Build a subscriptions integration

Create and manage subscriptions to accept recurring payments.

Complexity:

Customize logo, images, and colors.

Use prebuilt hosted forms to collect payments and manage subscriptions.

Clone a sample integration from GitHub.

For an immersive version of this guide, see the Billing integration quickstart.

View the demo to see a hosted example.

What you’ll build

This guide describes how to sell fixed-price monthly subscriptions using Stripe Checkout.

By following this guide, you’ll

Model your business by building a product catalog.
Add a Checkout session to your site, including a button and success and cancellation pages.
Monitor subscription events and provision access to your service.
Set up the customer portal.
Add a customer portal session to your site, including a button and redirect.
Let customers manage their subscription through the portal.

After you complete the integration, you can extend it to:

Set up Stripe

Install the Stripe client of your choice:

Terminal

# Available as a gem
sudo gem install stripe

Gemfile

# If you use bundler, you can add this line to your Gemfile
gem 'stripe'

Install the Stripe CLI (optional). The CLI provides webhook testing, and you can run it to create your products and prices.

To install the Stripe CLI with homebrew, run:

Terminal

brew install stripe/stripe-cli/stripe

To run the Stripe CLI, you must also pair it with your Stripe account. Run stripe login and follow the prompts. For more information, see the Stripe CLI documentation page.

Create the pricing model
Dashboard or Stripe CLI

Create your products and their prices in the Dashboard or with the Stripe CLI.

This example uses a fixed-price service with two different service-level options: Basic and Premium. For each service-level option, you need to create a product and a recurring price.

If you want to add a one-time charge for something like a setup fee, create a third product with a one-time price. To keep things simple, this example doesn’t include a one-time charge.

In this example, each product bills at monthly intervals. The price for the Basic product is 5 USD; the price for the Premium product is 15 USD.

Navigate to the Add a product page and create two products. Add one price for each product, each with a monthly recurring billing period:

Premium product: Premium service with extra features
- Price: Standard model | 15 USD
Basic product: Basic service with minimum features
- Price: Standard model | 5 USD

You don’t need to specify the unit amount in the Dashboard unless you use the package pricing model.

After you create the prices, record the price IDs so you can use them in subsequent steps. Price IDs look like this: price_G0FvDp6vZvdwRZ.

When you’re ready, use the Copy to live mode button at the top right of the page to clone your product from test mode to live mode.

If you offer multiple billing intervals, use Checkout to upsell customers on longer billing intervals and collect more revenue upfront.

For other pricing models, see Billing examples.

Create a Checkout Session
Client and Server

Add a checkout button to your website that calls a server-side endpoint to create a Checkout Session.

index.html

View full sample

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Checkout</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <form action="/create-checkout-session" method="POST">
      <!-- Note: If using PHP set the action to /create-checkout-session.php -->

      <input type="hidden" name="priceId" value="price_G0FvDp6vZvdwRZ" />
      <button type="submit">Checkout</button>
    </form>
  </body>
</html>

On the backend of your application, define an endpoint that creates the session for your frontend to call. You need these values:

The price ID of the subscription the customer is signing up for—your frontend passes this value
Your success_url, a page on your website that Checkout returns your customer to after they complete the payment
Your cancel_url, a page on your website that Checkout returns your customer to if they cancel the payment process

If you created a one-time price in step two, pass that price ID as well. After creating a Checkout Session, redirect your customer to the URL returned in the response.

server.rb

View full sample

# Set your secret key. Remember to switch to your live secret key in production.
# See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys
Stripe.api_key = 'sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc'

# The price ID passed from the front end.
#   price_id = params['priceId']
price_id = '{{PRICE_ID}}'

session = Stripe::Checkout::Session.create({
  success_url: 'https://example.com/success.html?session_id={CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID}',
  cancel_url: 'https://example.com/canceled.html',
  mode: 'subscription',
  line_items: [{
    # For metered billing, do not pass quantity
    quantity: 1,
    price: price_id,
  }],
})

# Redirect to the URL returned on the session
#   redirect session.url, 303

This example customizes the success_url by appending the Session ID. For more information about this approach, see the documentation on how to Customize your success page.

From your Dashboard, enable the payment methods you want to accept from your customers. Checkout supports several payment methods.

Provision and monitor subscriptions
Server

After the subscription signup succeeds, the customer returns to your website at the success_url, which initiates a checkout.session.completed webhooks. When you receive a checkout.session.completed event, you can provision the subscription. Continue to provision each month (if billing monthly) as you receive invoice.paid events. If you receive an invoice.payment_failed event, notify your customer and send them to the customer portal to update their payment method.

