A subscription toggle makes two choices before the customer does: one-time or subscribe, and how often. It’s easy to set both when you install the app and never look again.

Which option is ticked

Preselecting subscribe-and-save will raise your subscription share, partly because customers read it as your recommendation (chapter 2). So preselect it only where the recommendation is true.

Whatever you preselect, the law cares about what the customer sees. The Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act requires online sellers of anything that renews to disclose all material terms before taking billing information, get the customer’s express informed consent before charging, and give a simple way to stop the charges Published. California’s automatic renewal law, as amended for contracts from July 1, 2025, requires the renewal terms to be clear and conspicuous before the purchase and the customer’s “express affirmative consent” to them, and requires the business to keep proof of that consent for at least three years Published. A ticked toggle with the terms in a tooltip is the weakest position under both. Have counsel review the product page and checkout together.

My rule: preselect subscribe only when all four are true.

• The product is used up. Coffee, supplements, pet food, razors. Not a candle someone bought as a gift.
• The terms sit beside the button: the price after any first-order discount, the interval, the next charge date and how to skip or cancel.
• Checkout says it again and the customer confirms it with an action, not a sentence in the footer.
• You measure the outcome: first-renewal cancels and disputes for subscribers who arrived through the preselected toggle, against those who chose it.

How often the box comes

The interval default gets less attention and does more damage. Ship faster than people use the product and every subscriber builds a pile, which becomes the reason to cancel. The right default is the interval customers actually use, readable from one-time buyers: the median days between first and second orders of the same product. The Second Order covers replenishment timing in depth.

Say a supplement lasts most people 45 days, and the app’s default is 30. Say subscribers on the 30-day default cancel at 12% of shipments, because the bottles pile up, and subscribers on a 45-day default cancel at 7% of shipments. Over a year at $34 a bottle, the 30-day group receives about 6.5 shipments per starting subscriber, $222 of revenue, and 22% are still subscribed at the end. The 45-day group receives about 6.3 shipments, $214, and 56% are still subscribed. Year-one revenue is nearly the same. The 45-day default goes into year two with two and a half times as many subscribers.

A cadence that’s too fast doesn’t earn more. It spends next year’s subscribers to hit this year’s number.

Show the reason beside the default: “Most people finish a bottle in about six weeks.” That turns the endorsement into advice the customer can check, and a reason to change it if they use more or less.

Do this

• For your top three subscription products, pull the median days between first and second orders for one-time buyers. Set each default interval to the nearest option, and add one line explaining it.
• Tag subscribers by how they arrived: toggle preselected or not. You’ll need the tag for every comparison in this guide.