When a customer clicks Cancel Subscription in the customer portal, the Cancellation tab decides what happens next. You can let them cancel straight away, show an offer that fits their reason for leaving, or show your own instructions instead of a cancel button.
Where to find it
In Appstle Subscriptions, go to More > Retention Management and open the Cancellation tab. The Sample preview on the right shows what customers will see as you edit, with the same titles and buttons as your customer portal. With Retention offers, click a step in the preview, such as Final check, to see that screen. Click Save to apply your changes.
This setup works in the classic customer portal and in Shopify's new customer accounts. Customers only see the Cancel Subscription button while Allow customers to cancel subscriptions is on in Advanced Configuration.
Step 1: Choose how customers cancel
Direct: customers see a short confirmation, can add optional feedback, and cancel with one click, or click Keep my subscription to close the window. There are no reasons or offers.
Retention offers (recommended): customers choose a reason for leaving, and you show an offer for that reason, such as a discount, a skipped order or a pause. They can always still cancel.
Custom instructions: customers see only your message, for example how to contact you to cancel. There's no cancel button, so customers can't cancel on their own. Some regions require cancelling online to be as easy as signing up, so check the rules that apply to your store.
Retention offers and Custom instructions are included in the Business, Business Premium, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus plans. On other plans, customers cancel directly.
Step 2: Add reasons and offers
With Retention offers, each reason a customer can choose has its own offer. Customers see the reasons in the order you list them. Use the arrows to reorder them.
Quick start
If you haven't added any reasons yet, Start with a proven setup suggests three common reasons with ready-made offers: Too expensive with a 20% discount, I have too much product with a skipped order, and Just taking a break with a pause. Choose the ones you want and add them, then edit anything you like.
For each reason
Cancellation Reason: the text customers choose, for example "Too expensive".
Retention Offer: what you offer for this reason. See What each offer does below.
Show Feedback Box: lets customers add more detail in their own words. Require Feedback makes it mandatory before they can continue.
Custom Retention Message (optional): the text on the offer screen for this reason. Leave it blank to use the default message for that offer from Step 3. Message customers will see shows the result.
Custom Success Message (optional): shown after the customer accepts the offer. If it's blank, customers see "Success!".
Second offer after decline
Under Fallback offer, you can give a reason a second offer that's shown only if the customer declines the first one. Choose it in Second offer after decline. A reason set to No offer never shows a second offer, because there's no first offer to decline.
What each offer does
No offer: the customer cancels as soon as they choose this reason and continue, with no offer and no extra confirmation step.
Offer Discount: a percentage off the subscription's current price, for the number of billing cycles set in Discount Duration under Step 3. Each subscription can receive a retention discount only once, whether it was accepted while cancelling or pausing.
Skip Next Order: skips upcoming orders. Skip Duration (Orders) sets how many.
Pause Subscription: pauses the subscription for the number of billing cycles in Pause Duration (Billing Cycles). This is one setting shared by every pause offer and the Pause tab, so changing it in one place changes it everywhere. Pause offers need Allow customers to pause subscriptions turned on in Advanced Configuration. To learn how long a pause lasts, see Pausing and pause offers.
Swap Products: opens the product swap. Product swaps must be allowed in your customer portal settings. After a swap, customers see "Product swapped successfully" instead of your success message.
Gift Subscription and Update Address: open the shipping address editor, so future orders go to a new address.
Change Delivery Date: opens the editor for the next order date.
Update Frequency: opens the editor for how often orders arrive.
For swaps and for address, date and frequency changes, nothing changes and nothing is cancelled if the customer closes the editor without saving. Subscriptions on a fixed billing schedule can't change their delivery date or frequency, so those reasons are greyed out for them.
A second-offer discount also uses Discount Duration, and a second-offer pause uses the shared Pause Duration.
What customers see
With Retention offers, customers go through these steps:
They click Cancel Subscription, choose a reason and continue. If there's only one reason, it's already selected.
If the reason has an offer, they see your message under the title "Before you go", with Accept and No, cancel the subscription.
If they decline and the reason has a second offer, they see it next.
Last, they see a final check titled "Cancel your subscription?", with Keep my subscription and No, cancel the subscription. Only this last button cancels the subscription.
After cancelling, the subscription page shows "This subscription has been cancelled."
If they accept a discount, skip or pause offer, they see "You're all set" with your success message and a Close button. The titles and button text come from Cancellation modal labels below. If a customer chooses a discount reason after their subscription has used its retention discount, what happens depends on Let customers pick a used discount reason again in Advanced Configuration.
