How to sell a subscription on your website with a hosted checkout
Create the recurring plan at your payment provider, link to its hosted checkout from your pricing section, and switch on the provider's customer portal so people can update cards and cancel without emailing you. The provider bills, retries failed cards and sends receipts. Your site explains the plan and what each payment buys.
What a subscription actually needs
Taking a first payment is the simple part. A subscription keeps going: the card is charged again each period, some charges fail, prices change, people pause or leave, and everyone expects a receipt. List the pieces before you choose tools:
- A recurring price with a clear interval: monthly, quarterly or yearly.
- A checkout that stores the payment method and starts the schedule.
- Self-service management: update the card, switch plan, cancel.
- Receipts and failed-payment emails, sent automatically.
- Delivery of whatever the subscription buys: a box in the post, a monthly session, files, or access to something.
The last item is the one to settle first. If subscribers get a physical box or a monthly call, the website only has to sell it. If they get access to content behind a login, you need member accounts, which is a much bigger job and usually a dedicated membership platform.
Set up the recurring plan
- Create the product with a recurring price at your provider. Stripe's Payment Links can sell a subscription directly; Lemon Squeezy, Gumroad and others have their own recurring products.
- Decide the details the checkout must show: the amount, the interval, when the first charge happens, any trial, and that it renews until cancelled.
- Turn on the customer portal. Stripe's customer portal lets customers update payment methods and billing details, view invoices, and cancel immediately or at the end of the period. Lemon Squeezy has a portal for subscription customers too.
- Switch on receipts and dunning emails (the reminders sent when a renewal fails). Stripe notes that revenue recovery features, including Smart Retries and reminder emails, are available for subscription payment links.
- Set what happens after payment: a confirmation message, or a redirect to a thank-you page on your site that says what arrives when.
- Link the plan from your pricing section and from any page that sells it.
Write the plan so nobody feels caught out
Unclear renewals cause chargebacks and complaints, and in many places consumer rules expect the terms of a recurring payment to be clear before someone agrees to it. Next to the button, say:
| Detail | Example wording |
|---|---|
| Interval and renewal | Billed monthly. Renews until you cancel. |
| First charge | First payment today; the next on the same date each month. |
| What each period includes | One box of four bags, posted in the first week. |
| How to cancel | Cancel any time from the link in your receipt; the current month still ships. |
| Trial terms, if any | 14 days free, then billed monthly unless you cancel before. |
Put a short "Managing your subscription" answer in your FAQ with the portal link, and repeat the cancellation route in your refund policy.
Selling a subscription from an Anticode site
Anticode builds the pricing section and connects it to your provider. Create the subscription checkout at your provider, then add its URL under Connectors as a Payment link; the site's pricing buttons open that checkout in a new tab. Billing, renewals, receipts and cancellations all stay with the provider, which is where they belong.
There's one payment link per account, so it suits a single plan best. For several tiers, point the button at a page at your provider that lists every plan, such as a Lemon Squeezy store page. The general choice between links and on-site checkout is covered in how to accept payments on a website, and Stripe Payment Links has the setup for that provider.
Mistakes to avoid
- Making cancellation a phone call. Use the provider's portal and link it everywhere a subscriber might look.
- Promising members-only content you can't gate. Without accounts, a page you send subscribers to is public to anyone who has its address.
- Changing the price on the site but not at the provider. Existing subscribers keep paying the old amount until you change their subscription there.
- Forgetting failed renewals. Turn on reminder emails, or you'll keep posting boxes to people whose cards stopped working.
Limits
Anticode doesn't bill subscriptions, store cards or manage subscribers; your provider does. Published design-engine sites have no visitor accounts or member areas, and published pages can't be password-protected, so a subscription that sells access to private content needs a membership platform, or the Next.js export, which includes real accounts and a developer to finish it. On-site pay pages are switched off in Anticode, so the hosted checkout is the route. Anticode's own plans are on /pricing.
Questions people ask
Can a payment link take monthly payments?
Yes, if the provider supports recurring prices on its links; Stripe does. The buyer subscribes once at checkout and the provider charges each period after that.
Do I need member accounts to sell a subscription?
Only if the subscription is access to content behind a login. For a delivered product, a service or a monthly session, the provider's records of who is subscribed are enough.
Who sends the receipts?
The payment provider, automatically, once you switch receipts on in its settings. Your website doesn't need to send anything.
Sources
- Stripe Docs: Payment Links, checked
- Stripe Docs: Provide a customer portal to your customers, checked
- Lemon Squeezy Docs: My Orders, checked