If I remove a product or a product variation from my store, will that effect past Subscriptions based on the product I removed?

I get this question a lot, and it makes sense. If you run out of stock, you don’t want to sell it anymore. Or what if you just want to discontinue a product, but still plan to sell it to folks who already have a Subscription?

The answer is yes, removing the product or variation will effect future Subscription renewals. Simply, they won’t renew. That’s because when the new order is created for the Subscription, the product the order is being created from does not exist and the process is halted. So the Subscription is not renewed.

But there are work arounds that should help.

First

First you can set the Catalog Visibility to Hidden. That will stop it from being shown. But that only works for Products, not variations.

Second

Secondly you can set the stock to 0. That way if someone does have direct link to the product or it’s a variation, they can’t actually order it. But Subscriptions will still renew and set the stock to -1. I double checked with the Developer to make sure. As longs as there is no custom code to stop this, then it will work.