CUROBI
Glossary
Subscription commerce, defined.
Plain-language definitions of the terms behind Shopify subscriptions — how the billing works, what the box formats mean, and the metrics that decide whether a recurring business grows. Every definition stands on its own.
Shopify mechanics
- Subscription ContractA Subscription Contract is Shopify's native record of a recurring agreement between a store and a customer — it stores what is being sold, how often it renews, the price, and the vaulted payment method, and Shopify uses it to create each recurring charge.
- Selling Plan · Selling plan groupA selling plan is Shopify's definition of how a product can be purchased on a recurring basis — the frequency, any subscription discount, and billing terms — and a selling plan group bundles related plans and attaches them to specific products, variants, or collections.
Storefront
Box formats
- Build-Your-Own Box · BYOBA build-your-own box (BYOB) is a subscription in which the customer assembles their own recurring box from a set of eligible products each cycle — for example choosing which coffee bags go in this month's shipment — usually within a per-item limit and before a billing cutoff.
- Curated Box · Merchant-curated boxA curated box is a subscription box whose contents the merchant selects and rotates on a schedule — the customer subscribes to the experience and the merchant decides what ships each cycle, such as a monthly coffee sampler that changes every month.
- Mix & MatchMix & match is a bundling model that lets a customer combine several products of their choice into one purchase or subscription at a set bundle price or discount, rather than being limited to a single fixed product or a pre-set bundle.
- Product BundleA product bundle is a fixed set of products sold together as a single unit — often at a discount versus buying each separately — which can be offered as a one-time purchase or on a recurring subscription.
- Subscription BoxA subscription box is a recurring package of physical products delivered on a schedule — weekly, monthly, or another cadence — which the merchant either curates or lets the customer build, and which the customer pays for automatically each cycle.
Billing
Retention
- Dunning · Failed-payment recoveryDunning is the automated process of recovering a failed subscription payment — retrying the declined charge on a schedule and prompting the customer to update their payment method — so a recoverable card failure doesn't silently cancel the subscriber.
- Cancellation Save Flow · Save flow, Retention offerA cancellation save flow is the sequence a subscriber sees when they try to cancel — presenting an alternative such as pausing, skipping a delivery, changing frequency, or a retention offer — designed to keep customers who would otherwise leave over a fixable, temporary reason.
Metrics
- Churn · Subscription churn, Churn rateChurn is the rate at which subscribers cancel or lapse over a given period — the share of recurring customers a business loses — and it is the single most important number in a subscription business because retained revenue compounds while churned revenue must be re-acquired.
- Monthly Recurring Revenue · MRRMonthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the predictable revenue a subscription business expects to collect each month from its active subscriptions, normalized to a monthly figure — the core measure of the size and growth of recurring revenue.
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