Why Your Subscription Business Needs Its Own Website

You can run your subscription business on a large e-commerce platform like Amazon or eBay. However, while these platforms offer convenience, they come with limitations. 

They allow you little control over customization, branding, and direct customer relationships. 

Managing subscriber registrations, payments, and cancellations through these platforms often entails facing restrictions and inflexibility. 

Ultimately, this setup can present an array of challenges, such as difficulty in scaling your business and potential customer dissatisfaction due to delays and limited control over information updates.

Having a website allows you to overcome many of these challenges. 

A good membership site allows you to: 

• Automate key subscription functions, like recurring payments. 
• Easily monitor interactions and your subscribers’ preferences. 
• Deliver instant updates and notifications, such as renewal notices. 
• Manage content and product offerings in one place. 
• Scale your business without taking on unnecessary costs. 
• Sell across multiple channels, allowing you to expand your reach. 

By choosing to build your own website, you gain the flexibility, customization options, and control needed to grow a successful subscription business.

10 Steps to Set Up Your Subscription Site from Scratch

Now that you’re aware of what you need for your subscription site, it’s time to set it up. 

Let’s say you want to launch an adventure subscription box service for outdoor enthusiasts, complete with gadgets, maps, and adventure-themed snacks. 

You can follow these steps to launch your subscriptions or membership site:

1.Choose Your Niche

A successful membership site sells products or services that people need on a recurring basis. 

Before committing to a business idea, ask yourself three questions:

• Is there recurring demand? Look for something people consume regularly like coffee, skincare, or pet food, or want ongoing access to, such as training, curated products, or a community.
• Who is the audience? Define who you’re selling to and why they’d subscribe instead of buying one-off. 
• Is the market sustainable? Check the competition and margins. A niche with high loyalty and low churn potential is better than one where customers drop off quickly

Google Trends is a good tool for testing how much demand there is for a product, service, or niche. 

Begin by typing a term relevant to your business idea into the search bar and clicking “Explore”.

You’ll see a graph showing the number of searches for that term over a period of time. 

This gives you an idea of how popular it is and whether it is growing in popularity or not.

For example, the graph below shows that interest in cold brew coffee is stable, with clear seasonal variations. 

You can also see the regions where the term is most popular, plus related topics and queries. 

2.Plan your business

The first thing you need to do is prepare your business plan, which should clearly outline the following:

• Target market: Make sure you have a clear understanding of who your subscribers might be. Will your boxes target all adventurers or, for example, only adventurers who enjoy water-based sports? Do they live in the U.S.? How old are they? 
• Unique value proposition: You need to understand what sets your business apart from its competitors. If a competitor of yours already offers adventure boxes, how will your boxes be different? What sets it apart? 
• Pricing strategy: Determine how you will price your monthly subscription boxes to ensure profitability while remaining competitive. Will you offer tiered pricing? Will you provide discounts for longer subscription commitments or bundle deals?
• Marketing plan: Develop a comprehensive strategy to promote your subscription box service and attract potential customers. Will you use a mix of digital marketing channels or a single channel? What are your target audience’s preferred communication channels? 

Create a membership site business plan where you outline all of this and use it as a roadmap for your decisions.

3.Determine your subscription model

Armed with the knowledge from your business plan, you can now determine what kind of subscription business you’ll be running. 

It’s important to consider what you sell, for example: 

• Product subscriptions: This is when you offer regular deliveries of physical items, such as beauty products, snacks, or clothing. 
• Service subscriptions: If you provide ongoing exclusive access to subscription services like online courses, cleaning services, or software subscriptions. 
• Replenishment subscriptions: When you sell a base product such as a desktop printer range that requires regular refills of items that users can subscribe to. 
• Membership subscriptions: If you give subscription members exclusive perks, premium content, or access to a community or platform, you have a membership model that needs a membership website.
• Hybrid subscriptions: This is a combination of different subscription models, such as a subscription box that offers products as well as exclusive services.

You also need to decide how you’ll sell it. This could include:

• Tiered access: Multiple price points with increasing levels of value (basic, premium, VIP).
• Drip-feed delivery: Content or products released gradually to keep subscribers engaged over time.
• Fixed-term memberships: Access for a set period (e.g., three or six months) with a clear start and finish.
• All-access subscriptions: Unlimited use or access for as long as the customer stays subscribed.

