Memberships on Submarine

Memberships with Submarine work much the same way as Subscriptions, but with a few added features to assist with the cancellation flow.

When a customer checks out on a store for a Membership, Submarine creates the record as normal and sets it as the ‘Memberships’ type, and it will automatically process future orders or renewals as per the configured frequency. Note that the schedule is more strictly adhered to for memberships — delays due to failed payments, for example, will not push out the schedule.

The customer’s billing and shipping address details, shipping method and payment method can be edited on an active Membership, however the line items in the Membership cannot be altered, as with the frequency of the Membership, and the date of the next scheduled Membership order or renewal. Memberships are always scheduled according to the Membership creation date and the Membership duration, and cannot be shifted, regardless of if the customer has experienced any payment failures. This prevents customers from gaining access to Membership benefits which they have not paid for.

Unlike a Subscription, when a Membership is cancelled by the customer or a service agent, they have the option to cancel immediately or place it into a ‘Pending Cancellation’ status. This status means the Membership will stay in an active state but automatically cancel when the next payment due date occurs which allows the customer to still access the relevant benefits of their membership for the time they have paid up until. After the Pending Cancellation time period has elapsed, the Membership will automatically move into a Cancelled status, at which stage any associated Shopify flows (if configured) will run to remove access tags from the customer so they no longer have access to any Membership benefits and will not be re-billed in future.

In the Submarine UI, Memberships are distinguished from Subscriptions with a 'Membership' pill label. This makes it easy to identify Memberships in the UI list if your store is using a mix of Subscriptions and Memberships.

In the Shopify Admin, Membership products are identified by the presence of a _membership_duration variant metafield, i.e. 3_months. Note that this frequency must match the subscription frequency set by the source Shopify order (as per regular subscriptions) or a membership subscription will not be created.