For testing purposes, you can monitor events in the Dashboard. For production, set up a webhook endpoint and subscribe to appropriate event types. If you don’t know your STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET key, click on the webhook in the Dashboard to view it.

server.rb

View full sample

# Set your secret key. Remember to switch to your live secret key in production.
# See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys
Stripe.api_key = 'sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc'

post '/webhook' do
  webhook_secret = {{'STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET'}}
  payload = request.body.read
  if !webhook_secret.empty?
    # Retrieve the event by verifying the signature using the raw body and secret if webhook signing is configured.
    sig_header = request.env['HTTP_STRIPE_SIGNATURE']
    event = nil

    begin
      event = Stripe::Webhook.construct_event(
        payload, sig_header, webhook_secret
      )
    rescue JSON::ParserError => e
      # Invalid payload
      status 400
      return
    rescue Stripe::SignatureVerificationError => e
      # Invalid signature
      puts '⚠️  Webhook signature verification failed.'
      status 400
      return
    end
  else
    data = JSON.parse(payload, symbolize_names: true)
    event = Stripe::Event.construct_from(data)
  end
  # Get the type of webhook event sent
  event_type = event['type']
  data = event['data']
  data_object = data['object']

  case event.type
  when 'checkout.session.completed'
    # Payment is successful and the subscription is created.
    # You should provision the subscription and save the customer ID to your database.
  when 'invoice.paid'
    # Continue to provision the subscription as payments continue to be made.
    # Store the status in your database and check when a user accesses your service.
    # This approach helps you avoid hitting rate limits.
  when 'invoice.payment_failed'
    # The payment failed or the customer does not have a valid payment method.
    # The subscription becomes past_due. Notify your customer and send them to the
    # customer portal to update their payment information.
  else
    puts "Unhandled event type: \#{event.type}"
  end

  status 200
end

The minimum event types to monitor:

Event name	Description
`checkout.session.completed`	Sent when a customer clicks the Pay or Subscribe button in Checkout, informing you of a new purchase.
`invoice.paid`	Sent each billing interval when a payment succeeds.
`invoice.payment_failed`	Sent each billing interval if there is an issue with your customer’s payment method.

For even more events to monitor, see Subscription webhooks.

Configure the customer portal
Dashboard

The customer portal lets your customers directly manage their existing subscriptions and invoices.

Use the Dashboard to configure the portal. At a minimum, make sure to configure it so that customers can update their payment methods. See Integrating the customer portal for information about other settings you can configure.

Create a portal Session
Server

Define an endpoint that creates the customer portal session for your frontend to call. Here CUSTOMER_ID refers to the customer ID created by a Checkout Session that you saved while processing the checkout.session.completed webhook. You can also set a default redirect link for the portal in the Dashboard.

You can also create the Stripe Customer object separately and pass the customer ID to the initial call to the Checkout Session endpoint and subsequent calls to the customer portal endpoint.

You can also pass an optional return_url value for the page on your site to redirect your customer to after they finish managing their subscription:

server.rb

View full sample

# Set your secret key. Remember to switch to your live secret key in production.
# See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys
Stripe.api_key = 'sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc'

# This is the URL to which users will be redirected after they are done
# managing their billing.
return_url = '{{DOMAIN_URL}}'
customer_id = '{{CUSTOMER_ID}}'

session = Stripe::BillingPortal::Session.create({
  customer: customer_id,
  return_url: return_url,
})

# Redirect to the URL for the session
#   redirect session.url, 303

Send customers to the customer portal
Client

On your frontend, add a button to the page at the success_url that provides a link to the customer portal:

success.html

View full sample

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Manage Billing</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <form action="/customer-portal" method="POST">
      <!-- Note: If using PHP set the action to /customer-portal.php -->
      <button type="submit">Manage Billing</button>
    </form>
  </body>
</html>

After exiting the customer portal, the Customer returns to your website at the return_url. Continue to monitor webhooks to track the state of the Customer’s subscription.

If you configure the customer portal to allow actions such as canceling a subscription, see Integrating the customer portal for additional events to monitor.

Build a subscriptions integration

What you’ll build

Set up Stripe

Create the pricing modelDashboard or Stripe CLI

Create a Checkout SessionClient and Server

Provision and monitor subscriptionsServer

Configure the customer portalDashboard

Create a portal SessionServer

Send customers to the customer portalClient

See also

Create the pricing model
Dashboard or Stripe CLI

Create a Checkout Session
Client and Server

Provision and monitor subscriptions
Server

Configure the customer portal
Dashboard

Create a portal Session
Server

Send customers to the customer portal
Client