What Happens to Shopify Discounts When a Subscription Ends?

Most subscription pages explain what you get while you pay. Rarely do they explain what happens at the moment you stop. That gap matters if you run live promotions: the day after a plan ends, your dashboard can still show the rules you built while the checkout tells a different story.

This is the paid-to-Free boundary in detail — what keeps running, what gets switched off, what comes back when you upgrade again, and what to check before you cancel. Markdo's behavior is the concrete example, because that's the system we can describe precisely.

Disclosure: we build Markdo, a discount app for Shopify. Other apps draw their plan boundaries differently, so treat this as a map of one system, not a universal rule.

The short answer

• Your rules are not deleted. They keep their names, conditions, and settings.
• Up to three active rules continue to apply at checkout on the Free plan. Extra active rules are switched off.
• Paid-only tools — discount codes, collection discounts, the promotion calendar, customer segments, bulk pricing — become inaccessible.
• Paid storefront widgets stop rendering. The three free widgets keep working.
• On Business, active campaigns are paused and Flow automations are disabled.
• If you return to the plan you had, or a higher one, campaigns, Flow actions, and previously enabled widgets are restored automatically. Rules that were switched off are not.

Your rules are kept, but three stay live

The Free plan allows three saved rules in total. When a paid subscription expires or is cancelled, Markdo doesn't delete the extra ones. It ranks your active rules by priority — remember that a lower priority number means higher priority in the rule editor — keeps the first three, and marks the rest inactive.

An inactive rule still appears in your rule list. You can open it, read it, edit it, and turn it back on later. What changes is whether the checkout knows about it: the next sync removes inactive rules from the configuration Shopify Functions read at checkout. From that point, customers no longer receive those discounts.

That sync usually takes a few seconds. It is not instantaneous, and it is not the same system as your dashboard — the dashboard reads the app's database, while checkout reads the configuration written to Shopify. If a discount still seems to apply right after a downgrade, give the sync a moment, then re-save any active rule to trigger a fresh full sync. Our nine-check troubleshooting guide covers this gap in more detail.

The practical consequence: if you downgrade during a live promotion, decide which rules matter before you cancel. A rule you want to keep should be inside the top three by priority.

The plan boundary at a glance

Plan limits apply to more than rule count. This is the Free / Pro / Business split as of October 2026:

A downgrade to Free doesn't just hide the Pro and Business menu items. It also cleans up the features that would otherwise keep running without a way to manage them, which is easy to miss.

What happens to your storefront widgets

The three free widgets — Stock Urgency, FOMO Notification, and Cart Goal Bar — keep working on the Free plan.

Paid widgets are disabled during the downgrade. This includes the SDP nudge and tier ladder, the cart discount summary, subscribe-and-save prompts, mix-and-match pickers, the gift picker, and the rest of the paid widget set. Disabling a widget switches it off in your storefront; it doesn't uninstall the theme block from your theme. Your widget settings stay in place.

That distinction matters when you come back. Markdo records which paid widgets were enabled before the downgrade and restores exactly those on upgrade. Widgets you had already turned off yourself stay off — the app doesn't switch on things you chose to disable.

What happens to campaigns and automations

Campaigns and Flow automation are Business features. When a Business subscription ends, active campaigns are paused and active Flow actions are disabled. This prevents a campaign from continuing to drive promotions, or a Flow from sending discount codes, after the tools that manage them are gone.

As with widgets, the app records what was active. Returning to Business restores paused campaigns and disabled Flow actions automatically — but only the ones that were running when the downgrade happened. Anything you had already paused stays paused.

Referral tracking and API access are also Business-only. Their management pages lock on Free; the app does not delete your referral or API configuration.

What happens to discount codes

Discount code management is a Pro feature. After a downgrade, the Discount Codes page is locked.

One thing worth understanding: codes you generated are native Shopify discount codes. They live in your Shopify admin under Discounts, and they are separate objects from your automatic rules. When the downgrade switches a rule off, the codes created for that rule are deactivated with it and stop accepting redemptions. Codes attached to the rules you keep are not touched, because those rules are still running. If you need one of those to stop, review it in Shopify admin and deactivate it there. Don't assume a plan change clears every code you ever created. For more on how codes and automatic discounts interact at checkout, see our guide to the automatic discount limit.

