Subscriptions

A subscription represents one email address waiting for one exact Commerce variant. It also records the site, store, and language needed to send the correct message.

Subscription States

A subscription can move through these states:

• Awaiting verification means email verification is required and the customer has not yet used their signed verification link.
• Waiting means the request is active and eligible for a future restock notification.
• Notified means an availability message was successfully handed to Craft’s mailer.
• Cancelled means the customer or a store manager ended the request before notification.
• Expired means the request exceeded its configured lifetime without being notified or verified.

Only waiting subscriptions can be selected when a variant becomes available. A successfully notified, cancelled, or expired customer can subscribe again later.

Duplicate Requests

Repeated submissions for the same email address, variant, site, store, and language resolve to the existing active request. The public response remains neutral, so a storefront does not reveal whether that address was already subscribed.

Optional options data can pass a small amount of extra storefront information to an email template, such as the label shown by a custom variant selector. Changing those details does not create another subscription for the same email address and variant.

Email Verification

When Require Email Verification is enabled, a new request waits for the customer to follow the signed link in its verification email. The verification window controls how long that link remains usable, while the pending expiry setting controls how long an unverified record is retained.

Verification is useful when a store wants stronger evidence that the recipient controls the submitted email address. When it is disabled, new subscriptions become active immediately and can optionally receive a confirmation message.

Cancellation and Expiry

Confirmation emails include a signed cancellation URL, so recipients can leave a waiting list without signing in. The link opens a short confirmation page, so an email security scanner that follows it cannot cancel the request. Custom confirmation templates receive the same cancelUrl value. Cancelling one variant does not affect subscriptions for other variants.

Waiting subscriptions can also expire after a configured period without a successful notification. Expiry stops an old request from remaining on the waiting list indefinitely and allows that customer to subscribe again. Completed History Retention separately controls how long notified, cancelled, and expired records remain available when answering customer questions or investigating a problem.

You can inspect these records from the Subscriptions tab for a variant. Search by email address or filter by state when tracing a particular customer request.

Managing Subscriptions

Admins, and users with the Cancel subscriptions and erase subscriber data permission, can act on a subscription from its row in the Subscriptions tab:

• Cancel subscription ends a waiting request for that variant, as if the customer had used their cancellation link. They can still subscribe again later.
• Erase subscriber data handles a request to remove someone’s data. It cancels everything that email address is waiting for, then removes the address, any linked user and any options from all of their subscriptions, on every variant and site. It also clears any delivery error text for those subscriptions, as mail servers often include the address in their errors. This can’t be undone.

Erased subscriptions stay in the list without an email address, so notification history and counts remain accurate, until Completed History Retention removes them.

Erasing doesn’t reach anything outside these records. Check Craft’s log files, database backups, your mail provider and any integration listening to Back in Stock’s events, as these can also hold the address. An email already being sent at that moment can still go out, and if it fails, its error text can still be recorded.