Let’s say after having considered these categories, you realize that your adventure subscription box falls under the product subscription model. 

This knowledge will further inform your decisions regarding product sourcing, pricing strategies, and marketing tactics. 

Many businesses combine models, such as offering tiered pricing for a drip-fed subscription box.

Once you’ve decided how your subscription will run, the next step is choosing the platform to build it on.

4.Choose your subscription site’s platform

There are two main options when you’re determining how to create a membership site: 

• Use a platform-plugin combination. 
• Opt for an all-in-one solution. 

Let’s look at each in detail.

A) Base platform + subscription plugins 

Some platforms, like Shopify, Wix, and WordPress, don’t automatically offer subscription-specific functionality. 
If you want to manage your subscribers effectively, you need to add membership plugins, such as WooCommerce and WooCommerce Subscriptions, to ensure that your membership site features the following:

• Subscription management: Allows customers to manage their subscriptions, such as upgrading, downgrading, or canceling plans.
• Trial periods: Offer free trial periods to attract new customers.
• Discounts and coupons:  Add discounts or coupon codes to get more subscribers or encourage renewals. 
• Product variations: Offer different subscription options, such as monthly, quarterly, or annual plans.
• Email notifications: Send automated emails for subscription-related events, like renewal reminders or failed payments.
• Recurring payments: Automatically charge customers on a recurring basis for their subscriptions without manual intervention.
• Payment retries: Automatically retry failed payments so that billing issues are addressed immediately and don’t pile up over time. 
• Customer support features: Provide customer service through live chat or a ticketing system to assist subscribers with issues.

However, you might find that WooCommerce isn’t ideal for advanced subscription models or specialized industries that offer digital downloads or memberships. 

In such cases, you may need to explore alternative plugins, such as MemberPress for membership sites or Easy Digital Downloads for digital downloads. 

Adding these plugins means you’re now using two subscription plugins. If it turns out that you need more features, this list will continue to grow. 

Multiple plugins increase your expenses and add complexity to your membership site, potentially leading to software conflicts and crashes. 

B) All-in-one platform 

Instead of juggling a list of plugins to meet different needs, consider the simplicity of an all-in-one solution like Subbly.

With Subbly, you get the best of both worlds: 

• General subscription website features: Enjoy secure payment processing, automated billing and invoicing, user-friendly website management, responsive design options, and SSL encryption for security.
• Specialized subscription functionality: Gain instant access to trial periods, discounts and coupons, product variations, email notifications, and analytics and reporting tailored to subscription businesses.

Subbly gives you access to an AI website builder, allowing you to easily set up and manage your membership site according to your exact preferences in just a few prompts.  

Within a few minutes, you can have your subscription business up and running with all the functionality and features you need.

What Should Your Subscription Website Include?

Some requirements are critical for subscription websites, whether you choose a base platform with plugins or an all-in-one website.  

Responsive design

Have you ever come across a website that looks great on your laptop but terrible on your mobile phone? 

This happens when a website isn’t responsive. Instead of rearranging the content to fit smaller screens, it tries to display everything in the format used for larger screens.

Have a look at the example below—the website on the left is responsive whereas the one on the right isn’t: 

Unresponsive websites are difficult to read because the content isn’t scaled properly, pages are often cut off, and navigation becomes a hassle.

Research has found that responsive websites achieve an 11% higher conversion rate, which means that they effectively capture and retain more visitors. 

When choosing your CMS or website builder, make sure it offers responsive options that make it easy for your subscribers to find and understand your offers. 

Robust security measures 

When you choose a website builder, make sure it has SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). This keeps all the information that passes between your site and your users secure. 

For example, when someone logs in to your site, SSL scrambles their login details and personal information so that no one else can see it. 

This encryption prevents unauthorized access to their personal details, providing you and your subscribers with peace of mind.

How to tell whether a website has SSL

An easy way to check this is by looking at the website’s URL. If it starts with “https://” instead of just “http://”, then the website has an SSL certificate:

Smart subscribers will be aware of this and, if they notice your website doesn’t feature it, they might take their business elsewhere.

Reliable hosting and storage

Once your website goes live, you need to do everything within your power to keep it up and running smoothly. 

If your website crashes, you risk losing potential customers who are trying to find you online, and existing customers may become frustrated because they can’t access their subscription details. 

By using reliable hosting and storage services, you’re guaranteeing consistent uptime and smooth website performance. 

Easily integrates with popular apps 

If you’re not familiar with data-gathering apps like Google Analytics, you might want to integrate them into your website to analyze performance. 

Similarly, if your business needs more detailed tools, such as extensive customer support features, integrating an app like Zendesk can boost your business.

Source

Make sure your subscription website can easily integrate with these apps from the start, otherwise you may have to compromise and revert to less optimal third-party choices. 

Final word on choosing a platform

Before you make a final decision for your adventure business, you read some comparisons of Subbly and alternative options, like Shopify and WordPress.

You decide to choose Subbly as your platform because you’ll be gaining the following advantages: 

• Easy scalability: Subbly offers scalable solutions that can grow with your business, allowing you to easily expand your subscription offering and increase website traffic. 
• Dedicated support: With Subbly, you gain access to dedicated customer support from experts in subscription commerce, ensuring guidance whenever you encounter challenges. 
• Brilliant subscription features: Subbly has flexible billing options, customizable subscription plans, recurring subscription payments, and advanced analytics tools.
  

       To-do list for choosing your website’s platform

  • Decide your path: Keep your current site with plugins or move to an all-in-one.
  • Set up your “must-haves”: Billing automation, customer portal, coupons, analytics, and taxes.
  • Calculate and compare the total 12-month cost of potential platforms (platform + plugins + processing + dev time).
  • Test two demos: Build one plan, one coupon, and a checkout flow in each.
  • Check billing logic: Upgrades/downgrades, proration, pause/skip, dunning.
  • Confirm security/compliance: HTTPS, SCA/3DS, GDPR tools, data export.
  • Review performance: Mobile speed, CDN/media optimisation, and uptime status page.
  • Verify integrations: Email, analytics, CRM/helpdesk, webhooks/Zapier.
  • If migrating: Confirm token portability with your gateway and plan 301 redirects.

  5. Set up secure payment processing

  This is a critical stage in setting up your website. 

  If you make errors when processing your customers’ payments or put their personal data at risk, it will instantly erode their trust. 

  Without secure payment processing, your business will collapse before it even takes off properly, regardless of how good of an idea you have. 

  If you want your business to succeed, you need to set up payment gateways to ensure secure transactions.

  If you want your business to succeed, you need to set up payment gateways to ensure secure transactions. 

  The downfall of Moviepass MoviePass offered a subscription service that let members watch multiple movies in theaters for a fixed monthly fee — a bold idea that disrupted the entertainment industry. However, by 2019, the company shut down due to a series of financial and operational problems. Users faced constant frustrations — from ticket access issues to unauthorized charges — which eroded trust quickly. Most critically, MoviePass failed to maintain secure and reliable payment processing. Poor fraud prevention and billing system errors compounded their financial instability and accelerated their decline. The brand has since been acquired and relaunched by a former employee, aiming to rebuild its reputation with stronger systems and better user protections.

      To-Do List for Setting Up Secure Payment Processing

  • Pick a payment gateway (Stripe, PayPal, etc.).
  • Enable SSL on your site and confirm your URL begins with “https://”.
  • Run a small $1 test payment to verify that transactions are processed correctly

  6.Implement automated billing and invoicing

  One of the most time-consuming tasks when running a subscription business is keeping track of billing cycles and drawing up invoices.

  If your website is set up well, it will handle these tasks automatically, saving you valuable time and reducing the risk of errors.

  The results are twofold:

  •   Your customers are happy because they’re charged the agreed-upon amounts at the correct intervals.
  •   Your business successfully receives the correct payments on time, allowing you to cover your own expenses.

     To-Do List for Implementing Automated Billing and Invoicing

  • Enable auto-billing in your platform dashboard.
  • Upload your company details and logo to personalize your invoices.
  • Test a full subscription sign-up and confirm invoices generate correctly.
  • Simulate a failed payment and verify that retry logic works as intended.

  7.Design your website

  Now you’ve got the basics in place, it’s time to create your website’s structure and design the pages.

