Discontinuing subscription products

There are times when you may need to discontinue a product from your store. If you are discontinuing subscription products, you must perform additional steps before deleting the product or hiding the product in your ecommerce platform. Otherwise, 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 for new subscribers

To prevent new customers from purchasing a subscription product, remove the product from Recharge.

Remove the product 

1. From the merchant portal click Products.
2. Locate the product you want to discontinue and select Actions.
3. Click Remove from Recharge.

Discontinue products for existing subscribers

To discontinue subscription products for existing subscribers, use one of the following options.

Option 1 - Manually discontinue products for existing subscribers

If you are discontinuing products for less than 50 customers, manually remove or swap the product from the customer's account. 

Option 2 - Bulk discontinue products for existing subscribers

If you are discontinuing products for more than 50 customers, the Recharge support team can assist with performing a bulk update. There are two methods for bulk updating the customers' subscriptions, Remove subscriptions or Swap products.

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.
2. From the merchant portal, click Exports.
3. Click Create export and export the Subscriptions - All CSV file. 
4. Update the CSV file to include all discontinued subscription products that should be removed from customer accounts.
5. Save a copy of the CSV file.
6. Send the CSV file to the Recharge support team. In your support ticket, please specify if customers should receive an automated cancellation notification or not. 

Once the bulk update request is received, the Recharge support team will perform the bulk update. This process can take up to five days to complete. 

Method 2 - Swap products

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

1. Remove the product from Recharge. 
2. From the merchant portal, select Exports. 
3. Click Create export and export the Subscriptions - All CSV file. 
4. Add three additional columns to the end of the CSV file and use the following column titles:
   • NEW Product Title
   • NEW Variant Title
   • NEW Variant ID
5. Update the CSV file to only include products that will be swapped.
6. Fill in the new columns with the new product title, new variant title, and new variant ID. 
7. Send the CSV to the Recharge support team. 

Once the bulk update request is received, the Recharge support team will perform the bulk update. This process can take up to five days to complete.