Running a subscription business for physical products can be tricky, especially if you’re trying to adapt a traditional eCommerce setup or fit subscriptions into your existing sales tech stack. Managing recurring payments, product deliveries, returns, and customer requests adds a whole new layer of complexity that often needs its own system. circuly brings all subscription operations into one place, making it easier to manage and scale your business. In this guide, we’ll give you an overview of how circuly works and how it helps you launch, manage, and grow a physical product subscription business.

There are two main ways to use circuly, depending on whether you already have a shop system and payment provider (PSP):

• With a shop system & PSP: circuly connects to your existing tools to handle subscriptions alongside your current setup.
• Without a shop system & PSP: circuly can work on its own. You can create a product catalog, manage orders, and handle payments through pre-filled checkouts or invoices.

This guide gives a general overview of how most circuly customers or companies who operate a subscription-based business model for physical products manage subscriptions. Exact setups will differ depending on your tools, the customer journey you want to offer, and your business needs.

Option 1: You have an eCommerce store & a payment system.

• circuly connects to your shop & payment system
• A "Subscribe Now" button leads to circuly's white-label checkout page
• Your customer fills the checkout and places the order
• An order is created in your shop & circuly Hub
• circuly Hub becomes your platform of operations & home to all subscription related-tasks
• When payment is due circuly triggers the payment
• Your customer gets a customer portal for self-management of subscriptions

Step 1: Connecting Your Shop System & PSP

To run a subscription business smoothly, all the details of a customer’s journey, from product selection and subscription details to payment details, need to flow seamlessly into your operations. That’s why circuly connects directly with your shop system and payment service provider (PSP) directly to ensure not only a seamless customer journey but also a subscriber-first journey that combines all relevant aspects of subscription-based commerce. This ensures accurate subscription orders and automated workflows. 

Payment Service Provider (PSP):

• circuly embeds your PSP into the white-label checkout via API.
• All payment methods supported by the PSP are displayed on the checkout page for the customer to select and complete the payment.
• Currently supported PSPs include: Stripe, Braintree, Mollie, Adyen.
  

Shop System:

• Backend integration via API for product sync: Ensures that all your products, subscription options, add-ons, bundles, and pricing from your shop system are automatically reflected in circuly, keeping your product data consistent across platforms.
  
• Backend integration via API for order push: Orders flow both ways—when a customer subscribes, the order goes from your shop system to circuly, and updates from circuly, like subscription changes or cancellations, are pushed back to your shop system. This keeps your ERP, inventory, and logistics fully aligned.
  
• Frontend integration via JavaScript SDK: Provides a seamless experience for your customers directly on your website. All subscription interactions, like selecting durations, add-ons, or delivery options, happen smoothly without leaving your site.
• Currently supported shop systems include: WooCommerce, Saleor, Magento, Shpoify.

Bonus

If you want to see the tools & systems circuly integrates with, check out circuly's supported integration.

To see how circuly integrates with your tech stack, check out this guide: How circuly connects to your existing tech & tools.

Step 2: “Subscribe Now” Button

• Any subscribe Now or confirmation button on your product page confirms the customer’s subscription journey.
• Clicking this button leads to the circuly checkout and/or cart page, where the customer enters essential details such as name, address, and payment information.
• Additional options like delivery date, product pickup, multiple delivery countries, applicable taxes, and dynamic shipping costs can be configured on the checkout page and automatically calculated based on cart size, product type, or delivery location.
• All this information—including the customer’s payment details—is combined to create a subscription order, which is then pushed to both the circuly Hub (for all subscription operations) and your shop system (for ERP and logistics integration).

Step 3: Your customer fills the checkout and places the order

Once the customer clicks the “Subscribe Now” button, they are directed to the circuly white-label checkout. Here, they enter their payment details, contact information, and delivery address to finalise the subscription. This is also where additional options, like preferred delivery dates, product pickup, or shipping locations, can be selected. Taxes and shipping costs are automatically calculated based on the customer’s selections, ensuring a smooth and transparent checkout experience.

Step 4: An order is created in your shop & circuly Hub

Once the customer completes the checkout, the order is automatically created in circuly Hub, where it triggers the order confirmation email to the customer. At the same time, an order is also created in your shop system.

This two-way order creation serves a few important purposes:

• Automation and tools: Many businesses have shipping, ERP, or fulfillment tools connected to their shop system. By creating the order in the shop system, these tools can automatically process shipments and updates based on the order status. If you want to see the tools & systems circuly integrates with, check out circuly's supported integration and this guide to see how circuly integrates with your tech stack: How circuly connects to your existing tech & tools.