  If you’re using a platform like Subbly, then there are three approaches you can take:

  • Design it yourself using either code or our drag-and-drop editor.
  • Choose a template from our library.
  • Use our AI generator to automatically build a completely unique website for you.

  For example, you might browse the website subscription templates on Subbly and decide that the Paw Package template matches the natural feel of the website you want to set up.

   

  

  After selecting this option, you can start customizing it to suit your adventure-themed boxes by adding your own content and images. 

  This is also the right time to create essential pages, such as your About section, which gives paying members or subscribers some background about your business. 

  Sign up for Subbly’s AI website builder

Subbly’s AI website builder allows you to build an entire original site in hours rather than days, no coding or technical skills required. 

Simply describe what you want and the AI codes a professional, subscription-ready site for you.

It can suggest layouts, write on-brand copy, and adapt designs to match your products and audience. 

You still control the look and feel, but the AI takes care of the heavy lifting so you can launch faster.

You can visit our landing page to learn more and sign up for early access or watch the video below.

8.Set up your subscription management

Next, you’ll want to determine which subscription features you need for your business. 

This will depend on your subscription model (aka product subscription) and the details you outlined in your business plan. 

Based on this, you decide to make sure the following is set up: 

• Customizable subscription plans: Offer different adventure box options tailored to varying preferences, such as beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels of adventure.
• Trial periods: Provide potential subscribers with the opportunity to receive a single trial adventure box without having to commit to a full subscription. 
• Flexible billing and shipping options: Implement flexible billing cycles and shipping frequencies to accommodate the diverse needs and schedules of adventure enthusiasts. 

9.Build subscriber loyalty from day on

The success of a subscription website depends on retention. Good loyalty programs help you keep customers engaged and reduce churn.

Here are a few ways to build loyalty from day one:

• Send a welcome email that explains how the subscription works and what customers can expect next.
• Give subscribers exclusive content or perks, such as early access to new products or behind-the-scenes updates.
• Create opportunities for members to connect with you and each other through forums, private groups, or live Q&As.
• Use email or SMS to remind subscribers of upcoming deliveries, renewals, or new exclusive content drops.

With Subbly, you can automate much of this communication. That means less manual work for you and a smoother, more reliable experience for your subscribers.

A good example of a business generating loyalty through its website is meal kit subscription service HelloFresh.  Its website features HelloFresh Rewards, a free, progression-based loyalty program where members unlock milestones that deliver vouchers, free shipping, and box discounts as they place more orders.

10.Promote, launch, and monitor

Now that everything is in place, you can start marketing your subscription website according to your marketing plan. 

Once you’re confident you’ve created strong enough interest, take the plunge and officially introduce your adventure subscription box service to the world. 

At the same time, you keep a close eye on its performance from day one by analyzing metrics and customer feedback to make informed decisions and tweaks as necessary.

Here are some of the important website metrics you should track: 

• Churn rate: The percentage of subscribers who cancel their subscriptions over a certain period. For example, if a subscription box service had 1,000 subscribers in January and 50 canceled their subscriptions by the end of the month, the churn rate would be 5%.
• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): The monthly revenue you gain from active subscriptions. For example, if a software subscription business has 100 subscribers paying $20 per month each, the MRR would be $2,000. 
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The cost of acquiring a new customer. For example, if a marketing campaign costs $500 and attracts 50 new customers, the CAC would be $10 per customer. 

Our Favorite Subscription Sites

Right now, we’re particularly impressed by the following subscription sites: 

1. Hatch Speciality Coffee

Hatch Specialty Coffee’s website delivers a seamless subscription experience and intuitive online shopping, making it easy for customers to explore and purchase specialty coffees.

2. Nudo Adopt an Olive Tree

Nudo Adopt’s website offers a unique opportunity to adopt an olive tree from small-scale, sustainable Italian groves. The site effectively communicates its mission of supporting regenerative farming practices and allows users to easily explore adoption options, subscriptions, and related products.

3. Bead Master Envy

Bead Master Envy is an online training course and craft subscription for budding beaders. This subscription website knows exactly how to capture attention with its eye-catching pop-ups, design, and calls-to-action that easily convert new subscribers.