Subsail lets you sell magazine subscriptions. You can sell subscriptions for a single issue, a recurring series, or a one-time purchase.

Subscription product options

There are a few options for selling subscriptions in Subsail. Here's a quick breakdown of each:

Rolling one-issue subscriptions

Rolling subscriptions is the name Subsail uses to define a subscription that renews every issue. They are a unique offering from Subsail. Technically, they are simply renewing one-issue subscriptions.

When creating a subscription product, simply specify the subscription Length as 1.

Renewing subscriptions

If you want to sell subscriptions that renew every X issues, set your product to automatically renew.

In Subsail, subscriptions renew based on issue release dates, not set time intervals. This lets you charge subscribers only when new issues are ready, instead of having subscriptions forcing you to publish as a specific cadence.

When creating a product, set the Automatically renews option to Yes. and a Length to match the number of issues you want to charge for each period.

If you want to sell on time intervals, check out Memberships.

Non-renewing subscriptions

Non-renewing one-issue subscriptions are for a single issue of a magazine. You can sell a non-renewing one-issue subscription for a fixed price.

Digital subscriptions

Digital subscriptions are for a digital-only version of a magazine. Read more about digital subscriptions.

Flexi-start subscriptions

Flexi-start subscriptions change their start issue automatically based on your issue release dates instead of having a fixed start issue run. Learn more about flexi-start subscriptions.

You can also set up a subscription product so that the customer can choose their start issue from "current issue" or "next issue".

Creating products

To sell a new subscription product, go to your Sell page in your account and click Sell a new subscription.

In the subscription form, you can configure the subscription product:

• Automatically renews (choose between a renewing or non-renewing subscription)
• Price (price per period)
• Name
• Benefits (a list of benefits that will be shown to the subscriber at checkout)
• Start issue (either a specific issue or the current issue)
• Length (number of issues included per period; for rolling subscriptions, this is always 1)
• Medium (print + digital, print only, or digital only)
• Last renewal issue (set this if you want to stop renewals at a specific issue)

Setting postage rates

For print products, you can add postage rates for different countries. This lets you set different prices for different parts of the world.

Postage rates you add also determine the location of customers who are able to purchase your subscription. Any countries not listed will not be able to purchase your subscriptions. An "Everywhere else" option that can be used to set a default postage rate.

Tax

Read how to add tax to your subscriptions.

Linking to checkout

When you are ready to sell to readers, you can add a link to <your-site>.subsail.com/subscribe on your site or on social media.

If you want to link to specific subscription products, there is Copy link option when hovering over the product in your Sell page.

Hiding subscriptions from checkout

You can hide subscription products from checkout by setting the Show in shop option to No.

When hidden, direct links to the subscription product will still work but the product will not be visible in your checkout.

Offering benefits

You may want to add additional benefits to your subscriptions alongside the magazine.

You can list benefits at checkout by adding them to the Benefits field when creating a subscription product. This list will be shown in the product's box at checkout when using the Horizontal cards products view.

To give access to these benefits after purchase, you can use the API, integrations or CSV exports to manage access or permissions in other systems.

Magazines will always be included with subscriptions.