Discontinuing subscription products

There are times when you may need to discontinue a product from your store. If a product is on subscription, you will need to perform additional steps before deleting the product or hiding the product in your ecommerce platform. Otherwise, simply deleting the product from your storefront can cause a variant error.

This guide provides instructions on how to discontinue a subscription product and how to remove a product from existing subscriptions.

Discontinue products on your storefront

If you would like to prevent new customers from purchasing a product on subscription, remove the product from Recharge.

Remove the product 

1. Select Products in your merchant portal and click Products from the drop-down. 
2. Locate the product you want to discontinue and select Actions.
3. Click Remove from Recharge.

Discontinue products for existing subscribers

If you would like to discontinue products that your existing customers have on subscription, there are a few options depending on the desired outcome.

Option 1 - Manually discontinue products for existing subscribers

If you have less than 50 customers, it is recommended you manually remove or swap the product. 

Option 2 - Bulk discontinue products for existing subscribers

If you need to update more than 50 subscriptions at once, Recharge can facilitate a bulk update to discontinue products for existing subscribers. You must send the required CSV file at least 5 business days in advance to ensure the subscription is updated for the customer's next upcoming charge. 

Method 1 - Remove subscriptions

If you are discontinuing a product and would like to remove it from all existing subscriptions:

1. Delete the product from Recharge by selecting Remove from Recharge under Actions in the Product tab.
2. Select Exports from the merchant portal. Click Create export and export the Subscriptions - All CSV. 
3. Isolate the CSV to all subscription products that should be removed from customer accounts. Do not include any subscription products that should remain on subscription.
4. Save a copy of the CSV.
5. Send the CSV to Recharge support. In your e-mail, please specify if customers should receive an automated cancellation notification

Once received, Recharge support will remove the subscription products in bulk.

Method 2 - Swap products

If you are discontinuing a product but would like to replace the product for existing subscriptions:

1. Delete the product from Recharge by selecting Remove from Recharge under Actions in the Product tab. 
2. Select Exports from the merchant portal. Click Create export and export the Subscriptions - All CSV. 
3. Within the CSV, add three additional columns to the end of the CSV and use the following column titles:
   NEW Product Title
   NEW Variant Title
   NEW Variant ID
4. Isolate the list of subscriptions to only include products that will be swapped. Fill in the columns with the new product title, new variant title, and new variant ID. 
5. Send the CSV to Recharge support. Once received, Recharge support will perform the bulk product swap.