How to Manage Subscription Price Updates
When you update a product's price in Shopify, your existing subscriptions keep their original (grandfathered) price — they don't update automatically. This help doc walks you through how Smartrr detects those price changes and how you can review and apply them to your affected subscriptions, all from the Bulk Updates page.
Step 1: Get notified of a price change
Smartrr automatically detects when a product's price changes in Shopify. No setup is required — this works in the background.
Once a change is detected, you'll see a notification in your Admin Portal.
Go to Subscriptions > Bulk Updates.
Click the Price Changes tab.
Step 2: Review affected products
Each price change appears as its own card, showing:
The product name
The old price → the new price
The number of active and paused subscriptions affected
The date the change was detected
Step 3: Decide how to handle the change
For each product, choose one of two options:
Update
All active and paused subscriptions for this product are updated to the new price.
Ignore
Affected subscriptions keep their current (grandfathered) price. The card is dismissed from this page.
Step 4: Confirm the bulk update
If you choose Update subscriptions, you'll see a confirmation step before anything changes.
Review the number of subscriptions that will be affected.
Confirm that only the line item base price will change — selling plans, discounts, and billing schedules are untouched.
Click Confirm & continue.
Step 5: Choose whether to notify customers
After confirming, you'll be asked whether to let affected subscribers know about the price change.
Yes, notify customers
Smartrr automatically emails every affected subscriber once the update finishes.
No, skip notification
No email is sent. Customers will see the new price reflected on their next billing cycle.
If you choose to notify customers, you can preview the email before sending:
Click Update & send notification (or Update if you skipped notifications).
Step 6: Confirm the update completed
You'll initially see a message to confirm that the update has been scheduled and is processing.
Smartrr will then email the user who initiated the bulk update(s) a summary once the update completes, rather than making you wait on the page.
The merchant summary email includes:
How many subscriptions were updated successfully
Any subscriptions that failed to update
An attached CSV results file. This contains details on all subscriptions and line items updated. Information included:
Line Item ID
Variant ID
Subscription ID
Customer's email
Subscription update status
Customer was notification status (email sent: Y/N)
What customers see
If you choose to notify customers, affected subscribers receive an email letting them know:
Which product(s) in their subscription changed price
The old price and the new price
That the new price applies starting with their next scheduled charge
A link to manage their subscription (skip, swap, or cancel) if they'd like
FAQ
Will this affect new subscribers? No — new subscriptions are always created using your product's current Shopify price. This flow only affects your existing subscriptions that were grandfathered at an older price.
What if I update the same product's price twice in a row? Smartrr keeps a single, up-to-date record per product on the Price Changes page, reflecting the most recent unacknowledged price change.
Can I customize the customer notification email? Not yet. The current version of the notification template can't be edited.
What if I don't have any active subscriptions affected by a price change? You won't be notified — there's nothing to update in that case.
Can I undo a bulk price update? If a bulk update fails partway through, the affected job can be safely re-run. If you have concerns about an update that already completed successfully, contact Smartrr Customer Support.
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