Setting up the Subscriptions extension

Updated May 29, 2026 Extensions

The Subscriptions extension adds recurring billing to TitanCart — subscription products, membership plans, free trials, signup fees and automatic renewals. This guide takes about fifteen minutes and assumes you already have a payment gateway working (Stripe is recommended, since automatic renewals need a gateway that can store a payment token).

1. Activate and enable the extension

Install the TitanCart Subscriptions plugin (downloaded from the Extensions Marketplace) and activate it under Plugins.
Go to TitanCart → Extensions → Installed Extensions and enter your license key.
Open TitanCart → Subscriptions → Settings and toggle Enabled on, then save.

Note: the Enabled toggle stays locked until a valid license is active — that’s expected. Activate your license first, then enable. You can configure every other setting while disabled and flip the master toggle on last.

2. Configure subscription settings

Still on TitanCart → Subscriptions → Settings, set the behaviour that fits your store. The main groups:

Checkout: allow a mix of subscription and one-time products in the same cart, handle zero-cost initial checkouts (free trials), and override the add-to-cart / place-order button text.
Customer self-service: choose what subscribers can do from their account — pause (and a maximum number of pauses), cancel, switch plans, and update their payment method.
Renewals: automatic renewal, manual renewal, and whether customers may renew early.
Failed payments (dunning): enable retries, set the maximum number of attempts, the retry intervals, and a grace period before a past-due subscription is cancelled.
Notifications: how many days before renewal and before expiration to email the customer, plus payment-failed and status-change emails.
Memberships: optional WordPress roles to assign while a subscription is active and after it lapses (handy for gated content/services).
Proration: how to handle the price difference when a customer switches plans mid-cycle.

3. Create a subscription plan on a product

A plan defines the billing terms. A product can have several (for example Monthly and Annual).

Open the product under Products (or create a new one).
In the product editor open the Subscription Plans section and click Add Plan.
Fill in the plan:
- Name — e.g. Monthly or Annual.
- Price — the recurring charge.
- Billing period & interval — the unit (day, week, month, year) and how many of them per cycle (e.g. interval 3 + period month = every quarter).
- Signup fee — optional one-time charge on the first payment.
- Trial days — optional free trial before the first charge.
- Max renewals — leave 0 for an indefinite subscription, or set a number to auto-end after N cycles.
- Site limit — for software/license-style subscriptions.
- Customer group — optional; when set, an active subscriber is automatically added to this group, which can unlock member pricing.
- Status — set to Active so it appears on the storefront.
Save the product. The plan(s) now appear as options on the product page.

4. (Optional) Standalone membership plans

Plans don’t have to be tied to a product. A standalone plan — not attached to any product — works for memberships or services. Pair it with a Customer Group and an active role (from the settings in step 2) to gate access while the membership is paid up.

5. What the customer experiences

On a subscription product, the storefront shows the available plans (e.g. “From $9.99/month”) for the shopper to choose.
Choosing a plan and checking out starts the subscription — applying any trial or signup fee on the first payment.
After purchase, the customer manages everything under My Account → Subscriptions, where — depending on your settings — they can pause, resume, cancel, switch plan, or update their payment method.

6. Manage subscriptions as an admin

Open TitanCart → Subscriptions to see every subscription with its status (active, trialing, paused, past-due, cancelled, expired). From a subscription’s detail view you can pause, resume or cancel it and review its full renewal and event history.

7. How renewals and retries work

When auto-renewal is on, TitanCart rebills the stored payment token on schedule and emails a renewal reminder beforehand. If a renewal payment fails, the dunning rules from step 2 take over: the subscription goes past-due, retries run on your configured intervals within the grace period, and the customer gets a payment-failed email. If no payment succeeds before the grace period ends, the subscription is cancelled. Subscribers also receive lifecycle emails for activation, renewal, pause, resume and cancellation.

Note: automatic renewals require a gateway that can securely store a payment token — Stripe is the recommended choice. With a gateway that can’t tokenize, you can still run manual-renewal subscriptions where the customer pays each cycle themselves.

Troubleshooting

The Enabled toggle won’t switch on — activate your license first under TitanCart → Extensions → Installed Extensions.
Plans don’t appear on the product page — confirm the extension is enabled, the plan’s status is Active, and the product was saved after adding the plan.
Renewals aren’t charging — make sure the gateway supports stored tokens (e.g. Stripe), that WordPress cron is running on the site, and that auto-renewal and retry settings are configured.
Customers can’t pause or cancel — enable the matching customer self-service option in Subscriptions → Settings.