Understanding the customer portal
Customers can edit their subscriptions, update billing information, or see their purchase history through the customer portal. This comprehensive guide reviews the sections of the customer portal and the settings you can adjust to enable or disable certain features.
Customer portal types
Customer portal themes
Affinity customer portal theme provides a clean user interface that allows users to manage their subscriptions seamlessly. This customer portal theme is enabled by default and is recommended to use.
Novum and Prima are also available customer portal themes. Similar to how you can select different stylings for your ecommerce store through the themes section, you can choose different customer portal themes in Recharge.
Refer to our dedicated guides for more information about each theme:
- Using the Affinity customer portal theme
- Using the Novum customer portal theme
- Using the Prima customer portal theme
Recharge Theme Engine
Recharge Theme Engine is available exclusively to merchants on the Recharge Pro or custom plans. Theme Engine allows you to customize the interface of your store's customer portal. You can tailor the look and feel of the portal to fit your store's style and branding.
Although the PRO Theme Engine option can be selected in your Customer portal settings, adjustments to the customer portal should be done through the Theme Editor (click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Theme editor).
Enable the customer portal
- Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer portal.
- Select your customer portal type in the Customer portal section.
- If using Customer portal themes, select Themes.
- If using the Recharge Theme Engine, select PRO Theme Engine.
- If using Customer portal themes, select the desired theme in the Themes section.
- Click Save.
Test the customer portal
- Select Customers in your merchant portal and click on the Customers menu.
- Search and select the customer's name.
- On the Customer overview page, click Customer portal links to access a dropdown.
- In the dropdown, choose the section of the customer portal to preview.
- Click the Preview portal icon to see the customer-facing view for that section.
Specify the customer portal location
Merchants using the Shopify Checkout Integration can choose between two options for where the customer portal will be hosted:
- Hosted by Recharge - The customer portal is hosted by Recharge and will not inherit any styling or style changes from your store theme.
- Embedded in platform storefront - The customer portal is embedded within your Shopify theme and takes on the styling, logo, and menu from your Shopify theme.
This is important for your store depending on your theme. The CSS from your Shopify theme can conflict with the customer portal code and switching to hosted will resolve this. If you notice an issue with the CSS styling on your portal, switch to Hosted by Recharge momentarily to see if the issue persists.
Hosted customer portal URL
Updating the portal from embedded to hosted will cause the portal URL to change, and rechargeapps.com will be included in the URL. Merchants on the Recharge Pro Plan using the Hosted by Recharge option, can follow our guide for Setting up a custom customer portal domain if you want to customize this.
Customize the customer portal theme
You can customize the style of your customer portal header and footer with HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. You can also modify the credit card page with CSS. Updating the style through CSS requires custom code and is not supported by Recharge as per our design policy. If you require further assistance, visit working with third-party developers.
Stores using the Affinity customer portal theme can customize the theme directly in the Shopify theme editor. For more information and customization options, refer to Customizing the Affinity customer portal theme.
To customize the customer portal:
- Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer portal.
- Add your custom code to Header HTML/CSS/JS, Footer HTML/CSS/JS, or Credit card page CSS in the Customize styles section.
- Scroll to the bottom and click Save.
Customer portal login options
Manage how customers access the customer portal based on your preferences.
Passwordless login
Provide customers with a secure four-digit code via email or SMS and allow them to log in to the customer portal without needing to sign into their Shopify account.
See Passwordless login for more information.
Shopify Multipass
Shopify Plus merchants can use Multipass to allow customers to log in to their Shopify account with Recharge’s Passwordless Login Widget.
See Enable Multipass for more information.
Manage subscriptions after checkout setting
By default, customers access their customer portals through your Shopify storefront. Additionally, you can configure your settings to display the manage subscriptions link on the Order Status page after a customer successfully checks out.
Enable the Manage subscriptions after checkout setting
- Navigate to the Recharge merchant portal to enable the Manage subscriptions after checkout setting.
- Select Customer portal from the Storefront dropdown menu.
- Find the Checkout Settings section and select Enable manage subscriptions on checkout.
Select Enable manage subscriptions in the pop-up window to inject the manage subscriptions link into the thank you page.
Recharge automatically injects the necessary code into the Order Status page theme file to ensure the manage subscription link displays on the Order Status page.
Shopify does not provide access to the Order Status page files at the merchant level, and as such, the language displayed cannot be changed or updated.
Preview the Manage subscriptions link on the Order Status page
Review the Order Status page for an order processed after enabling the setting to see the Manage Subscription option live.
- Navigate to the Orders page in Shopify.
- Select the most recent Online Store order processed after enabling the manage subscriptions setting.
- Select More actions.
- Click View order status page to review the Manage subscription link.
Customer portal controls
- Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer portal.
- Scroll down to the Customer portal controls section to toggle the controls off or on.
- Toggling on allows customers to change the desired option.
- Toggling off means only the storeowner can change that option.
- Click Save once finished.
