Upgrading to the Woo Subscriptions extension from the WooPayments built-in subscriptions

With WooPayments, there are potentially two ways to sell subscription products:

Using the built-in subscriptions functionality.
Using the Woo Subscriptions extension.

See this document for a comparison between the two options, as well as information on why the built-in subscriptions feature might not be available for you.

If your store has been selling subscriptions using the built-in subscriptions functionality, and you want to begin using the Woo Subscriptions extension instead, this page is for you.

Using Woo Subscriptions for all subscriptions

↑ Back to top

If you would like to move your new and pre-existing subscriptions over to the Woo Subscriptions extension, follow these steps:

Purchase, install, and activate the Woo Subscriptions extension on your site.
Go to Payments > Settings and find the Advanced Settings section.
A notice will be shown offering you the option to migrate existing subscriptions off of built-in subscriptions functionality and onto the on-site billing engine powered by the Woo Subscriptions plugin.

Click Begin migration to start the process.
- The setting will show that the migration is underway.

Depending on the number of pre-existing subscriptions you had that need to be migrated, the process could take some time.

When the migration is finished, the notice will change to inform you of that:

This means that the migration is done, and all of your subscriptions are now using the on-site billing engine provided by the Woo Subscriptions plugin.

No other action is necessary, and all subscribers will continue to renew automatically just as before. The migration process happens entirely “behind the scenes”, and your customers should not notice any difference in behavior.

Migration log files

↑ Back to top

If you need to view the migration log files (for example, if our support staff asks for them), you can do that like so:

Go to WooCommerce > Status > Logs in your site’s dashboard.
Use the dropdown to find a log beginning with woopayments-subscription-migration- and a date.
- For example, to find the log file created for a migration on November 19, 2023, use the dropdown to search for woopayments-subscription-migration-2023-11-19.
Once you’ve selected a log, click the View button to load it.
Select the entire log contents and copy it to the clipboard.
Open a new text file on your computer and paste the log contents in.
Attach that file to your email response to our support staff.

Using Woo Subscriptions for new subscriptions only

↑ Back to top

NOTE: We suggest that you migrate all subscriptions to Woo Subscriptions as shown above instead of using Woo Subscriptions for new subscribers only. Migrating not only unlocks new features for subscribers, but can reduce confusion and administration burden for you as well, since you will not need to keep track of which subscribers are using which billing engine and so on.

To use the Woo Subscriptions extension for new subscriptions only, simply purchase, install, and activate it on your site. Once it’s been activated, your store will automatically begin using Woo Subscriptions to power newly created subscriptions.

Pre-existing subscriptions will continue to use the WooPayments billing engine, and the additional subscription fees will continue to be charged on those.