Overview
Leverage the Bold Subscriptions APIs to create a subscription-focused business model with your customers in mind. Bold Subscriptions enables you to generate recurring revenue and increase customer loyalty, and our APIs give you the ability to easily get started, customize, and scale with your subscriptions implementation.
The content in this section of the Developer Documentation applies only to Bold Subscriptions.
If you are looking for Bold Subscriptions V1 (sometimes called Recurring Orders) documentation and API specifications, refer to our archived documentation.
What checkout can I use?
The requirements for Bold Subscriptions depend on the platform your store uses. Use the following table to determine the requirements of your platform.
While it is not required to use Bold Checkout with Bold Subscriptions, Bold strongly recommends it. An integration of Bold Subscriptions with another checkout provider is possible but would require significant development effort.
| Platform | Checkout Requirements |
|---|---|
| BigCommerce | Bold Checkout on BigCommerce |
| commercetools | Bold Checkout on commercetools |
| Shopify | Shopify's native checkout or Bold Cashier. Bold Cashier is only available to merchants who installed the app prior to January 20, 2020. New enterprise customers can submit a request to Shopify to use Bold Cashier if they choose. |
| Another platform | Bold Checkout on a Bold platform connector |
How do I get started?
Refer to the Bold Subscriptions Getting Started Guide to install and begin using the Bold Subscriptions API.
What are some example use cases?
- Create convertible subscriptions that let merchants swap out an initial product for a different one (e.g. a coffee maker converts to a coffee subscription).
- Apply a discount on the selected order count for loyal customers by using webhooks to listen for order count, which triggers a price change.
- Use Subscription Builder to give your customers the flexibility to build their own custom subscription box, or offer a curated subscription. Think meal kits, custom wine collections, curated clothing subscriptions, pet treat boxes, and more.
- Build a custom, unique-to-you customer portal that allows customers to add items, pause, and cancel their subscriptions.
- Build custom reports that allow you to analyze the success of your subscriptions by viewing metrics such as customers by product, paused subscriptions, or number of orders before cancellation.
- Send the store owner an SMS message as soon as a customer cancels their subscription by listening for the correct webhook, and connecting to a third-party service such as Twilio.
How big of a project is this?
Customization projects with the Bold Subscriptions APIs range in complexity, time, and effort. For example, programmatically adding items to a subscription is a relatively simple task for an experienced developer. By contrast, creating a unique customer portal from scratch is a more complicated and labor-intensive process. Many Bold customers choose to work with Bold’s experienced agency partners to create the perfect customer portal.
If you have questions about making your ideas a reality, reach out to our Bold Partners Team.
Subscription Builder
Subscription Builder is an integration that extends the functionality of Bold Subscriptions and gives customers complete control by allowing them to pick and personalize what they receive in every subscription order, based on your settings and restrictions.
The API-driven architecture of Subscription Builder allows merchants to customize the Subscriptions experience to their exact needs, with use cases such as:
- Create a fully customizable selection page.
- Enable customer-driven scheduling choices.
- Offer a hybrid subscription with “mystery” selections.
- Integrate with a third-party AI that selects products based on customer preferences.
- Offer location-based pricing based on city, zip, and country, and optionally build shipping costs into product pricing.
Contact our Bold Partners Team for more information about adding the Subscription Builder integration to your store. Integrate Subscription Builder includes instructions on using the additional functionality.
Where to next?
Learn more about foundational Bold Subscriptions concepts.
Get started with customizing your Bold Subscriptions implementation using the API.