The Best Subscription Apps for Shopify
Ready to create loyal relationships with your customers on Shopify through subscription services? This article will discuss the top subscription apps available so you can decide which is the best bang for your buck.
If you’re a Shopify store owner, you know that feeling of installing an app on your website, having it alter the code, only to find out it doesn’t work the way you want it to. For a subscription service, the last thing you want is to have to switch over to a different app down the road and potentially jeopardize the recurring purchases you worked hard to earn from your customers. But don’t worry; we’ve compiled the top subscription apps for you and listed their capabilities, pricing, reviews, and other insights to help you find the one that’s right for you. Here are the top subscription apps on Shopify you need to look into:
1) Recharge
Recharge is an independent app that solely focuses on subscription services. You can quickly get set up by connecting to your existing store and integrating it with popular payment processors through Shopify Payments. The app will create a seamless experience for your customers to manage their subscriptions with a customer portal and SMS. Customers can skip or reschedule deliveries, swap products, manage their notifications, and see buying history. Recharge also gives you actionable insights about your customers, subscriptions, revenues and tracks performance in real-time. This app also allows you to use their APIs to scale your subscription business further. You can install Recharge for free with their standard plan, and you will only pay a fee based on transactions. Recharge Subscriptions has 4.7 stars in the Shopify App Store with over 500 reviews.
Key Features
- Subscription uses Shopify Payments
- Let customers manage subscriptions through Customer Portal and SMS
- Add up-sells with one-time products
- Keep customers informed with automatic notifications
- Connects with Shopify orders for customer data
- Automatic payment retries and dunning
- Add custom CSS to the checkout page
- Customers can customize subscriptions with the option to change delivery frequencies, skip/delay service, or swap out products.
- Automatic notifications and updates for subscribers
- APIs
- Integrates with Klayviyo, Gorgias, Yotpo, Shipstation, Loyalty Lion, Attentive
Pricing
Recharge offers a standard plan which is free to install. However, the standard plan charges you based on transaction fees of 1% of the total value and $0.10 per transaction.
There is also a Pro plan for $300 per month with a 1% and $0.19 transaction fee. The Pro plan gives you more customization options for the customer portal, deeper analytics, pre-authorized transactions, and enhanced support.
2) Bold Subscriptions
Bold Subscriptions lets you create a subscription model with more flexibility for the rules and process of onboarding subscribers. This app allows you to fully integrate with the Shopify Checkout portal and process transactions with Shopify Payments; customers can transact with both a one-time purchase or a recurring subscription altogether in the original checkout flow. Customers can manage their subscription, delivery frequency, delivery dates, payments, customer profile, and more with an auto-branded customer portal. In addition, you can promote conversions by adding incentives for subscriptions, like discounting on future recurring orders. Bold Subscription offers a 60-day free trial, but to keep using them, you’ll need to pay a monthly plan. This app has 4.3 stars in the Shopify App Store with over 160 reviews.
Key Features
- Integrates directly with Shopify Checkout, Shopify Payments, and Paypal Express
- Seamless checkout with both one-time and recurring products in the same transaction
- Offer incentives for recurring orders
- Offer incentives to stay subscribed or the option to pause for customers deciding to cancel
- Let customers manage subscriptions: change delivery interval; edit/pause/skip orders; swap products; change payments.
- Automatic styling for subscription management portal with site CSS
- Dunning management
- APIs and webhooks to customize every aspect of the subscription
- Automatic email notifications and updates for subscribers
Pricing
Bold Subscription offers a 60-day free trial. After that, you’ll need to pay for a monthly plan of $49.99 with a 1% fee of orders with subscription products.
3) Seal Subscriptions
Seal Subscriptions lets you create two types of subscription plans. The first type is what most people are familiar with, which is auto-charge; customers get charged for recurring orders automatically. The other type of subscription plan is recurring invoice mode, in which subscribers are sent invoices with a checkout link when the time comes to pay for the next recurring order. This app uses Shopify’s checkout process so customers will go through a familiar checkout page with Shopify’s payment processing. Subscribing customers also don’t need to register for an account as they will be automatically sent a magic link in the order email to view and manage their subscription. Seal Subscriptions has 4.8 stars in the Shopify App Store with over 250 reviews.
Key Features
- Auto-charge subscription model or recurring invoices model
- Migrate customers from other platforms
- Customers can start multiple subscriptions in the same order with different intervals
- Add incentives like a discount for subscriptions
- Integrates with Shopify Checkout process and Shopify Payments
- No customer registration needed to manage their recurring subscriptions
- Automatic notifications and updates for active subscriptions
- Integrates with Klayviyo, Google Analytics, Bundler
Pricing
Seal Subscriptions offers four plans to choose from. All of them have 0% transaction fees, but the number of subscriptions you can have depends on the plan you choose.
- Free: $0/month for 150 subscriptions with features discussed above
- Premium Tier 1: $9/month for 1,000 subscriptions with features including upcoming billing and successful charge emails
- Premium Tier 2: $20/month for 10,000 subscriptions and all features from lower plans
- Premium Tier 3: $50/month for 50,000 subscriptions and all features from lower plans
4) Appstle Subscriptions
Appstle Subscriptions is a comprehensive subscription solution for your Shopify store. You can create and manage subscriptions from the product description pages through Shopify Admin or Appstle’s merchant portal. Customers have the ability to self-manage their subscriptions with options to pause or skip deliveries, swap/add/delete products, and change their delivery interval & dates. Subscribers can check out with one-time products and subscription products through Shopify’s checkout process and payment gateway. Subscribing customers also don’t need to register for an account as a magic link will be provided. Apostle Subscriptions currently has an impressive 5 stars in the Shopify App Store with over 290 reviews.
Key Features
- Multiple subscription options/frequency
- Customers can self-manage subscriptions without any registration necessary
- Original Shopify checkout process and payment gateway
- Mixed cart checkout with both one-time products and subscription products
- Personalized & automated email notifications
- Real-time data and reports for customer subscription
- Dunning management
- Custom CSS
- Integrates with Loyalty Lion, Klaviyo, Zapier
Pricing
Appstle Subscriptions offers 4 plans starting with a free plan. They also offer a 14-day free trial for premium plans. Their plans have 0% transaction fees, but the number of subscriptions and features varies depending on the plan you choose.
- Free: $0/month for 50 subscriptions with regular & prepaid subscriptions, email notifications, order & customer tagging, advanced analytics, and 24/7 support
- Basic: $15/month for 1,000 subscriptions with subscription management, dunning management, daily summary reports, and lower-tier plan features
- Professional: $40/month for 10,000 subscriptions with advanced customer portal settings, customer shipping profiles, advanced widgets, and lower-tier plan features.
- Enterprise: $100/month for 50,0000 subscriptions with product swaps, custom email domain, app integrations, dedicated engineers, and all lower-tier plan features.
Need help with Shopify App selection or integration? Reach out and let’s chat about how we can help you scale your business.
