Creating a subscription form

Introduction

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to create and customize a subscription form.

Creating a subscription form in 8 easy steps

We recommend going through the following steps:

1. Switch to test API mode
2. Create products/prices on the Stripe dashboard
3. Create form
4. Add products to form
5. Insert form shortcode into a page
6. Test-drive form
7. Customize form
8. Switch to live API mode

1. Switch to test API mode

This tutorial assumes that you’ve already configured your Stripe API keys.

You can switch to test mode on the “Full Stripe / Settings / Stripe account” page in WP admin:

2. Create products/prices on the Stripe dashboard

You can add recurring products on the Stripe dashboard.
Make sure that you’re in test mode also in Stripe.

Go to the “Products / Overview” page, and press the “+ Add product” button:

Fill in the essential fields of the product and price, and press the “Save product” button:

Please make sure that:

• The product name is entered
• Standard pricing is selected as the pricing model
• Recurring price is selected as the price type

You can create price variations for your recurring product, and you can create as many products as needed.

3. Create form

You can create a subscription form on the “Full Stripe / Forms” page in WP admin, by pressing the “Add form” button:

On the next page, enter form name and display name, and select a form layout, and press the “Create & edit form” button:

You can compare and learn the difference between form layouts here.

4. Add products to form

Once your newly created form is saved, you’re redirected to edit the form.

You can add your recurring products to the form on the “Payment” tab by pressing the “Add plan from Stripe” button:

The dialog fetches the recurring products from Stripe, you can select one product at a time:

In the last step of adding a recurring product, you can configure some additional properties of the plan:

This is how these properties change the behavior of the plan:

• The optional setup fee is charged up front, together with the first recurring fee.
• You can specify a free trial period in days. If there is a setup fee then it’s charged up front, then the free trial starts, and the first recurring fee is charged at the end of the trial.
• If you choose to end the subscription after a certain number of recurring charges then don’t forget to set up webhooks.
• A billing anchor day can be set up for monthly subscriptions only. When the billing anchor day is turned on, you can specify whether the first recurring payment of the subscription should be prorated until the anchor day.

When the form is saved, you’re ready to try it out.

For all customization options of the form, please go to the Customization section.

5. Insert form shortcode into a page

You can obtain the form shortcode on the “Full Stripe / Forms” page.

Please visit our dedicated knowledge base article on how to use shortcodes.

6. Test-drive form

Once the form shortcode is inserted into a page, you can open the page, and test your form.

The form is fully-functional in test mode, and you can make payments using test cards to simulate every possible payment outcome.

No need to refund your payment after testing either.

7. Customize form

Now that the form is up and running, you can customize the form if needed:

• Create a Thank you page
• Configure email notifications
• Set up tax collection
• Change labels or translate the plugin labels
• Customize the form with CSS
• Add Stripe badge to the payment page
• Create a Customer portal page

8. Switch to live API mode

When you’re ready to go into production, there are only two things left to do:

1. Copy your Stripe products to live mode
2. Switch the plugin to live mode

You can flip the switch on the “Full Stripe / Settings / Stripe account” page in WP admin: