Custom BigCommerce Storefront & Subscription Billing, Founders Fuel

The Business

Founders Fuel is a health and wellness brand selling a premium nutritional product through its online storefront. The website plays a central role in how customers understand the product, interact with the brand, and manage recurring purchases, so the experience needs to feel polished and easy to navigate.

Launching on BigCommerce required the operational systems behind the storefront to be ready at the same time, including payments, shipping, taxes, reviews, email marketing, and custom recurring billing.

The Objective

Founders Fuel needed a branded BigCommerce storefront launched alongside a recurring billing system it could own and control. The project scope included:

• Design a custom storefront in Figma and implement it within the selected BigCommerce template, with responsive behavior across desktop and mobile
• Configure core BigCommerce operations, including payments, shipping, taxes, transactional emails, and foundational SEO
• Build a custom recurring billing application using BigCommerce Custom Checkout and the Authorize.Net ARB API
• Support monthly, quarterly, and annual billing cycles with automated renewals, payment retries, and failure handling
• Create a customer self-service portal for billing frequency changes, cancellations, payment method updates, upcoming charges, and billing history
• Develop a custom administrative panel for pricing, refunds, cancellations, billing-cycle management, and retry rules
• Integrate Klaviyo and Yotpo for lifecycle marketing, product reviews, and social proof

Four business challenges shaped the work:

• A custom brand experience within a selected template. The approved Figma direction had to carry through key pages, navigation, and responsive layouts while working inside the structure of the selected BigCommerce template, without introducing unnecessary maintenance complexity.
• Recurring billing beyond the initial checkout. Renewals, failed charges, retry rules, customer notifications, and new BigCommerce order creation all had to happen reliably after the original purchase, without requiring staff to manage each billing event manually.
• Customer self-service and internal control. Customers needed access to upcoming charges, billing frequency, payment methods, cancellations, and billing history from their account, and Founders Fuel needed a separate administrative layer for pricing, refunds, cancellations, billing-cycle updates, and retry settings.
• Keeping BigCommerce and Authorize.Net in sync. Authorize.Net ARB handled recurring payments while BigCommerce remained the commerce system for orders and storefront activity, so webhooks had to keep successful renewals, failed payments, and account status aligned across both systems.

The result had to preserve a simple customer experience and give the business enough control over billing, account management, and renewals to operate the program independent of a packaged subscription platform.

The Strategy

We paired a custom-designed BigCommerce storefront with an owned recurring billing application, then connected the two so orders, renewals, and account management stayed in sync.

The Results

• The custom Figma designs were implemented on BigCommerce across the core storefront, with responsive behavior delivered for desktop and mobile.
• Payments, shipping, taxes, and transactional emails were configured, and foundational SEO elements were implemented as part of the production launch.
• A custom recurring billing application launched with 3 billing cycles, monthly, quarterly, and annual, using BigCommerce Custom Checkout and Authorize.Net ARB.
• Renewal and failed-payment handling were automated through webhooks, including new BigCommerce order creation after successful charges, a 24-hour retry, customer notifications, and automatic suspension after 3 failed payments.
• Customer and administrative management tools were delivered for self-service billing changes and internal control over pricing, refunds, cancellations, billing cycles, and retry rules.
• Klaviyo and Yotpo were integrated to support lifecycle marketing, product reviews, and social proof across the storefront.

Founders Fuel can run recurring purchases without relying on a packaged subscription platform or absorbing per-transaction app fees. Customers handle routine account changes on their own, reducing administrative overhead, and the business retains ownership of its subscription data and direct control over the recurring revenue program.

At launch, Founders Fuel introduced a branded commerce experience with an owned recurring billing system connected to its BigCommerce stack. The company can expand its product offering, introduce new billing options, and add future marketing or storefront functionality while keeping the infrastructure that supports recurring purchases in place.