Home-roasted coffee, candles, cosmetics, craft snacks, flowers — a large share of Ukrainian direct-to-consumer brands sell through Instagram and Telegram rather than a website. Orders by direct message, payment by card transfer, Nova Poshta shipments by hand. Repeat sales in this model rest on reminders: “you have not ordered in a while”, a story about the new batch, personal messages.
A subscription is needed here more than in a big store — because those reminders are your main cost in time. And it is easier to launch here than it seems.
What it takes
A registered business with an account. Acquiring with LiqPay or Plata by Mono cannot be set up for a private individual. If you still take card transfers, this is the first step — and the only one that takes time: a day to a week for registration and review.
Acquiring. LiqPay — an account at PrivatBank; Plata by Mono — a sole-proprietor account at monobank. Both are set up from a phone. Subscription charges need tokenisation: with mono it is switched on through support, with LiqPay it is part of the contract. Which provider to pick is in LiqPay or Plata by Mono.
One link. The Neocarts subscription checkout page: the product, a frequency choice, the Nova Poshta branch, the card. You create it in the merchant dashboard in a few minutes and share the link wherever you talk to customers.
What it does not take
A website. The checkout page is the website for this scenario. If a site appears later, the widget goes on it, and existing subscriptions stay where they are.
A developer. No code at all. The page is ready, Nova Poshta is connected, the customer dashboard exists.
A CRM. To start, subscriptions and orders are visible in the merchant dashboard: who, what, when the next charge is, the shipment status. A CRM connects through webhooks when things get crowded without one.
Manual reminders. This is the main one. The charge happens by itself, the order is created by itself, the shipping label is generated by itself. Your part is to pack and send.
Where to put the link
- The bio. Instead of “DM to order” — “subscribe”. One click from the profile to payment.
- Stories and highlights. A “Subscription” highlight explaining the frequencies with the link is the FAQ page for those who do not write.
- The DM reply. When asked “how do I order”, instead of five messages with bank details — one link. The customer picks the frequency and enters the address themselves.
- A card in the parcel. A QR code to the checkout page in every one-off order. Someone who has just received the product and is happy with it is the best moment for a subscription.
How to talk about subscriptions
An Instagram audience reacts badly to the word “subscription” — it brings to mind services that are hard to cancel. Specifics work: “coffee arrives every three weeks, you can pause it from your phone”. Show the customer dashboard in a story: pause, skip, change frequency. That it is easy to cancel is the main argument to sign up.
A subscription discount is optional for a small brand: your customers pay for the relationship with you, not for a percentage. If you do give one, free delivery beats a percentage off the price. More in the article on the subscription discount.
Who it works best for
Products that run out — everything described on the niche pages: coffee, cosmetics, flowers, farm boxes. For candles and decor it works less well: they are not consumed on a schedule. A “box once a season” format works for them, but that is a curated subscription with a different retention logic.
What about the money
Charges go straight to your account through your own acquiring — Neocarts is not an intermediary in the payment. The fee is 5% of successful charges, billed monthly, with no subscription fee: a month without sales costs nothing. How recurring payments work is on a separate page.
If a site does appear on Tilda or Horoshop, the checkout page stays the main route — exactly how is described on the Tilda and Horoshop pages.