If you're planning to downgrade, this is a five-minute check, not a migration project — but it is a check worth doing.

When does the change reach checkout?

There are two cancellation paths, and they behave slightly differently.

If you cancel from Markdo's pricing page, the app cancels the subscription and applies the Free-tier cleanup immediately, without waiting for a notification. If the subscription ends through Shopify — a cancellation in the Shopify admin, a declined charge, or an expired subscription — Markdo applies the same cleanup when Shopify notifies it of the status change.

In both cases, the checkout configuration is only as current as the last successful sync. Under normal conditions that's seconds. If Shopify's API is slow or a write fails, the app marks the sync as pending and retries automatically. During that window, the dashboard and the checkout can disagree — the same class of issue described in the troubleshooting guide linked above.

After any downgrade, the reliable verification is a test checkout: one product that matches the rule you expect to keep, no discount code in the field, incognito window. If the discount appears, the sync is live. If not, re-save an active rule to force a fresh sync before assuming the rule survived.

Before you cancel: a five-minute checklist

1. Rank your rules. Only the top three active rules by priority remain active on Free. Put the promotion you care about most at the top.

2. Review your discount codes. Codes are separate from rules. Deactivate any code you don't want redeemable after the downgrade.

3. Export a backup if your plan includes it. Rule import/export is available on Pro and Business. Export before the plan changes; it gives you a clean copy of rule definitions to restore later.

4. Note what's active. Paid widgets — and, on Business, campaigns and Flow actions — will be switched off. Knowing which ones were on makes it easier to confirm they come back.

5. Test after the change. Place a qualifying order in an incognito window and confirm that only the promotions you intended are applying.

If you return to a paid plan

Returning to the plan you had before the downgrade, or a higher one, restores paused campaigns, disabled Flow actions, and the paid widgets that were enabled before the downgrade. That restoration is automatic and based on the state recorded at downgrade time.

Rules are the exception. The app does not automatically re-enable rules that were switched off at the Free limit. You'll need to open each one and turn it back on.

One more detail for merchants who downgraded with a large rule library: the Free plan's three-rule allowance counts every saved rule, active or inactive. If you keep ten rules after downgrading, the inactive ones still occupy slots, and creating a new rule will be blocked until you free up capacity. Deleting a rule you no longer need is the way to make room; deactivating it is not enough.

A trial ending is not a downgrade: the subscription transitions to a paid subscription and all features stay available. Trial length is set when the subscription is created and shown on the confirmation screen in Shopify. Shopify's billing system handles the charge itself; Markdo only reacts to the subscription status.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are my rules deleted when I cancel?

No. Every rule stays in your list with its conditions and settings. Rules beyond the Free limit are marked inactive, not removed.

Will my customers suddenly pay full price?

No for the three rules you keep. Yes for the extra rules, once the checkout configuration syncs. Customers redeeming a discount code are a separate case — review those codes in Shopify admin.

Can I keep more than three rules if the extras are inactive?

You can keep the rules in your account, but the Free plan's allowance counts saved rules whether they're active or not. Inactive rules still occupy slots. To create a new rule on Free, you may need to delete older ones first.

Does a trial ending downgrade me?

No. The trial is part of the paid subscription. When it ends, billing begins and your plan stays the same. A downgrade only happens when the subscription itself is cancelled, declined, or expired.

What if I uninstall the app instead?

Uninstalling is a different path. Shopify cancels the app subscription when the app is removed, and the app's checkout discounts and storefront widgets stop with it. This article is about moving to the Free plan while keeping the app installed.

Plan changes are reversible, with one exception

A plan change is a business decision, and it shouldn't require guessing which promotions are still live. The safest sequence is simple: decide what should keep running, rank those rules, review your codes, then test checkout after the change. If you return later, widgets, campaigns, and Flow actions can be restored — but rules you turned off have to be switched back on by hand.

Markdo runs on Shopify Functions and never writes to your product prices, so a plan change affects which discounts apply — not your catalog. If you're weighing whether a paid plan is worth it, start on Free with three rules, then upgrade when you need unlimited rules, widgets, or automation. The App Store listing has the current plan details.