Recurring Services & Subscriptions

Pro feature. Available in WP Sell Services Pro.

Sell services that bill on a schedule: weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Think retainers, maintenance plans, or ongoing content work.

Not switched on in 1.7.0

Recurring services are switched off in the plugin and there is no setting to turn them on. Their settings, wizard section and admin page are all hidden. If you cannot find any of the screens below, nothing is broken and nothing you can change will reveal them -- the feature is not finished. This page describes the intended behaviour.

The code ships (including its REST routes and Stripe webhook handling) so the feature can be finished and turned on without a migration, but it is not supported for production use and we do not recommend selling recurring services on 1.7.0.

Developers can opt in on a staging site:

add_filter( 'wpss_pro_recurring_feature_available', '__return_true' );

Once the filter returns true, the settings appear under Sell Services > Settings > Orders & Disputes and the rest of this page applies. We will announce general availability in a release note; this banner comes down at that point.

Enable recurring billing on a service

From the frontend Service Wizard

Vendors can enable recurring billing directly from the frontend wizard at Dashboard > Create Service > Pricing step. A Recurring Billing section appears in the Pricing step when all of these are true:

  • The Pro plugin is active.
  • The wpss_pro_recurring_feature_available filter returns true (see the notice above).
  • Recurring services are globally enabled in Sell Services > Settings > Orders & Disputes.

Toggle Enable recurring billing on, then pick a billing frequency: Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly.

From wp-admin

  1. Edit the service and open the pricing section.
  2. Mark the package as Recurring and pick the interval.
  3. Buyers see the interval on the service page and at checkout.

Recurring billing runs on Stripe. Each cycle creates a new order for the vendor automatically, so delivery and messaging work exactly like one-off orders.

Managing subscriptions

  • Buyers see and cancel their subscriptions from their dashboard.
  • Vendors see active subscribers per service.
  • Admins get a Subscriptions page under Sell Services in wp-admin, listing every subscription with status, next renewal, and cancel controls. This menu item only registers while the feature flag is on.

Failed payments

Stripe retries per its dunning settings. The subscription pauses if retries fail; webhooks keep order status in sync.