Smart Cart: Switch to Subscription

Use this article to let shoppers turn a one-time product into a subscription without leaving the cart, and to control every piece of text they see while they do it. The settings live in your Rebuy admin under Smart Carts, your cart, then the Cart Items component panel.

Switch to Subscription adds a subscription selector to any cart line item whose product has a subscription option, so a shopper who added a product at full price can upgrade it in place rather than removing it and starting over. It applies to every product in the cart that has a selling plan; there is no way to limit it to some products and not others.

Switch to Subscription is a cart-level feature even though its settings sit on the Cart Items panel. Turning it on affects every Smart Cart line item that qualifies.

Switch to Subscription needs everything below in place, and the control does not render otherwise. Turning the toggle on is not sufficient on its own.

If you turn the toggle on and no subscription selector appears on any line item, the second condition is the one to check first. Connect your subscription app, sync your selling plan and product data, then reload the cart.

When Switch to Subscription does not appear on a cart item that has a subscription in Shopify, or it appears with the wrong frequencies, prices, or plan names, start by refreshing the selling plan data Rebuy holds. The Smart Cart renders from Rebuy's synced copy of your selling plans rather than reading Shopify live, so a plan you added, renamed, or repriced in Shopify shows up in the cart only after that copy refreshes. Work through the steps below in order, since a resync cannot help while the integration itself is off.

Open the Rebuy admin and go to Integrations > Subscriptions. The Subscriptions card there controls whether Rebuy pulls selling plan data at all, and it shows a Connected badge once it is set up.

Confirm the provider named here is the app that actually owns the selling plans on your products. A store that migrated from one subscription app to another, or that added a second app, often still has the old selection saved here.

Resync the data itself from Settings > Status, which is a different place from the Integrations page you used in step 1.

For the full resync reference, including clearing the data source cache, see Sync Product Data, Store Data, and Clear Cache.

Once the resync finishes, load your storefront in an incognito window and add a subscription-eligible product to the cart, so browser cache is not showing you the previous state.

If the subscription selector now appears but picks the wrong frequency, the Upgrade To Subscription Default Frequency field is the next thing to check. That field holds a subscription plan name, so renaming a plan in Shopify leaves the saved value pointing at a name that no longer exists, and the cart falls back to the product's first plan.

The Switch to Subscription toggle sits on the Cart Items component panel and is off by default.

Once saved, any cart line item whose product has a subscription option shows a subscription selector. If a product you expect to see it on does not have one, check that the product has selling plans in Shopify and that those plans have synced into Rebuy.

The subscription selector renders on a line item only when that item's product has a subscription option available in Shopify and synced into Rebuy. Items without one keep their normal display.

There is one condition that catches merchants out. When your store uses Shopify selling plans and the selected variant of a product has no selling plan allocations of its own, Switch to Subscription does not render for that line item, even if a different variant of the same product does have selling plans. Every variant of a product needs the same selling plans attached for the control to appear consistently.

Disable Downgrade is a checkbox inside the Switch to Subscription card, off by default. When it is checked, shoppers cannot switch a subscription line item back to a one-time purchase from the Smart Cart.

Leave it unchecked if you want shoppers to be able to move an item in both directions. Check it when a subscription-only offer, a build-a-box, or a bundle would break if its line item lost its selling plan.

Switch to Subscription Labels is an expandable group inside the Switch to Subscription card. It holds every string the feature renders, so you can match your store's voice or translate the cart into a single other language.

Each field is optional. Leaving one empty renders nothing in that position rather than falling back to the default text, so fill in every field you want shown.

The table below lists each field by its admin label, the text Rebuy ships as the default, and the placeholder tokens that field replaces at render time.

Knowing which label renders in which state saves a round of trial and error in the cart.

Upgrade To Subscription Default Frequency decides which subscription frequency a shopper gets when they upgrade a one-time item, instead of the first frequency in the list. It is empty by default, and while it is empty Rebuy uses the product's first available frequency.

The value is the name of the subscription plan as Shopify stores it, not a number of days or an interval. Find it in your Shopify admin by opening the product and reading the plan names in the Purchase options card, where your subscription app lists every plan attached to that product.

Type that plan name into Upgrade To Subscription Default Frequency exactly as Shopify shows it, with the same capitalization and spacing. On a product whose plans are named 1 Month Subscription, 2 Month Subscription, and 3 Month Subscription, entering 2 Month Subscription makes the two-month plan the one a shopper lands on when they upgrade.

The field holds one exact plan name, so it only takes effect on products that have a plan with that name. A value that matches no plan on the product is ignored and the shopper gets that product's first plan instead, which is also what happens on every product whose plans are named differently. Stores that want one default across the catalog need the same plan name on every subscription product.

Switch to Subscription has boundaries worth knowing before you design an offer around it.

No, the Smart Cart's Switch to Subscription cannot be limited with a Data Source, because the cart feature configured in Cart Items > Switch to Subscription has no Data Source of its own and applies to every cart line item whose product has a selling plan. Rebuy also ships a Switch to Subscription widget type, a separate feature that you build in the widget editor and place on product pages, so anything you read about choosing which products get a subscription upgrade describes that widget and not the cart setting. The cart setting stays all or nothing no matter which products are involved.

To offer subscription upgrades on only part of your catalog, the approaches that work are placing the Switch to Subscription widget type on the product pages you choose, running an upsell widget that returns subscription products only, or hiding the cart's subscription control on specific line items with CSS.

No, Rebuy does not support variant-level subscription selling plans in the Smart Cart, because switching to a subscription cannot change the product variant a shopper already added. Every variant of a product needs the same selling plans attached. When the selected variant has no selling plan allocations, the subscription selector does not render for that line item at all, so a product with selling plans on only some variants shows the control inconsistently.

You can hide individual subscription frequencies with CSS targeting the option value, or with JavaScript when you need to remove several at once. To remove the downgrade path entirely, check Disable Downgrade in Cart Items > Switch to Subscription, which stops shoppers moving a subscription item back to a one-time purchase.

The Upgrade To Subscription Default Frequency value has to be a subscription plan name exactly as Shopify stores it, and a value that matches no plan on the product is ignored. Open the product in your Shopify admin, read the plan name from the Purchase options card, and enter that name with the same capitalization and spacing. Products whose plans carry a different name fall back to their first plan, so a single value only defaults the products that share that plan name.

The order comes from the selling plan data Rebuy has synced, so start by confirming your subscription integration is connected in the Rebuy admin, then resync your selling plan and product data. If Shopify's order is correct and the cart's order is still wrong after a resync, contact Rebuy support with the product handle so the sync can be investigated.

Duplicate frequency options almost always mean the store switched subscription apps and the previous app's selling plans are still attached to the products, so Rebuy is displaying both sets correctly. Remove the old app's selling plans in Shopify and resync your product data.

No, a Tiered Progress Bar order discount applies to the first order only and does not carry to the recurring subscription orders that follow it.

Recurring orders carry Rebuy attribution because the subscription app copies the original line item properties onto every recurring order, and Rebuy's attribution properties ride along with them. Rebuy cannot change those properties after the first order, so removing them is a change on the subscription app's side.