Is it possible to send a native Invoice Email for a new Subscription (Selling Plan)?

Technical Q&A
1

Hi,

I’m currently building a custom subscription app and I’ve hit a roadblock regarding the “Subscription Proposal” workflow.

The Goal: I want to create a contract/checkout for a specific customer + product + selling plan, and trigger a native Shopify email (like the “Complete your purchase” invoice) so the customer can click a link and activate the subscription.

The Problem: I cannot find a way to combine “Selling Plans” with Shopify’s native invoicing system (orderInvoiceSend). Here is what I have tried:

Attempt 1: Draft Orders (The Standard Way) I tried using draftOrderCreate.

  • Result: DraftOrderLineItemInput does not accept a sellingPlanId.

  • Outcome: I can send an invoice, but the resulting checkout is for a one-time purchase, not a subscription. The selling plan is stripped out.

Attempt 2: “Pending” Orders (The Workaround) I tried using orderCreate with financialStatus: "PENDING" and status: "OPEN", hoping to create an unpaid order and then use orderInvoiceSend.

  • Result: API Error: Variable $order of type OrderCreateOrderInput! was provided invalid value for lineItems.0.sellingPlanId (Field is not defined on OrderCreateLineItemInput)

  • Outcome: It seems I cannot attach a selling plan to an order during creation via the Admin API.

Attempt 3: Storefront API (Current Solution) I am currently using cartCreate via the Storefront API.

  • Result: This works perfectly for generating a checkout URL that does include the subscription (Selling Plan).

  • Outcome: However, I now have the URL, but I cannot trigger Shopify to email this URL to the customer. I have to send the email manually using an external service (AWS SES/SendGrid), which introduces domain verification and deliverability issues for my merchants.

My Question: Is there any Admin API mutation that allows us to create an unpaid order/draft with a sellingPlanId so we can use the native orderInvoiceSend mutation?

Or is the “Storefront Cart URL + External Email Service” strictly the only way to handle manual subscription creation?

Thanks!

2

Hi @lc2410 with that many moving pieces you probably want to be on the dev forums, way better experience and actual possibility staff might respond.
Though you’ll probably want to scrutinize the api docs for those endpoints if this is expected behavior.

3

Hey,

As per your Query is related to Shopify app development. Then I highly recommended you to post your Query on Shopify Dev platform.

There are many of the expert app developers will helps with your request.

Here is the link for the Shopify dev community.

If you need any other help then let me know.

Thanks

4

Thanks, I’ll definitely post my message over there.

5

Thank you very much for your understanding.