Many products are suitable to be sold as one-off purchases and being offered on recurring subscriptions, from beauty & healthy items to groceries and many more but you need to do a bit of planning to make sure that your plugin stack is suitable for your business.
In WordPress and especially with WooCommerce extensions, plugin compatibility is a key consideration. Nobody wants to start using a plugin only to find that it’s not compatible with another plugin you intended to use, or requires a custom integration which may be outside your budget. but if you need custom integrations I know a developer who can help! 🙂
Compatibility is one of the main reasons I prefer working with the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin by Woo, which integrates with other plugins I use regularly like AutomateWoo and Woo Product Bundles.
But Woo Subscriptions works with a custom product type meaning that a product is either one-off or recurring, but not both. A way around this is to combine Woo Subs with “All Products for Woo Subscriptions“. It’s not perfect as you need two plugins with paid licences, but it gives you flexibility to make any product a subscription whilst being compatible with the other Woo plugins.
If that’s too complex and compatiblity with other plugins is not your priority then an alternative is “Subscriptions for WooCommerce” by WPSwings. There’s a free version on the WP plugin repository but if you want to sell products both recurring and one-off you will need the paid Pro version. For projects where I can be certain that plugin compatibility won’t be an issue and where the compatible payment gateways are appropriate I’d be happy to use it.
And if you run a Google search there are many more Woo subscription plugins available, but as a rule I only include the ones I’ve personally worked with. If there’s a plugin you’re using & love, let me know in the comments!
Looking for help managing inventory in WooCommerce?