Last updated - October 17, 2022
Systems for recurring payments enable you to bill your clients on a regular basis, often monthly or annually. One of the primary advantages of recurring payments is that they provide a steady flow of income for your company and make it simpler for clients to pay their bills automatically.
Physical retailers may readily implement subscription model businesses and recurring payment choices. However, you could become puzzled about how to set up the payment and other aspects of the recurring payments when you want to adopt it in your online business. These days, we may buy books, furniture, software, and other items online and pay over time. How can it be completed quickly, precisely, and without error?
There are a ton of plugins for payment gateways that provide options for integrating WooCommerce subscription-based payments. You need to manage these payments without any confusion if you are selling really expensive things like electrical equipment as well as other products like magazines or even software packages on a subscription basis.
This post will demonstrate how to set up and accept recurring payments with WooCommerce Subscriptions. If you would like to take a look at the various plugins available for different payment gateways, check out 8 Best Payment Gateway Plugins for WooCommerce Subscription.
Accepting recurring payments with WooCommerce
The biggest eCommerce platform in the world is WooCommerce. It is one of the top WordPress eCommerce plugins since it is affordable, simple to use, and allows you to sell actual products, services, and subscriptions.
Installing and activating the WooCommerce plugin is easy if you already have a WordPress website.
You’ll need to purchase a domain name, SSL certificate, and a WooCommerce hosting account if you don’t already have a website.
After this, a crucial step is to select a hosting platform. There are many options such as Kinsta, Bluehost, and Cloudways, but Bluehost is the most popular.
Visit the Bluehost website and select the “Start Your Store” option to register.
The next step is to choose a plan. We advise picking the Starter package if you are just getting started.
You can then type in a domain name for your WooCommerce store after that.
Your account and package details will then be requested by Bluehost. Additionally, it will make some recommendations for add-on packages that you may purchase.
If you’re not sure if you need these extras, leave them out for the time being. In the future, you may always add them to your hosting account.
Finally, click the “Submit” button after providing your payment information and acknowledging the terms of service.
Following your registration with Bluehost, you’ll receive an email with instructions on how to use Control Panel, which serves as the company’s web hosting control panel.
You’ll get a popup notification when you first log into your account. You may access the WordPress admin section by just clicking the “log in to your site” option on cPanel.
Your WooCommerce store may now be set up.
Configuring Recurring Payments in WooCommerce
You must add at least one payment gateway before you can configure recurring payments in WooCommerce.
Although there are several WooCommerce payment gateways available, Stripe is an ideal option.
Scroll down to the “Stripe” option and click “Get Started”.
Your Stripe account keys will now be requested by WooCommerce. Open a new tab and log onto your Stripe dashboard to get this data.
Choose “API keys” from the left-hand menu inside the Stripe dashboard and copy the API key.
The key may now be pasted into the “Live secret key” area on your WordPress dashboard.
Simply select the “Test connection” link after that.
You will notice a notification saying “Connection successful” after a little while. This indicates that your Stripe account and WooCommerce are now linked.
You may go ahead and select “Save live keys”. This will bring up the Settings screen for Stripe. Check the “Enable Stripe” box on this screen.
Additionally, you should uncheck the “Enable test mode” option. This exits test mode on your Stripe connection, so you can immediately begin receiving payments from your customers. For the sake of this demonstration, we will leave the test mode on.
Next, click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the screen.
The Subscriptions for WooCommerce plugin must then be installed and activated. Like any other WordPress plugin, this extension may be installed.
Once the plugin is installed, it takes you through a setup wizard that is fairly easy to understand.
Let’s look at how to make a new product that accepts recurring payments. Go to Products » Add New on your WordPress dashboard.
Next, navigate to the “Product Data” box.
You may tick the “Subscription” box to enable subscriptions for that product.
You may provide details such as the cost of your membership and the frequency of paying. Additionally, you may select the expiration date and add an optional sign-up cost.
You could also wish to provide a free trial to entice them to purchase a membership.
Demonstration
For the purpose of this demonstration, we will be setting the subscription for a software product named “Anti-Virus”. This product is, as its name suggests, an anti-virus and takes money on a subscription basis from customers willing to sign up for the product.
Assuming that the plugin is installed and active, go to the Dashboard > WP Swings > Subscription for WooCommerce > General Settings and enable Subscription, and Allow Customers to Cancel Subscription. Once done, click Save Changes.
Now that the plugin is enabled, go to the product you want to add a subscription model to and tweak the settings.
We have set the expiry per subscription to 30 days and set the cost of the subscription to $10 with a free trial of 10 days. Below, you can see the “Anti-Virus” product with the product metabox settings tweaked.
Below, you can see a screenshot of the frontend view of the above settings.
The free version of this plugin only offers compatibility with simple products. If you wish to do the same with other kinds of products such as physical and variable products, you may purchase the Subscriptions for WooCommerce Pro at $99 for a single site.
Conclusion
For your WooCommerce store, there are several payment gateway plugins that can correctly process recurring payments for subscription-based items. We’ve walked you through the process of adding recurring payments to your store using a WooCommerce subscription plugin. Check out the link to the top 8 subscription plugins above to browse the product pages of other plugins that are similar.
