Blog 3 minutes

Subscriptions: Turn one-time buyers into loyal subscribers

Barbra Barcenas
May 10, 2025
Introducing Subscriptions: Drive recurring revenue and optimize sales operations

Picture this: one of your top customers is a regional bottling plant that goes through the same set of replacement gaskets every six weeks—without fail.

Until now, their maintenance manager has juggled sticky-note reminders, emailed purchase orders and the occasional panicked phone call when stock runs low.

With Subscriptions in Sana Commerce Cloud, that routine order simply places itself: the plant schedules a six-week cadence once, the gaskets arrive right on time, and your sales team moves on to more strategic work instead of firefighting repeat requests.

The problem

Subscriptions are transforming the way we buy and sell, and B2B is no exception.

Revenue is moving to subscriptions, but B2B is lagging.

Subscription models now account for a significant chunk of digital commerce revenue growth.

Manual reorder cycles burn time on both sides of the table.

Buyers chase internal purchase approvals; your sales and CS teams rush to meet delivery dates.

The cost is more than lost efficiency—it’s lost loyalty.

Without a friction-free way to automate routine needs, customers look elsewhere.

The solution

Sana Commerce Cloud’s Subscriptions is a powerful tool that lets you offer recurring product deliveries right through your web store.

Self-service repeat buying, built right into your web store.

Customers lock-in weekly, monthly or custom cadences from the “My Account” page—pause, cancel or tweak items whenever they need, no phone calls required.

Automation that removes the grunt work for everyone.

Auto-generate each follow-up order, honor your Duration Manager rules, and sends confirmations—so neither side re-keys the same PO again.

Admin-grade controls today, deeper insights tomorrow.

Ops teams preload default conditions, roll the feature out across any ERP or region, and soon tap upcoming dashboards for revenue and inventory forecasts.

What can you expect from Subscriptions?

Customer-centric ordering

Buyers create a subscription from any product page or their cart. The web store then builds each follow-up order automatically and sends confirmations, so nobody has to re-key the same PO.

Flexible scheduling options

From “My Account” users pick weekly, monthly or custom cadences, pause or cancel at will, drop single items on the fly, or set an end-of-term rule—“after 10 deliveries” or “on 31 Dec 2025.”

Bill-of-Materials (BOM) ready

Kits, assemblies and other multi-line products behave just like single SKUs, so complex maintenance packs or replenishment bundles renew without fuss.

Payments that match your roadmap

Today, buyers click an email link (or use Sana Pay+) to settle each invoice. Card-on-file and fully automated captures arrive later this year, keeping the path clear for friction-free renewals.

Implementing subscriptions: a practical guide

Implementing Subscriptions in Sana Commerce Cloud is a straightforward process. To enable subscriptions in your Sana Admin, follow these steps:

  1. Click on “Setup” in your Sana Admin
  2. Navigate to “Ordering”
  3. Within the Ordering section, you’ll find the “Subscriptions” tab
  4. In the Subscriptions tab, you can enable subscriptions and configure their frequency

By default, the “Enable subscriptions” option is disabled. It’s important to note that several dependencies can influence the availability of the subscriptions feature.

Note: With our new update, you can even send payment links via e-mail to pay with credit card.

For the time being, all payments are processed on the B2B buyer account. This means there is a need for manual oversight from our Sana customers. This is to ensure that buyers are correctly paying for the products they are receiving

The impact

A single “set-and-forget” subscription can ripple through your whole operation, delivering value you’ll feel in both the top and bottom line.

  • Predictable, higher-margin revenue

Locked-in delivery cadences turn erratic one-offs into steady, forecastable income—making it easier to plan inventory and cash flow.

  • Lower operating costs

Auto-generated follow-up orders slash the time your team spends re-entering data, while buyers save hours on repeat POs and approvals.

  • Stronger customer relationships

Self-service scheduling, pause/cancel controls, and upcoming performance dashboards give buyers full confidence that you’ll always deliver exactly what they need—no frantic calls, no stockouts.

  • Scalable governance without extra IT spend

Pre-set conditions, ERP-agnostic deployment and future analytics roll out across every region and business unit—so operations stay consistent even as your subscription base grows.

Two employees looking at a the benefits of a manufacturing e-commerce solution

Build customer loyalty with thriving web stores

Learn more about how Sana Commerce Cloud can help your business today.