Subscription cancellation scenarios and lack of documentation

Retired Boards Appdev Billing

Topic summary

Central issue: partners need a reliable, documented way to detect Shopify app subscription cancellations, but current Billing API and webhooks lack clarity.

Initial approaches: app/uninstall webhook and shop/update webhook. shop/update exposes plan_name, but values are undocumented and ambiguous. Reported states include:

  • frozen
  • cancelled
  • dormant
  • fraudulent

Operational pain: APP_SUBSCRIPTION/APP_SUBSCRIPTIONS_UPDATE webhook appears undocumented or not firing as expected. Many resort to daily API polling, noting charges can show “active” until the next billing date even if the shop is frozen/cancelled.

Requests: a full enumeration and meaning of plan_name values, clear guidance on when subscription-update webhooks fire and the payload, and best practices to monitor cancellations beyond uninstall.

Recent update (2024, Shopify staff): subscription charge details should indicate status (cancelled, frozen, etc.), and APP_SUBSCRIPTIONS_UPDATE should deliver updates. If a shop reactivates, existing app subscriptions resume unless the app is uninstalled. Links to charge details and subscription monitoring docs were provided.

Status: still unresolved for many; partners report ongoing gaps. Action: Shopify staff will pass feedback to the billing team. Key unanswered items: documented plan_name states and guaranteed webhook behavior for subscription changes.

Summarized with AI on December 26. AI used: gpt-5.
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Shopify staff can we please get an update on this? Clarification on plan_name has been asked again and again without sufficient responses from staff. This isn’t something that partners can figure out on our own and this is internal knowledge that isn’t publicly documented.

I just asked a related question here.

This post also asked for a full list of plan_name values. No response from shopify staff and it was asked four years ago. Other Shopify partners tried their best to crowd source the various values but without context as to what plan_name can mean, it doesn’t really help us.

Shopify Staff, please help us write better software for merchants. Tell us something, even if it’s just that there are no plans to document plan_name at this time. It would be disappointing but still less frustrating than the silence.

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