# Build brief — a focused alternative to WooCommerce Subscriptions

> **Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 40/100 · **Category:** Commerce
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/woocommerce-subscriptions
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from WooCommerce Subscriptions. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**WooCommerce Subscriptions** — Official WooCommerce extension that turns a WordPress store into a recurring billing system with renewals, upgrades and failed payment handling. It currently costs $23.25/mo.

The actual hard part of recurring billing lives at the payment processor, not in this plugin: Stripe Billing already does tokenization, renewal attempts, SCA, proration and dunning. So an agent can absolutely wire a small self-hosted checkout plus webhook listener plus entitlement table in a focused implementation, and for one product with two or three plans that is genuinely enough. What you cannot one-shot is the part that makes this extension worth a license: living inside WooCommerce so that orders, coupons, taxes, shipping, emails, reports and forty other plugins all understand a subscription. If you already run a real Woo store, replacing this means rebuilding the glue, not the billing. If you just want money to arrive monthly for something you built, you never needed WordPress in the first place.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of WooCommerce Subscriptions that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

Sells a handful of hardcoded plans through Stripe Checkout, listens to billing webhooks, and keeps a local table of who currently has access.

- Manage a small catalogue and checkout flow for products you fulfil yourself.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- Stripe account in live mode.
- Node 20 and SQLite.

### Data and integrations

- A publicly reachable HTTPS host for webhook delivery.
- Stripe API keys and webhook secret in .env.

Each of these needs a real account, credential, or quota. Set them up before writing feature code.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build a minimal self-hosted recurring billing service for a single product. No WordPress, no WooCommerce.

Stack, non negotiable: Node 20, TypeScript, Express, SQLite via better-sqlite3, Stripe Node SDK, plain server-rendered EJS templates. No React, no ORM, no Docker.

Scope, in:
- A plans.ts file defining three hardcoded plans (monthly, annual, lifetime) each with a Stripe Price ID pulled from env.
- GET /pricing renders the plans and a Subscribe button per plan.
- POST /checkout/:plan creates a Stripe Checkout Session in subscription mode (or payment mode for lifetime) and redirects to it.
- POST /webhook with raw body parsing and signature verification. Handle checkout.session.completed, customer.subscription.updated, customer.subscription.deleted, invoice.payment_failed. Upsert into a subscriptions table: stripe_customer_id, email, plan, status, current_period_end, cancel_at_period_end.
- GET /portal creates a Stripe Billing Portal session for the logged in customer so plan changes, cancellation and card updates are Stripe's problem, not yours.
- Magic link auth only: POST /login emails a signed token, no passwords. Log the link to stdout in dev instead of sending mail.
- GET /api/entitlement returns JSON with active true or false plus plan and period end, so another app can gate features on it.
- GET /admin, protected by a single ADMIN_TOKEN from env, listing subscribers with status and next renewal, filterable by status.
- Idempotent webhook handling: store processed event IDs and ignore repeats.

Scope, out: multi gateway support, tax calculation beyond Stripe Tax, proration math of your own, coupons, shipping, invoices you render yourself, any telemetry.

Secrets in .env: STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET, STRIPE_PRICE_MONTHLY, STRIPE_PRICE_ANNUAL, STRIPE_PRICE_LIFETIME, ADMIN_TOKEN, APP_URL. Commit a .env.example, never a filled .env.

Deliver a README with exact steps: create products in the Stripe dashboard, run stripe listen to forward webhooks locally, seed a test subscription, and how to flip to live keys. Include a script that replays a saved webhook fixture so the handler is testable without Stripe.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- Integration with the WooCommerce order, coupon, tax and shipping machinery, so subscriptions are no longer just orders your other plugins understand.
- Gateway breadth: you are married to one processor instead of the dozen Woo supports.
- Customer-facing plan switching, pausing, resubscribing and prorated upgrades in your own UI, unless you accept the hosted portal as-is.
- Admin reporting, renewal calendars and bulk actions over thousands of subscribers.
- Years of edge case handling for partial renewals, mixed carts, manual renewals and payment method migrations.

## What you still own after launch

- Secure credentials, rotate secrets, and handle provider rate limits.
- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.
- Maintain every third-party integration as APIs and OAuth rules change.

## Risk

**High consequence.** Use this as a prototype or personal aid. Keep a qualified human and an established provider in the loop for consequential decisions.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: medium. No reviewed project implementation is linked yet.

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