1. Ordergroove Knowledge Center
  2. Subscriptions and Enrollment
  3. Designing your Subscription Program

General Subscription FAQ

Updated

This Article Contains The Following Questions:

Q: What’s the difference between a subscription and an order?

A subscription is a one-to-one relationship with a SKU. An order is a one-to-many relationship, in that one order can have many subscriptions.

Q: Are multiple subscriptions for the same customer sent in the same order?

Multiple subscriptions will be sent in the same order if they share a payment method and shipping address.

Q: Can I gift a subscription?

Ordergroove does not currently offer a true solution for gifting subscriptions, as the complexities surrounding billing and account management for a product subscription of indeterminate length defy conventional gifting strategies. It is possible, and common in caregiver scenarios, for example, for a customer to set up an account on behalf of someone else, sending subscription items to that person on a recurring basis. 

Additionally, if you offer gift card functionality on your site, it’s possible for a gift card to be used until depleted for subscription fulfillment if a ‘backup’ default payment method also exists within the customer's payment wallet.

Q: Do subscriptions have an end date?

Subscriptions do not have a defined end date and are canceled either by a customer, upon product discontinuation, or by client request.

Q: What should I do for a customer who wants to start a subscription without an email address or account?

A contingency of this kind would need to be addressed through your Customer Service team since our service requires an email address and website account for each customer to maintain subscriptions and handle recurring payments. Your representative could set up a new account on behalf of this customer, using a dummy email address that forwards to an email account accessible by your Customer Service team.

Q: If a customer cancels an order, does it cancel their subscription?

No. Canceling an order just skips the order placement date to the next date in sequence, according to order frequency.

Q: Our U.S. site ships to Canada. Can Canadian customers subscribe?

Yes. Both U.S. and Canadian addresses are eligible for subscriptions, but each subscription must utilize a single currency and a single language for communications.

Q: I have shipping restrictions to Alaska and Hawaii on some of my products. How can I limit shipping zones for subscription orders?

Out of the box, Ordergroove doesn’t allow for shipping restrictions to specific geographic areas.  The best solution within our framework is to set these products as ineligible for subscription and Instant Upsell.

Alternatively, you can own the Shipping logic within the Subscription Manager and leverage Ordergroove's Default Shipping API to send customer shipping updates to Ordergroove. Owning the shipping logic will allow you to set rules where customers cannot update the shipping address for select production to areas you do not support.

Q: Can we call our program “Subscribe & Save” like Amazon?

Amazon owns rights to that phrase. If you are interested in producing and employing a like phrase, please consult with your legal counsel first.

Q: Can I display offer prices the same way Amazon does? 

Ordergroove-hosted content can’t include the price of the product, either full or discounted. Clients who host their own content retain the ability to display offers and pricing, and to change pricing based on the user selection of the subscription option. Alternatively, you have the ability to leverage Ordergroove's Helper Methods to build your own custom dynamic pricing experience outside of Ordergroove's content. For more information on Ordergroove's Helper Methods, click here.


Q: Why didn't my subscription get created?

You have configured your subscription program, checked out, and do not see a subscription being created — now what? There are a few areas of the integration you can look to troubleshoot.

Note: The below list of troubleshooting is intended to help merchants who are leveraging OG-hosted offers.

  • General Troubleshooting:
    • Check that your subscription is not visible both in your account’s Subscription Manager and within Ordergroove
      • If visible in Ordergroove, but not in the Subscription Manager, there is likely an issue with customer authentication. 
    • Ensure you are pointing to the correct subscription creation endpoint (staging vs. production).
    • Check the hash key you have configured for the environment you are testing in (staging vs. production).
    • The payment gateway is configured and set in the correct mode.
    • Review the product id you are setting in the og-offer div, and confirm it is the same product you are checking out with.
    • Cross-check the fields you are sending in the Purchase POST against the fields you have chosen to validate against in Ordergroove
  • Shopify Merchants:
    • If testing in pre-production, ensure auth.net or CyberSource payment gateways are in test mode both within the Shopify App and within your payment processor settings. Doing so will generate a banner at the top of the OG Shopify App UI.
    • Check if the below fields are present in your Shopify Orders portal under ‘Notes’ for the Checkout in question.
      • og_subscriptions:true
          • Shopify Payments customers will see og_subscriptions:false 
      • og_optins data is present
          • If not present check that subscription data is being tracked during an e2e checkout within browser local storage under OG_STATE

Q: Why are my international subscriptions not getting created?

Note: This question assumes subscriptions are being created correctly for some countries. For general subscription creation troubleshooting, please review the section above section.

Ordergroove supports subscriptions shipping to several countries utilizing Latin1 languages. When launching a subscription program with multiple shipping countries, there are certain nuances you must be mindful of when setting your configurations.

If you’re not seeing your subscriptions being created for all countries, first check your Subscription Validation Settings. It’s important these reflect the address field requirements for the least restrictive country that you ship to.

  • For example, if you ship to the United Kingdom, you must set the ‘state’ field to not be required. A smaller list of counties does not have an equivalent of a zip code, so that may have to be set as optional as well if you ship to one of those.
  • Note: By making fields optional, Ordergroove will not look to validate the presence of the fields during subscription creation.

If you’re still seeing issues after updating these configurations, check your Purchase POST code to make sure these fields are not being sent with NULL values. If an address field is present in Purchase POST, Ordergroove will run validation to ensure it’s in the correct format. If the field does not exist for the country the customer selected, be sure to remove that field from the Purchase POST code entirely.

Ordergroove’s Shopify app accounts for this scenario, however, other platforms or custom integrations may require you to modify your existing code.

Still having trouble? Open a Support Ticket and a member of our support team will assist you.