Step 3: Discounts and default messages
Discount settings appear once a reason has a discount offer:
Discount Duration (Billing Cycles): how many billing cycles a retention discount lasts before the subscription goes back to its regular price. It applies to every discount offer on the Cancellation and Pause tabs, and to discounts in targeted flows that don't set their own number of orders. If no duration is saved, accepted discounts never end. A new duration only affects discounts accepted after you save it.
Let customers choose pause duration: customers choose how many cycles to pause, up to your Pause Duration, and how many orders to skip, up to the reason's Skip Duration. On this tab it only appears when you have a discount offer and a Pause Duration above 1. The same setting is on the Pause tab.
Email notifications for accepted discounts: emails your Notification Email Address whenever a customer accepts a retention discount, while cancelling or pausing.
Default retention messages hold the standard message for each type of offer. A reason uses them when it has no custom message. If a default message is blank, customers see a built-in one. For a discount offer, if the message is blank or still the original default text, customers see "Stay and get 20% off your next 3 orders.", using the offer's discount and your Discount Duration. With a duration of 1 it says "your next order", and with no duration saved it says "all your future orders".
Personalize messages with tokens
Click Insert token to add a value that's filled in for each customer:
{{discountAmount}}: the discount percentage, without the % sign.{{originalAmount}}and{{discountPrice}}: the subscription price before and after the discount, with two decimals and no currency symbol.{{cycleLimit}}: the Discount Duration.{{cycleDuration}}: the billing interval, such as "months".{{cycleNumber}}: how many cycles the subscription pauses for.{{skipCycleNumber}}: how many orders are skipped.
Not every token works in every field. Success messages only replace {{discountAmount}}. When a token won't be replaced, a note under the field tells you, because customers would see the token as plain text.
Cancellation modal labels
These change the titles and buttons of the cancel window:
Title: the heading when the cancel window opens. With Retention offers, the later screens use the titles below.
Confirm button and Confirm message, regular and prepaid: the button and question customers see with Direct. With Retention offers, the confirm button is also the button customers click after choosing a reason.
Keep subscription button: closes the window and keeps the subscription. Customers see it with Direct and on the final check.
Offer title, Final check title and Offer accepted title: the headings of the offer screen, the final check and the screen after a customer accepts an offer. The defaults are "Before you go", "Cancel your subscription?" and "You're all set". The offer accepted title is also used when pausing.
Accept offer and Decline & cancel: the buttons on offer screens. Declining an offer takes the customer to the next step. On the final check, Decline & cancel cancels the subscription.
Discount already used message: shown when a customer chooses a reason whose discount their subscription has already used.
Close button: closes the window after a customer accepts an offer. It's also the only button customers see with Custom instructions.
Other text in the cancel window, such as "Select Cancellation Reason", "Cancellation Feedback" and the message shown after cancelling, is in your customer portal labels.
Languages
If your store uses more than one language and you use Retention offers, the Languages card lets you pick a language and edit the default retention messages and cancellation modal labels in it. To translate a reason, its retention message or its success message, click Translate next to the field. Second-offer messages and custom instructions can't be translated.
Test it with Check on live
Check on live creates a link to a real customer's cancel window. Search for a customer by name or email and choose one of their subscriptions, or enter a subscription ID and click Look up. Then click Open in portal or Copy test link. The link works for about 2 hours and uses your saved settings, so save your changes first.
Everything you do through the link is real. Accepting an offer or cancelling changes that customer's subscription, so use a test customer.
If your store uses Shopify's new customer accounts, the link opens the subscription page instead. Log in as that customer and click Cancel Subscription to see the cancel window.
When this tab is read-only
While a targeted flow is published, this tab is read-only and shows a notice that a published flow controls the cancel experience. Customers who don't match a published flow still get the setup on this tab. To edit it, archive your published flows on the Flows tab. See Targeted cancellation flows.
When customers can't cancel
Allow customers to cancel subscriptions is off, the subscription is already cancelled, or a cancellation is already scheduled.
The subscription is in its free trial and Allow customers to cancel during free trial is off.
The subscription hasn't reached the minimum number of orders set in its plan's Cancellation Policy.
The next order is too close, based on Block cancellation, pause, or skip actions or Allowed days to cancel, pause, or skip orders under Customer Portal settings > Configuration.
You use Custom instructions.
In the free trial, minimum order and timing cases, customers see a message instead of the cancel steps.
Prepaid (separate orders) plans: when a customer cancels, the cancellation is scheduled for the end of the prepaid term, so they still receive the orders they've paid for. The subscription page then shows the expected cancellation date.
Measure your results
The Overview tab shows your save rate and how each reason and offer performs. See Retention Management in Appstle Subscriptions.
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