​​How to Display Subscription-Based Product Recommendations

Overview

AfterShip Personalization aims to help brands boost their AOV and maximize profits on every product sold with attractive upsell and cross-sell offers. Moving the extra mile, you can also seek to bolster your customer lifetime value (CLV) by settings up subscription-based product recommendations through upsell and cross-sell widgets on your website. This feature, besides boosting AOV, will help you capture a recurring stream of revenue, leading to more revenue gained from each customer.

Subscription-based product recommendations can be set up from AfterShip Personalization admin > Merchandising engine > Strategies.

What you’ll learn

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to:

• Subscription app setup on Shopify
• Configure subscription-based product recommendations
• Customer experience

Subscription app setup on Shopify

Setting up product type as Subscription only or One-time purchase only is just one step in this process. For subscription settings in the AfterShip Personalization app to reflect on your smart upsell widget for the product, cart, home, and thank you page, you must install a subscription management app like Recharge to configure subscription type, discount, and delivery frequency.

While AfterShip Personalization helps you recommend subscription products on your desired page on the website through upsell widgets, subscription management apps like Recharge, Appstle, Skio, Loop, and Seal help you configure subscription types for the products you want.

Let’s proceed with the Recharge subscription app as an example.

1. Install Recharge app from the Shopify app store.

2. Go to Products in Recharge admin

3. Click Add products. A list of all your listed product will open
4. Select the Products you want to add to the subscription products list and click Add n product(s). The selected products will be successfully added to the list under Products
5. Recharge offers you the flexibility to either update subscription settings for products in bulk or update them individually

Select the checkbox for products you want to update. AfterShip two filters will appear at the top under the Search bar—Update subscription settings and More actions

To update settings for individual products, simply click on the Product.

a. Under subscription type, choose the type from One-time and subscription, Subscription, and Pre-paid subscription only you would like to offer customers. An explanation of each kind is mentioned below the checkbox.

• Click on the One-time subscription

b. Set up a discount percentage to incentivize customers to subscribe and save

c. Set up an Order schedule (frequency) to determine the interval after which the order will be shipped, and the customer will be recharged on a recurring basis

• Setting up multiple frequencies will give customers the option to select the schedule from the dropdown that suits them the best

d. To discontinue the subscription after the set number of recharges, select the checkbox. Input the number of recharge(s) after which the subscription will expire

e. Click Save

6. Go to Products in Shopify admin and select the product for which you have to manage the subscription settings of

a. Move down to the Purchase option on the order detail page. You can see the current subscription settings configured for the product

b. You can Edit and Delete the subscription plan by clicking the Manage and Remove options respectively

• The Manage option allows you to update, add, and delete order frequencies and edit discount offer
• You can edit the subscription type only on the subscription app. Therefore, upon clicking the Add purchase option, you will be asked to migrate to the subscription app to update the settings
• The Remove option will delete the subscription plan from the product altogether.

Configure subscription-based product recommendations in AfterShip

1. Select the product recommendations strategy where you want to show the subscriptions products as recommendations in the AfterShip Personalization admin.

Product recommendation strategies control which products appear in widgets across the store. All active and inactive strategies are managed in a centralized Strategies dashboard, where they can be searched, selected, edited, or created. Strategies are reusable across multiple widgets, support flexible configuration, and help maintain consistent recommendation logic while enabling faster setup.

• Click Edit if you wish to set up a new strategy from scratch or modify an existing one. Configure the following actions to complete the setup.

a. Strategy name: Start off by giving your strategy a name.

b. Pre-made rules: It consists of 14 pre-made rules or recommendation types which you can select from to show the type of product recommendations you want.

c. Custom rules: It allows you to add custom rules based on your requirements. The products that will meet those requirements will be shown in the widget you are setting up and applying the strategy to.

Learn more about custom rules.

d. Pinned product: It allows you to pin a product that you want to highlight and prioritize in product recommendations all the time.

e. Exclusions: You can exclude products from recommendations. Three options to choose from: Exclude products in customers’ cart, Exclude specific products, Exclude by tag, Exclude by collection, Exclude by purchase option, and Exclude by vendor.

Click here to know more about product exclusions. Please note that product exclusion and pinning are feasible depending on the recommendation type you've selected.

• The Exclude by purchase option supports

a. Exclude subscription products: If selected, only products that can be purchased as a one-time item as configured in the subscription app (Ex. Multivitamins that can be purchased only once) will be displayed as recommendations.

b. Exclude one-time purchase products: If selected, only products that have the option of being purchased on a recurring basis and shipped at regular intervals as configured in the subscription app (Ex. A bottle of multivitamins shipped and paid for every month) will be displayed as recommendations.

f. Offer promotion: Enable Discount if you want to give a discount on the recommended products. You can either select the fixed amount or set the discount percentage.

Get more clarity on discounts here.

h. Click Save

Customer experience

Once the Strategy is set up and applied to a scenario of your choice, the products recommendations on the widget will be the result of the combination of

• The recommendation rules you’ve set up
• The products you’ve pinned to appear first
• The products you’ve selected to be excluded from being displayed as recommendations
• The product exclusion rules you've set up

If you have selected

1. Exclude Subscription products

The products not configured as Subscription only in the subscription management app will show.

• Products configured as a one-time purchase and subscription will show
• Products configured as pre-paid subscription only will show

2. Exclude One-time purchase products

The products that are configured as Subscription only in the subscription management app will show.

Key takeaways

• AfterShip Personalization helps increase AOV and CLV by recommending subscription products through upsell and cross-sell widgets.
• A Shopify subscription app (like Recharge) is required to define subscription types, discounts, and delivery frequency.
• AfterShip controls product recommendations, while subscription apps control how subscriptions function.
• Recommendation strategies determine which subscription or one-time products appear across store widgets.
• Merchants can filter recommendations to show only subscription products or only one-time purchases.
• Customers see recommendations based on the combined effect of rules, pinning, exclusions, and subscription settings.

Need help?

For any further questions or help, please contact our chat support team

Updated on: 02/02/2026