credit Gift. Add an image for the product. 
2. Set a price for the store credit gift amount and make sure this product is not charging tax or shipping. 
3. Add variants to provide options for gift amounts. 
4. Click Save, then Save as active. 

Step 2 - Add gift to Recharge

Once your gift product has been created in Shopify, the next step is to add this product to Recharge. Note that stores will be charged their regular subscription transaction fee for recurring gift orders.

Add the gift product to Recharge

1. Click Products and select Gift Products in your Recharge merchant portal. 
2. On the gifting page, click Add a gift product.
   
3. Click the checkbox confirming you’ve read the documentation as you created the Shopify gift product in Step 1. Select I’ve done this to proceed. 
4. Choose the gift product that you created and click Next. Then, specify that the type of gift is a Product gift. Click Next.
   
5. In this step, link your gift product to the original product. Select Save gift. 
   • In step 1, you duplicated the original product to create the gift product. 

Add the gift credit to Recharge

1. Click Products and select Gift Products in your Recharge merchant portal. 
2. On the gifting page, click Add a gift product. 
3. Click the checkbox confirming you’ve read the documentation as you created the Shopify gift product in Step 1. Select I’ve done this to proceed. 
4. Choose the gift credit product that you created and click Next. Then, specify that the type of gift is a Store credit gift.
   
5. Click Save gift to confirm. 

Step 3 - Add gift widget to theme

Once you’ve created your gift product and added it to Recharge, you have the choice of either creating a custom gifting widget or using the App Block provided within the Shopify theme.

Add the Gifting Widget using the app block

1. Navigate to your theme editor in Shopify. 
2. Create a new product template and name it recharge gift products. 
3. Make sure that your gift product is updated to display in the recharge-gift-products template rather than the default template. 
4. Click Add block in the theme editor on your recharge-gift-products template and add the Gifting Widget. You can drag and drop this widget wherever you’d like on the product page. 
5. Save your changes and preview the page to ensure everything looks as intended. 

Create a custom Gifting Widget

Create the input fields on the gift product page to add the correct line item properties, allowing us to import the gift details into Recharge. The line item properties we would need are: 

As long as we receive the required information, Recharge will create the customer accounts necessary using the recipient email address input by the sender and the sender’s email they input on checkout.

Step 4 - Enable email notification

After step 3, the setup is complete and gifts are ready to be purchased. Once the sender purchases a gift, they can set when they would like the recipient to be notified. When the recipient receives the email notification, it includes a redemption link for recipients to redeem their gifts. This is where the gift recipient chooses which product they would like to redeem. You must enable the email notification for ‘Gift Purchased’. 

To enable this notification and customize the template: 

1. Click Settings in the Recharge merchant portal and select Notifications. 
2. Select the Gift Purchased notification under the Customer notifications section.
   
3. On this page, you can toggle the status to Enabled and customize the email template to fit your brand. 

Review credit balances

Review your customers' gift credit balances in the Credits section. Refer to Credits and Credits at Checkout for more information on credit management. 

To see individual gift history for a customer:

1. Click Credits, then click the ellipsis, and select View history.
   
2. On this page you can review a customer’s credit history along with their current credit balance.
   

You can also review a customer’s credit balance on the customer details page. 

FAQs

How are refunds handled for gifted subscriptions?

If a gifted subscription is refunded, it will be delivered to the buyer of the gift as their payment information was originally used. Credits will not be refunded. 

What happens if the gift buyer enters the wrong recipient email? 

If an incorrect recipient email address is entered, there is not a way to edit the email at this time. 

Can gift credits be used to purchase add-on products?

Yes. Add-on products can be processed using gift credits. 

Limitations

• There will be no Bundles support during the Early Adopter Program. 
• Refunding the original order will not refund the credits. 
• Customers with a remaining credit balance that will not cover the total cost of the queued charge will need to add a payment method to their account. Stores on the Shopify Checkout Integration cannot add a payment method via the customer portal. 
• The recipient can perform all actions allowed on the customer portal after redemption. This includes skips, swaps, and any other features the merchant has enabled for the customer portal.
• If the recipient is already a subscriber, then the credits will always apply to their next queued charge regardless of whether or not the order is a gift.
• Gifting is not compatible with multi-currency at this time.