Acquire loyal customers! How to offer free shipping only for subscription orders using Shopify discounts

For e-commerce business success, it’s essential not only to acquire new customers but also to build long-term relationships with existing ones. In particular, the subscription (recurring purchase) model is attracting attention as an excellent business model that allows you to provide ongoing value to your customers while ensuring stable revenue.

This time, we’ll introduce a method to offer free shipping for subscription orders by utilizing Shopify’s discount feature.

The free shipping special is an effective customer retention strategy that can be implemented immediately while keeping initial setup costs low. By lowering the psychological barriers for customers when purchasing subscriptions, you can expect to see increased customer satisfaction and improved retention rates.

Let’s make the benefits of subscribing more appealing and encourage customers to switch from one-time purchases to loyal customers!

Shopify offers four types of default discounts.

You can specify certain products or collections and set a discount amount or percentage for those product prices.

When purchasing a certain product, you can offer another product for free (or at a discount).

Set a discount for the entire order.

You can set shipping discounts. This time, we'll use this feature to set up free shipping for subscription orders only.

It's best to choose “Automatic Discount” as the method. Of course, you can also use a coupon code, but in that case, customers will need to enter the coupon code themselves on the checkout screen when placing their first order.

Please select “Subscription” as the purchase type. If you want to limit free shipping to within Japan or to specific countries, you can also select the country.

If you want to exclude cases where the shipping fee exceeds a certain amount or not offer free shipping in such cases, check “Exclude shipping rates above a set amount” and then set the amount.

If you want to set restrictions based on purchase amount or quantity, please configure the minimum purchase requirements.

On the subscription payment schedule screen, you can specify the number of payments to be made free of charge.

Only for the first payment

Specify the number of free payments starting from the first order

Make every payment free for subscription orders

The following screenshots show settings that make shipping free for all subscription orders.

This setting determines whether it can be combined with other discounts. Please adjust to your preference.

The Shopify subscription app “Go Sub”, developed by GO RIDE Inc., is packed with features—not just regular subscription discount settings, but also subscription BOX, consolidated payments, design options, notification email settings, and more!

The Starter Plan has no monthly fee—just a 2% transaction fee.

The Go Sub Plan is $39 per month with zero transaction fees!

Plus, if you test in Shopify's payment test mode, you can try as many times as you like, completely free of charge.

Please feel free to use it to check things out before you sign up.

How did it go? This time, we introduced how to use Shopify's discount feature to set up free shipping for subscription orders.

It's super easy to set up, isn't it?!

We highly recommend implementing free shipping to boost customer satisfaction and LTV at your store!