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Firmhouse with native Shopify Checkout and Subscriptions
Firmhouse with native Shopify Checkout and Subscriptions
Michiel Sikkes avatar
Written by Michiel Sikkes
Updated yesterday

Introduction

Firmhouse can now be used in combination with Shopify Checkout and Shopify Subscriptions natively. We support all the payment methods that Shopify Subscriptions supports natively. In addition we allow you to add certain local payment methods like iDeal and Bancontact for paying for subscriptions as well.

This page explains the ins-and-outs of how the integration works, what is supported now, and what we're working on as part of our roadmap.

👉 Our native Shopify Checkout integration is currently in public beta but we're happy to help you get set up and take all your feedback so we can iterate, improve, and prioritize the most important next steps in our integration.

Please review Supported Checkout and Subscription capabilities for an up-to-date list on current and upcoming features and improvements.

How Firmhouse powers Shopify Checkout natively

The Firmhouse Shopify app adds subscription capabilities to your Shopify store. After you install our app, you can define plans and their discount policies with Firmhouse. These plans then become available for your customers to choose from and add to their cart. You can use our standard subscription option theme block to get up&running quickly. Or you can build your own subscription selection widget in your own store.

After subscriptions have been checked out by your customers, Firmhouse's billing logic will kick in and ensure your customers are charged at the right moments. And that failed payment and payment dunning flows are followed.

If customers check out with a payment method natively supported by Shopify Subscriptions (cards, PayPal), then Firmhouse uses Shopify Subscriptions. If you want to offer local payment methods like iDeal and Bancontact, then Firmhouse has a special additional layer to support this, built for native Shopify Checkout.

Your subscribers can use the Firmhouse Customer Portal to manage their subscriptions. The customer portal includes features like pausing, cancelling, modifying products, and more. The Firmhouse Self Service Center can be linked to your storefront so you can provide a seamless experience to your customers.

To manage your customer's subscriptions as a merchant, you can use the Firmhouse Portal. You can access the Firmhouse Portal from your Shopify store. Or you can invite team members to log straight into Firmhouse Portal for performing day-to-day actions like updating address details, changing products, or cancelling/pausing subscriptions.

Support for iDeal and Bancontact for Subscription checkouts

Firmhouse allows your customers to check out your product's subscription plans via local payment methods like iDeal and Bancontact.

This is done by configuring a supported payment provider like Mollie* in your Shopify store and in your Firmhouse project. In your Shopify store you can then activate the supported local payment methods on your Shopify Checkout as payment options. When a subscriptions is checked out via a local payment method, Firmhouse's own subscription engine will take care of billing, order generation, and subscription management.

*We're currently working on supporting Adyen as well.

Installation & setup instructions

If you do not have a project on Firmhouse yet:

  1. Make sure you're logged in to your Shopify store.

  2. Verify that your payment provider in Shopify is set to one of the payment providers that is supported by Shopify for subscriptions: Supported payment gateways for Shopify Subscriptions

  3. Go to the Firmhouse app on the Shopify app store and click Install.

  4. Verify and confirm the installation the Firmhouse app on your store. Once installed you will end up in the Firmhouse Portal.

  5. In the Firmhouse Portal, go to Plans and create plans for the frequencies and discounts you want to sell your products on.

  6. In Shopify from the product or product variant management screen, add products to the Firmhouse subscription options.

  7. In the Shopify theme editor, add the Firmhouse selling options theme block to your Product Detail page. Or optionally, develop your own subscription options widget in your theme.

  8. Optionally: Set up iDeal and Bancontact support for Subscription Checkouts in Shopify and Firmhouse with Mollie.

  9. Start selling subscriptions!

If you're already on Firmhouse:

  1. Get in touch with Firmhouse support so that we can do a sanity check together with you if your current project setup is compatible with subscriptions on Shopify. Then follow the following steps:

  2. In Firmhouse Portal, got to Apps in the sidebar and find the new "Subscriptions using Shopify" app and click Configure.

  3. In the Your Shopify Store Domain enter your store domain <yourstore>.myshopify.com

  4. Click Save

  5. Now follow the instructions above for a store that is not on Firmhouse yet.

Update your Shopify store template so that customers can add Selling Plans to their cart

In your Shopify store or page builder you need to implement that a Product's Selling Plans are in some way made available to your customers on your storefront to be added to their cart.

This typically happens by implementing a code snippet that presents the available subscription Selling Plans on your Product Detail Page as a dropdown or selection widget.

We've added a guide to the Firmhouse Developer Docs on implementing Firmhouse on your cart and Checkout using Shopify selling Plans.

In addition, Shopify has a general-purpose guide for developers on how you can add SellingPlan choices to your product detail pages and carts: https://shopify.dev/docs/storefronts/themes/pricing-payments/subscriptions/add-subscriptions-to-your-theme

Local payment methods on Checkout

For local payment methods to be visible on Checkout, the cart line items need to be updated to special local payment Selling Plans that Firmhouse will generate for you.

If you're on Shopify Plus:

If you are on Shopify Plus, then the Firmhouse integration will ensure that on Shopify Checkout the right payment methods are shown and that the right Selling Plans are updated in the Shopify cart depending on which payment method gets chosen.

If you're on a regular Shopify plan:

When you're on a regular Shopify plan (not Plus) and you want to offer local payment methods like iDeal and Bancontact, you need to add an additional "Checkout with iDeal/Bancontact" button to your cart page or cart slide-out. This button converts the subscription plan cart line items into special selling plans so that Shopify shows local payment methods on Checkout.

Follow the following section on our Developer Docs to learn how to add a Checkout button to your store that allows customer to pay for their initial subscription order via local payment methods: Customizations for using SEPA based payment methods during checkout

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