FluentCart 1.6.0 – Subscriptions on Your Terms

Until now, selling subscriptions depended on your payment gateway. If it offered recurring billing, you were in business; if it did not, you were locked out, and even gateways that do support subscriptions often charge extra for managing them. FluentCart 1.6.0 moves that decision into your store with a built-in subscription engine, plus a full set of renewal emails, richer subscription controls, and a healthy round of fixes.

Your store can now run its own subscriptions

Recurring revenue is the steadiest income a store can build, but it has always carried a hidden dependency: the payment gateway had to support it. Smaller and regional gateways often provide no subscription facility at all, and among providers that do, subscription management frequently comes with an extra fee on top of standard processing, a quiet tax on every renewal.

FluentCart 1.6.0 introduces a store-wide choice under a new setting: who manages subscriptions, the gateway or your store. The default keeps everything exactly as it was, with capable gateways charging renewals automatically. Switch to store-managed mode, and FluentCart itself takes over the renewal cycle. Ahead of each due date, the store prepares a renewal order and emails the customer a link to pay it, with lead time matched to the billing interval: weekly renewals are created three days early, monthly ones a week early, and quarterly through yearly ones fifteen days early, so customers always have room to pay. The customer pays with whatever gateway you offer at checkout, including ones that have no subscription support of their own. Each renewal goes through as a normal one-time payment, which means recurring billing now works even over cash on delivery or bank transfer.

The setting is deliberately guarded. Because this is a store-wide billing decision, changing it takes a confirmation step, and it only affects subscriptions created after the switch. Existing subscriptions keep behaving exactly as they were born, so flipping the setting never disturbs a customer already mid-cycle.

The practical impact is simple: you can now sell subscriptions with any payment gateway, without paying a provider extra for the privilege of recurring billing.

Renewals that ask politely, or charge automatically if you allow it

A renewal engine is only as good as its communication, so 1.6.0 ships a full set of subscription emails alongside it. Customers hear about a renewal order when it is created, get reminded before it is due, and are notified ahead of an upcoming charge. If a payment fails or a subscription slips past due, both the customer and the store owner are told, so nothing lapses in silence. There is even an optional email for skipped billing periods, off by default, that tells the customer when their billing resumes.

For stores that want the convenience of automatic renewals without handing the whole lifecycle to the gateway, there is an opt-in middle path. On Stripe and PayPal, the store can save the customer’s payment method at checkout and charge renewal orders against it automatically on the due date, with no customer action needed. This is off by default, so nothing starts saving cards until you decide it should, and customers with an active subscription can update the card on file from their own account area. Free trials are covered too: a zero-dollar trial still saves the payment method up front, so the first real renewal charges cleanly.

When an automatic charge fails, the engine does not give up quietly. It retries on a schedule matched to the billing interval, emails the customer a payment-failed notice with a link to update their card, and escalates unpaid renewals from past due to expired if nothing lands, while showing the retry state to the store owner throughout. Failed renewals used to be the silent leak in subscription revenue; now they are a managed, visible process.

Subscription management grows up

The subscription page has been rebuilt with fuller payment history and renewal detail, and every subscription now wears a badge showing how it bills: gateway managed, store managed, or auto-charge. Around it sit the controls a real subscription business needs day to day: pause a subscription, resume it, reactivate a cancelled one, or edit the amount, the schedule, the status, and the next billing date directly. Two quick actions handle timing: Charge Now collects a pending renewal immediately, and Charge Next Renewal Now creates and charges the next cycle early. Skipping a billing period as a goodwill gesture is first-class too; the admin can record a reason, and a “Period skipped” badge stays beside the next renewal date until billing resumes, so no one on the team wonders why a payment did not go out.

Pro users get an extra bridge between the two worlds. When a customer pays a renewal order through Mollie, Authorize.net, or Paddle, the subscription can graduate from manual renewals to automatic billing on the spot, with the change logged on the subscription’s history. Paddle subscriptions also gain first-class pause and resume, kept in step between your store and the gateway.

Smaller additions across setup and the storefront

First-run setup now explains itself better, with a short description on each onboarding step and the page generator moved front and center. For stores built with Bricks, the Products element gains a per-category toggle for showing empty categories, and the shop filter picks up matching controls to show or hide empty categories and tags, useful while a catalog is still filling out.

Improvements

Elementor for free stores. Elementor blocks are now available as an addon on free-version stores, so page-builder users no longer need Pro just to place FluentCart elements.

Storefront polish. Styling has been refined across checkout, the customer profile, the shop grid, and single product pages.

Admin comfort. Tables across the admin get better column widths and smoother loading placeholders.

Fixes & Stability

Product galleries. The advanced-variation lightbox now shows the featured image, and the gallery thumbnail follows along when a customer switches variations.

Editing and setup. The content editor dialog no longer clips its toolbar and now works correctly on multisite networks. Onboarding reliably returns to the dashboard after the final save when a store category is selected.

Email reliability. Previewing a broken email template now shows a clear error instead of failing blank, and emails sent in the background render their content correctly again.

Subscriptions and data integrity. Completed subscriptions no longer display a stale next-billing date, and existing records with the old value are cleaned up automatically.

Platform polish. Misconfigured file storage connections now report a clear error instead of failing silently, the Reports page is no longer cut off on iPad, product variant lists open cleanly without filters, and the Bricks Products element’s category filter controls now update dynamically.

Security and maintenance. This release includes ongoing security audits and routine hardening across both FluentCart core and FluentCart Pro.

Getting the subscription engine

The subscription engine ships with FluentCart core, so there is nothing extra to install: update from your dashboard, then visit Settings → Subscription Settings and choose who manages subscriptions. The gateway conversion bridge for Mollie, Authorize.net, and Paddle ships with FluentCart Pro.

Full Changelog

Features

• Subscription engine with store-managed subscription support
• Store-managed renewal orders with payment links for all supported gateways
• Optional automatic renewal charging with saved payment methods on Stripe and PayPal
• Automatic retry handling for failed renewal charges, with past-due escalation and admin-visible retry status
• Free trial support for automatic charging (payment method saved at checkout, charged at first renewal)
• Full subscription lifecycle management, including pause, resume, skip, reactivate, schedule, amount, status, and billing date controls
• Admin renewal actions: Charge Now, Charge Next Renewal Now, and Skip Next Period with reason tracking
• Collection-method badges showing how each subscription bills (gateway, store-managed, or auto-charge)
• Subscription emails for renewals, reminders, upcoming charges, payment failures, and past-due notices
• Optional period-skipped customer email showing when billing resumes
• Automatic subscription upgrades after renewal payments via Mollie, Authorize.Net, and Paddle (Pro)
• Pause and resume support for Paddle subscriptions (Pro)
• Bricks Products controls for empty categories, tags, and category visibility

Improvements

• Onboarding with clearer step descriptions and a prominent “Generate All Pages” action
• Elementor blocks availability for FluentCart Free as an add-on
• Storefront styling across checkout, customer profile, shop, and product pages
• Admin tables with better column layouts and loading states
• The subscription admin page with richer payment history and renewal details

Fixes

• Advanced Variation galleries syncing correctly on single product pages
• The content editor dialog toolbar and multisite editing issues
• Email preview and background email rendering
• Onboarding redirecting to the dashboard after completion
• File storage connection errors displaying proper error messages
• Reports page layout on iPad
• Product variant lists opening without filters
• Completed subscriptions showing stale next billing dates
• Bricks Products category filter controls updating dynamically