New UK subscription rules are coming: what your website needs to do now

New UK subscription rules are coming: what your website needs to do now

If you run any kind of subscription, membership or repeat payment through your website, there's a change worth knowing about, even though it's not law just yet.

The government has confirmed new rules for subscription contracts, covering things like auto-renewing memberships and the kind of free trial that quietly turns into a paid plan if nobody cancels it in time. Businesses will need to give customers clear information before they sign up, send a reminder before each renewal, and make cancelling online just as easy as signing up was in the first place. The rules aren't due to come into force until spring 2027, so there's no need to rip up your checkout flow this week.

But the body enforcing all of this, the Competition and Markets Authority, isn't waiting around. It's already using its newer powers this year, including its first ever fine for something called drip pricing, where extra costs only appear right at the final step of checkout rather than being shown upfront. That's a good sign of where attention is heading, and it applies whether or not you run a subscription model at all. Clear, upfront pricing and a non-scammy checkout experience are becoming things the regulator actively checks for, not just nice-to-haves.

None of this is really new territory if your site is built properly. Being upfront about what people are paying and not making it hard for them to leave has always been good practice. The rules just put a legal footing under something that was already worth getting right.

Sort your site: if you're already trading

A few things worth checking now rather than waiting for 2027 to force the issue.

• Look at how your pricing is presented. Is the full cost clear before someone reaches checkout, or do extra charges, shipping costs or fees only show up at the final step? If it's the latter, that's the exact behaviour the CMA has just started fining businesses for.
• Try cancelling your own subscription or membership. If you offer one, go through the process yourself as a customer would. Is it a self-serve button, or does it require an email, a phone call, or digging through account settings to find? If leaving takes noticeably more effort than joining did, that's worth fixing sooner rather than later, both for the coming rules and for how it makes customers feel about your business right now.
• Check your discount and "was" pricing. If you're showing a struck-through original price next to a sale price, make sure that original price is one you've genuinely charged recently. Inflating it to make the saving look bigger is exactly the kind of practice regulators are paying closer attention to.
• Review your renewal communications. If you run any auto-renewing product or service, are customers getting a heads-up before they're charged again? A simple reminder email a week or so before renewal goes a long way, both for compliance later and for reducing chargebacks and complaints now.

No site, no problem: if you're still planning yours

If you're in the process of building a website and thinking about adding a membership, subscription box or repeat payment option somewhere down the line, this is worth building in properly from day one rather than bolting on later.

• Design the cancellation route before you launch. Whatever platform you're building on, whether that's Shopify, a membership plugin, or a third-party subscription tool, make sure there's a straightforward, self-serve way for customers to cancel. Retrofitting this later, once customers are already used to how things work, tends to be far more disruptive than building it in from the start.
• Keep pricing simple and visible. Show the full price, including any fees, as early in the customer journey as you reasonably can. It's a small design decision now that saves a much bigger headache later.
• Plan your renewal reminders alongside your other automated emails. If you're already setting up order confirmations, shipping updates or abandoned cart emails, a renewal reminder fits naturally into that same system rather than being an afterthought.

It's a lot less work to set this up properly at the start than to go back and rebuild it once the rules are in force and customers are already frustrated by how hard it is to leave.

The takeaway

Spring 2027 feels a long way off, but the regulator's direction of travel is already clear, and a fair, upfront checkout tends to earn more trust and fewer complaints regardless of what the law eventually requires. If you're not sure where your own site stands on any of this, it's worth a proper look now rather than later.

*If you'd like a second pair of eyes on your website's pricing, checkout or subscription set-up, that's exactly the kind of thing I help with. Get in touch and we can have a look together.