Subscription Free Shipping: Box 1, Then?

Subscription free shipping looks like a small decision and behaves like a large one. A one-time order pays for shipping once. A subscriber pays, or does not pay, for it every cycle, so the policy you choose is multiplied by the number of boxes the subscriber stays for. This guide compares three policies, puts a cost on each across a subscriber's expected life, shows what Shopify's discount settings can and cannot target, and ends with how to word the change so nobody is surprised when shipping starts to cost.

Three policies

1. First box only. Shipping is free on cycle 1 and charged afterward. It gives a new subscriber a clean first impression, and the cost is capped at one parcel.
2. Every box. Shipping is free on every cycle for as long as the subscription lasts. It is the simplest message and the most expensive policy.
3. The first few boxes. Shipping is free for the first N cycles, for example three, then charged. It rewards the subscribers who stay long enough to matter and costs more than policy 1.

There is a fourth policy that gets asked about: free shipping starting at cycle N, as a loyalty reward. It is covered below, because what Shopify documents for discounts does not describe it.

What each policy costs per subscriber

The numbers below are assumptions, not benchmarks. Replace them with your own before you decide anything.

• Price per box: 32 dollars, with a 55 percent gross margin on the product, so each box contributes 17.60 dollars before shipping.
• Your shipping cost per box: 6.50 dollars.
• After the free period the subscriber pays a flat 3.99 dollars per box, so you absorb the other 2.51 dollars.
• A typical subscriber stays for 5 boxes.
• Payment fees are left out to keep the comparison readable.

The gap between "first box only" and "every box" is 15.96 dollars per subscriber. For "every box" to catch up, subscribers must stay longer. With free shipping, each box contributes 17.60 − 6.50 = 11.10 dollars, so the break-even stay is 71.46 ÷ 11.10 = 6.44 boxes. That means the policy has to lift the expected stay from 5 boxes to about 6.4, which is 29 percent longer. Nothing in this table says that will happen. It says how much you are betting.

Run the same calculation with your own stay. If you do not know it, our guide to customer lifetime value on Shopify shows how to estimate it from your order history, and the free shipping threshold guide has the one-time-order version of the same cost question.

What Shopify discounts can target

Shopify's Help Center describes the free shipping discount's setup and says that if subscriptions are set up on your store, then under Purchase type you can select whether the discount applies to One-time purchase, Subscription or Both. The page also says the minimum purchase amount counts product prices only, and that other costs such as taxes are never included.

The developer documentation for the Admin GraphQL API is more specific about recurring billing. The free shipping discount object has fields named appliesOnOneTimePurchase and appliesOnSubscription, and a field named recurringCycleLimit. The documentation describes the last as the number of billing cycles for which the discount can be applied, which is useful for subscription-based discounts: if you set it to 3, the discount applies to the first three billing cycles of a subscription, and if you specify 0, it applies indefinitely.

That maps to the policies as follows:

• Every box: a free shipping discount applied to subscriptions, with no cycle limit.
• First few boxes: the same discount with a cycle limit of 3, or whatever N you chose.
• First box only: a cycle limit of 1.
• Free shipping from cycle N onward: the documented field describes the first cycles only. The pages we read do not describe a start cycle, so do not promise this one until you have tested it in your own admin.

Also note that the Subscriptions page in the Help Center describes subscriptions as products sold on a scheduled frequency, such as monthly, weekly or daily, and says nothing about shipping or discounts. What your subscription app lets you set per cycle is a question for that app, not something a Shopify discount page can answer for you.

Per-cycle shipping prices with the Skio template

Discounts are one way to change shipping across cycles. The other is to price shipping per delivery. The Skio shipping per cycle template in Freebies Engine by Log Studio Lab is described as "Set shipping prices per Skio delivery." It requires the Skio subscription app, so it is for stores that already use it. If you sell subscriptions through a different setup, use the Shopify discount fields above instead. See the plan requirements for this template on the pricing page.

A per-delivery price is useful when the policy is a ladder: free on box 1, a reduced price on boxes 2 and 3, the standard rate after that. Write the ladder down before you build it, and check each step against the table above.

Tell subscribers when shipping starts to cost

A subscriber who signs up for "free shipping" and sees a charge on cycle 4 will cancel, ask for a refund or both. The FTC's guide on the word "free" (16 CFR 251.1) says that when you make a free offer, all the terms, conditions and obligations on which receipt of the free item depends should be set out clearly and conspicuously at the outset of the offer, in close conjunction with the offer, and not in a footnote. The guide is about the word "free" in advertising and does not mention subscriptions by name, but the principle is the same one: put the rule where the promise is. This is not legal advice.

In practice:

1. The offer line says when it ends. "Free shipping on your first 3 boxes, then 3.99 dollars per box" is a complete sentence. "Free shipping" alone is not.
2. The product page, the cart and the confirmation email repeat it. Use the same words every time.
3. Send a notice before the first charged cycle. One email on the cycle before shipping starts to cost, with a link to manage the subscription, is cheaper than a support ticket.
4. Do not raise the box price to pay for the free shipping. The same FTC guide says shoppers have a right to believe the merchant will not directly and immediately recover the cost of the free item by marking up the item they must buy.

Decide with one question

Start from your table, not from the competition. Which policy has an expected stay you can believe? If a subscriber's typical stay is short, a policy that is free for the first box protects you. If your retention is strong and the main barrier is the first checkout, a short free period is a better lever than a permanent one. If shipping is the only lever you are considering, free shipping versus a free gift costs each reward per order from your parcel weight and the gift's landed cost, which is a quick way to see whether a gift on the first box would cost less than the shipping it replaces. Set the policy for a fixed window, read the cycle-by-cycle cancellation rate and keep the shipping-cost assumption current when the carrier's prices change.