Zest supports fixed-term, prepaid gift subscriptions in storefronts, giving your customers a seamless way to send recurring gifts without managing ongoing billing. This article walks you through how subscriptions work in Zest, how to set them up, and how to manage them after launch.
Before you begin, keep these things in mind to set your subscription up for success:
Create Zest-only product variants for subscription SKUs rather than importing Recharge-managed variants from Shopify.
Decide on your subscription terms before configuring your products.
Align with your finance team on deferred revenue recognition, since the first order carries the full payment and subsequent orders will show as $0.
For more help on creating a subscription in Shopify, watch this video.
How Prepaid Gift Subscriptions Work
Zest subscriptions are fixed-term and fully prepaid — they are not perpetual or self-renewing. The gifter pays the full subscription cost at checkout. The payment will appear in Zest and Stripe reporting at the time of purchase. Zest then automatically pushes individual orders into your ecommerce platform at the scheduled subscription term intervals.
The first order pushed to your platform carries the full dollar amount. All subsequent orders in the series are pushed as $0 orders, since payment was already collected. Subscriptions do not auto-renew when the term ends unless the recipient actively opts into a continuing subscription on their own.
Setting Up Subscription Products
From your Zest Partners portal, navigate to Products.
Click Import products if adding a new subscription product from your ecommerce platform. Note: If the product is managed by Recharge, you will first need to create a separate variant in Shopify that is just for use in Zest. Import this variant instead of the Recharge variant.
Once imported, click the three-dot kebab menu for the product you want to edit as a subscription.
Click Edit subscription.
From the drop-down menu, choose your desired term length:
3-month: one shipment every month for three months
6-month: one shipment every month for six months
9-month: one shipment every month for nine months
12-month: one shipment every month for twelve months
Every 3 months for 12 months: one shipment every three months for twelve months
Every 3 months for 6 months: one shipment every three months for six months
Click Save.
In your Zest Product page, check that the product now indicates it’s a subscription item (e.g., 3-month subscription) in the Details column for that product.
Subscription functionality is included in Zest at no extra cost.
How Subscription Orders Appear in Zest
The first order in the subscription will appear in your Orders tab. The Subscriptions tab contains every subscription order.
In your Subscriptions tab, you will see the following information for each subscription order:
Order Number: Zest Parent Order number
Start date: the date selected for the first shipment
Recipient: the name of the recipient
Next shipment date: the next shipment date based on the cadence of the subscription terms
Last package date: the last date a shipment will be sent based on the cadence of the subscription
Total shipments: how many total shipments will be sent based on the cadence of the subscription
Awaiting shipments: the remaining number of shipments
Subscription Status:
Active: subscription term is active
Expired: subscription term is complete
Note: If a customer selects a future shipment date:
The next shipment date equals the first shipment date.
If you hold orders in Zest, the subscription will not appear on this tab or in Shopify.
How Subscription Orders Appear in Shopify
Because Zest synthesizes subscriptions by creating individual one-time orders rather than integrating with Recharge or Skio, you will see multiple Shopify orders per recipient over the course of their subscription. This is expected.
For example, if you send a two-shipment subscription to five recipients, Zest creates 10 Shopify orders—five with the initial ship date and five with the future ship date. Each recurring order receives a unique order number.
Note: If you collect a delivery or ship date, you will see the first order for the subscription appear at the time of purchase in Shopify. It will take thirty minutes for the remaining subscription orders to populate.
Managing Changes to Subscription Orders
Recipients cannot edit their own gift subscription orders. If a recipient needs to change a delivery date, they must contact your support team.
If you collect a shipping date or delivery date and share orders immediately with Shopify, you will need to cancel any/all orders attached to the parent order in both Shopify and Zest. Then, you will need to generate new orders with the products and correct dates using Concierge.
If you hold your orders in Zest, you can edit any orders that have not been submitted to Shopify directly in the subscription order dashboard.
Limitations to Zest Subscription Products
Zest is a fixed-term, prepaid gift subscription tool — not a full subscription management platform. The following are not supported:
Perpetual or indefinite subscriptions.
Recipient self-service actions such as skipping, pausing, or stopping deliveries.
Direct integration with Recharge, Skio, or other subscription management platforms.
Recipient-facing scheduling with pauses (e.g., ship for three months, skip one, resume).
Accelerating or manually triggering delivery ahead of the preset schedule.