About customer-facing purchase option portals

You can use the GraphQL Admin API to manage SellingPlan and SubscriptionContract objects from a merchant perspective. However, customers need to do the following tasks to manage their purchase options:

• Update shipping and billing addresses

• Skip, pause, or unpause a current subscription

• Cancel a subscription

• Cancel or modify a pre-order

  To give customers a seamless experience when managing their purchase options, we recommend using an app proxy. An app proxy enables you to present a customer-facing purchase option portal without having to leave the shop's domain.

Anchor to Why an app proxy is usefulWhy an app proxy is useful

An app proxy fetches data from an app proxy server to display on a page of the online store.

For example, a shop with the domain coffee.example.com and the shop sells coffee with various purchase options. Shopify handles the storefront and the checkout through the coffee.example.com domain.

If the app managing the purchase options provides its own customer-facing page, then that page might redirect the customer to a different domain. This redirection could confuse the customer. By using an app proxy, you can ensure the entire experience stays under the coffee.example.com domain.

To learn how to set up an app proxy, refer to our application proxy tutorial.

Anchor to Rendering an app proxyRendering an app proxy

There are several ways to render an app proxy.

Anchor to Full page rendering (recommended)Full page rendering (recommended)

Full page rendering replaces the shop's theme entirely. We recommend using the full page approach because apps and themes can execute untrusted JavaScript code on the storefront.

Anchor to Liquid code in the shop’s themeLiquid code in the shop’s theme

If the HTTP response from the proxy URL has Content-Type: application/liquid set in the header, then Shopify renders any Liquid code in the request body in the context of the shop using the shop's theme.

Anchor to ConsiderationsConsiderations

When setting up your customer-facing purchase option portal, consider the following components:

• Cookie headers: Cookie headers are stripped on app proxies. If you need to persist information between requests, such as authentication tokens, then use query string parameters.

• Assets paths: Apps run behind the app proxy in the storefront. You might need to adjust how assets are served from your app because the URLs will use the app proxy's prefix.

Anchor to Next stepsNext steps

• Create a customer-facing purchase option portal