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Understanding Subscriptions

A subscription represents a recurring payment agreement between you and your customer. When a customer subscribes to your product, they agree to be billed periodically (monthly, yearly, etc.) until they cancel their subscription.

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Key Concepts

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Subscription Status

A subscription can be in different states throughout its lifecycle:
  • Active: The subscription is current and payments are being processed normally
  • Past Due: A payment attempt has failed but the subscription is still active and retrying.
  • Canceled: The subscription has been terminated
  • Trialing: The subscription is in a trial period before the first payment
  • Incomplete: The subscription and checkout session was created but not paid

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Billing Cycles

Subscriptions operate on billing cycles that determine when payments are collected. You can set up various billing intervals:
  • Monthly billing
  • Yearly billing
  • Custom intervals (quarterly, 6 months, etc.)

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Creating a Subscription

To create a subscription, you’ll need to:
  1. Set up a subscription product in your Creem dashboard
  2. Generate a checkout session for the subscription
  3. Direct your customer to the checkout URL

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Code Example

const subscriptionCheckout = await axios.post(
  `https://api.creem.io/v1/checkouts`,
  {
    product_id: 'prod_your-subscription-id',
  },
  {
    headers: { "x-api-key": `creem_123456789` },
  }
);
For more details on checkout session options, navigate to our Checkout Session Introduction

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Managing Subscriptions

Creem provides several ways to manage active subscriptions:
  • Update billing information: Customers can update their payment method through the customer portal
  • Cancel subscriptions: Customers or merchants can cancel at any time, through the Dashboard, customer portal or APIs
  • Change prices: Merchants can update the price of a subscription, that takes into effect in the next billing cycle
  • Seat Based Billing: Merchants can update the usage of a specific subscription based on seats or units through the Dashboard or API