• Subscription management: Using the shop system’s order status can help determine when a subscription should start or be updated, keeping your operations aligned across both platforms.
• Fulfillment consistency and stock accuracy: Pushing the order into the shop ensures that fulfillment flows remain the same as for regular purchases and that inventory levels are accurately updated. Subscriptions don’t disrupt your existing logistics processes.

Step 5: circuly Hub becomes your platform of operations & home to all subscription-related tasks

Once an order is created, circuly Hub becomes the central place to manage every aspect of your subscriptions. From setting up a recurring payment schedule and charging the payments, to generating invoices, retrying failed payments, and handling dunning—everything happens in circuly. Learn more about how circuly handles recurring payments for a product-as-a-service business model.

circuly also manages subscription renewals, buyouts, product swaps, returns, and even product tracking. This means that beyond the standard subscription flow and automated processes, all operations—both routine and exceptional—are handled in one place.

You can adjust subscription prices or durations, configure notice periods for cancellations, manage payment retrials and debt collection, and even create bundled offerings—all directly within circuly Hub. Essentially, circuly acts as your central control center for subscription management, keeping operations smooth, automated, and fully under your control.

Step 6: When payment is due, circuly triggers the payment

Based on the subscription details agreed to by the customer—such as duration, price, and payment frequency—circuly automatically triggers the payment through your connected Payment Service Provider (PSP). Every payment generates an invoice, and you can optionally notify the customer via email about the upcoming charge.

If the payment is successful, circuly updates the payment status automatically. If it fails, the reason is recorded, and you can configure payment retrial attempts. Should the payment continue to fail, the subscription can be handed over for dunning, ensuring no revenue is lost.

This approach gives you complete visibility of the entire payment journey within circuly—no need to check multiple systems or log into your PSP or bank accounts.

Here’s what Franz from Bike Club said about circuly’s payment process:

"Being able to find the information about payments & invoices on every subscription and order, and then interact with that from within one platform without needing to go to your PSP or bank account to process refunds or transactions — that’s really helpful."

Step 7: Your customer gets a Customer Self-Service Portal for subscription management

One of the biggest conversion boosts for your subscription business: customers don’t need to create an account when placing an order. They can simply use the email address from their order to access the Customer Self-Service Portal at any time.

Within the portal, customers can manage their personal information, including contact details, shipping addresses, and payment methods. They can also take control of their subscription by performing actions such as buyouts, cancellations, product changes, or reporting issues.

Additional features in the portal include enrolling in referral programs, downloading invoices, and viewing upcoming orders. This gives your customers flexibility and autonomy while keeping all subscription operations fully transparent and managed within circuly.

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Option 2: You operate without an eCommerce store

• Use product storage to add products to circuly
• Create orders in the circuly Hub or in circuly StoreConnect
• Your customer gets the order as a pre-filled checkout or an invoice order
• Charge your customer via invoice or prefered payment method on checkout
• Manage all operations in the circuly Hub
• Your customer gets a customer portal for self-management of subscriptions

Step 1: Add products via Product Storage‍

If you don’t have a published shop system to store and catalogue your products, you can use circuly’s Product Storage to create a product catalogue. This allows you to manage your products directly in circuly, making them ready for subscriptions or one-off orders.

Step 2: Create orders in circuly Hub or StoreConnect‍

You can create subscription orders manually in the circuly Hub by adding customer details, assigning a product, and specifying subscription terms. A draft order is created, which can then be sent to the customer to finalize. Customers can complete the order either through a pre-filled checkout link or via an invoice.

Step 3: Customer finalises the order

• Pre-filled checkout: The customer simply adds their payment details to complete the order. This option is ideal for eCommerce-style journeys and allows recurring payments to be automatically charged using the stored payment information.
• Invoice: The customer receives an email with the invoice attached and manually transfers the payment to your provided account. This method is commonly used in B2B scenarios, large orders, or high-volume transactions.

Step 4: Charge your customer‍

Depending on the chosen method, circuly either automatically collects payments via the stored payment method on the checkout or waits for the invoice payment. All scheduled and recurring payments are tracked within circuly to ensure accuracy and visibility.

Step 5: Manage all subscription operations in circuly Hub‍

All operations, from payment schedules and retries to buyouts, cancellations, swaps, product returns, and subscription adjustments, are managed centrally in the circuly Hub, giving you full control over your subscription business.

Step 6: Your customer gets a Customer Self-Service Portal‍

Customers can manage their subscriptions anytime via the portal. They can update contact, shipping, and payment details, initiate cancellations or buyouts, report issues, change products, view upcoming orders, and download invoices. The portal ensures transparency and reduces the administrative burden on your team.