Overview of customer portal controls
Customer portal controls allow you to limit how your customers manage their subscriptions. The following table provides a list of customer portal control settings and definitions:
Customer portal control |
Definition |
| Delivery schedule | Customers can view future charge dates. Depending on other settings, they can also make adjustments to their order. |
| Force Shopify customer account logins |
Note: This setting is only available if the embedded in platform storefront option is selected for stores using the Shopify Checkout Integration. Stores must enable Shopify Multipass using the Shopify Plus plan to use this feature.
To improve the security of the customer portal, you have the option to implement enforced authentication via Shopify. Enabling this setting will prompt customers to login to their Shopify account before accessing their subscription portal. If set to no, customers can access the customer portal using tokenized magic links from notifications until they expire. If set to yes, customers will be required to login to their Shopify customer accounts to access the customer portal. Magic links will be generated in notifications as above but customers will be prompted to login or create a Shopify account before accessing the portal.
Note: To enable this setting, Shopify customer account must be enabled using the Show login link in the header of online store and at checkout checkbox.
When enabled, the Get Account Access notification should be edited to remove the If you use Quick Actions and enable this feature the customer will be prompted to log in using their Shopify customer account email and password if they choose to view the change they made in the customer portal after they process the quick action change or when using the "view customer portal" quick action. Stores using Theme Engine can use this feature with Base and Novum. Contact Recharge Support for the updated file information. |
| Edit shipping address | Customers can make updates to their shipping schedule. |
| Edit upcoming order date | Customers can adjust their next order date. |
| Edit upcoming quantity | Customers can adjust the number of products they receive in their next order. |
| Add products to subscriptions | Customers can add additional products to their subscription. For example, if you are a coffee company, this would allow a whole beans customer to add a subscription for coffee filters to their account. |
| Change variants | Customers can change the variant of the product. Using the coffee example, a customer subscribed to the Ethiopian blend could switch from whole beans to ground. |
| Swap products | Customers can switch their subscription product for another subscription product in your store. |
| Skip shipment |
Customers are given the option to skip their next order. For example, if a customer is going on vacation, they could skip that month's delivery. This feature does not apply to prepaid subscriptions, only recurring charges.
Note: This must be toggled on in order for the store owner to have access to the Delivery Schedule page as well.
|
| Allow skip shipment on prepaids |
Customers are given the option to skip their next prepaid order. |
|
Edit frequency |
Customers can change how often they receive a product. For example, from once a month to every two weeks. In addition, you can allow customers to choose any frequency or limit the frequency to the settings in the subscription rule.
Note: In order for the Edit frequency to appear for customers both Edit upcoming order and Edit frequency need to be toggled on. Customers are not able to edit the frequency if they first don't have the ability to edit the date of their upcoming order.
|
|
Customer-facing frequency options |
Select one of the two options for allowing customers to choose their frequency:
|
| Delivery schedule number of days in future shown |
Set the number of days in advance that upcoming subscriptions are shown in the customer portal, up to a maximum of 180 days. This allows you to limit how far into the future a customer can see and manage their upcoming subscription charges. |
| Products available for purchase |
Filter the products that are available for purchase within your customer portal. Use the dropdown to select one of the three options:
|
| Allow customers to input discount code on customer portal |
Storeowners can add discount codes to existing subscriptions through the merchant portal. When checked, this setting allows customers to be able to add a discount code on their end. |
| Remove discounts from customer addresses after discount limit has been reached | When checked, the discount code will be removed automatically from the customer account. This removal takes place the next time the upcoming subscription charge is created or regenerated. If this setting is left unchecked, discount codes will remain on file until the discount code is manually removed. |
| Allow a customer to select a quantity other than 1 when redeeming gifts | If you have the Gift subscriptions feature enabled, this option allows customers to choose a higher quantity than 1 when redeeming a gift. |
| Allow a customer to choose the one-time option when available on the product | You can enable or disable whether customers can add one-time products via their customer portal. |
| Allow subscribers to cancel subscriptions in their customer portal |
A toggle switch that allows customers to cancel their subscription. When toggled off, customers are given the store email. When toggled on, the customer will be shown your cancellation retention options. The default for these cancellation reasons are optional. In addition, you can specify your store email address and how many charges must be processed before the customer is allowed to cancel.
Note: If the customer is subscribed to more than one item they will be able to cancel one of their subscription items even with the cancellation charge restriction enabled. This ensures that customers are always able to modify the number of items they are subscribed to.
|
| Allow subscribers to reactivate subscriptions in their customer portal |
Customers can reactivate their subscriptions via their customer portal. |
Additional fields
By default, customers can also view and edit the following:
- Update the billing address
- Securely update credit card information
- View past orders in the purchase history section
Access the customer portal
For detailed information on how to access the customer portal, visit Accessing the customer portal.
Instructions for your customers
If you'd like to provide your customers with documentation on how to manage their subscriptions, but do not want to link to our Recharge documents, send customers the instructions for using Recharge Checkout on BigCommerce.
Stores using the Affinity customer portal theme can refer to Instructions for your customers using the Affinity customer portal theme.
