Top 5 Best Shopify Subscription Apps [April, 2024]
| Last updated March 8, 2024
This guide helps ecommerce store owners to compare and find the best subscription apps for Shopify. Subscription apps are popular for ecommerce businesses that want a solution that offers them predictable monthly recurring revenue, increased customer lifetime value, high customer return and retention rates and reduced inventory waste.
However, with the variety of Shopify apps for subscription, it can be challenging to find the ideal app for store owners’ individual needs. To help ecommerce store owners make the right choice, the attributes of available Shopify apps have been assessed considering: features, price, free trial availability, app store rating and free app options.
This guide compares five companies for merchants to review and find the optimal subscription app for their needs. To help them make an informed decision, a quick comparison table of the best subscription Shopify apps is shared below, followed by in-depth reviews and frequently asked questions.
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Quick comparison of the best Shopify Subscription apps
| # | App Name | Developer Name | Pricing | Rating | Free Trial | Image | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PayWhirl Subscription Payments | PayWhirl Inc. | $9/month | 4.6/5 ⭐️ | yes |  |
Get app |
| 2 | Bold Subscriptions | BOLD | $49.99/month | 4.2/5 ⭐️ | yes |  |
Get app |
| 3 | Recharge Subscriptions | Recharge | $99/month | 4.5/5 ⭐️ | yes |  |
Get app |
| 4 | RecurrinGO! Subscriptions App | SpurIT UAB | $9/month | 4.8/5 ⭐️ | yes |  |
Get app |
| 5 | BSS: B2B Subscriptions | BSS Commerce | $5/month | 4.9/5 ⭐️ | yes |  |
Get app |
Top Shopify subscription apps reviewed
Table of contents:
PayWhirl Subscription Payments
PayWhirl Subscription Payments is a Shopify app designed to enhance online stores by offering subscription and recurring payment solutions. This app integrates effortlessly with Shopify’s native checkout and product pages, allowing merchants to combine recurring and one-time purchases in a single checkout experience. This feature simplifies the buying process for customers, making it more efficient and user-friendly.
One of the standout features of PayWhirl is its automatic payment and order generation capability. The app takes charge of scheduling and processing recurring payments, which is a significant advantage for merchants as it reduces manual effort and allows them to focus on other aspects of their business. Additionally, PayWhirl provides a customer portal where customers can manage all aspects of their recurring payments directly from the store. This level of customer empowerment is a key factor in enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Merchants can also increase conversions and customer retention through the app’s “Subscribe & Save” options, which offer discounts for subscribing to products and services. Furthermore, PayWhirl simplifies shipping by automatically updating shipping options as customers modify their cart contents, making the process more dynamic and responsive to customer needs.
PayWhirl stands out for its developer-friendly approach, offering customization options for those familiar with Shopify’s Liquid template language. This feature allows for extensive personalization of the user interface, providing merchants with the flexibility to tailor the app to their specific requirements. In terms of support and recognition, PayWhirl is built exclusively for Shopify, ensuring a high level of compatibility and integration. It boasts over a decade of experience with Shopify and offers free US-based support, which is highly valued by its users. The app’s pricing plans are designed to cater to a range of business needs, starting from a free plan to more advanced options with varying transaction fees.
Merchants using PayWhirl have expressed high satisfaction with the app, praising its user-friendly interface, excellent customer service, and smooth integration with Shopify. They appreciate the app’s flexibility and customization options, especially when managing payment plans for high-ticket items. The app has a strong reputation for reliability and security, with regular updates adding new features to enhance its functionality.
- 14 day free trial
- Free plan available
- PayWhirl offers users the ability to create subscription plans that are highly customizable
- Allows for easy integration with product pages, shopping carts, and user accounts through simple drag-and-drop functionality, without requiring any coding skills
- For more technically skilled users, PayWhirl provides advanced options like APIs, webhooks, and workflow tools
- It includes tools for subscription analytics, churn statistics, and data exports to help optimize revenue
- Features subscription cancellation flows and automatic payment retries to help reduce customer churn
- Offers a free migration service from other subscription providers like ReCharge, Appstle, Seal, and Bold
- Has a US-based support team available for assistance via phone, chat, or email
- Infrequent issues of subscription links not working (quickly resolved by customer support)
- There are some fee's to watch for in the free plan (free up to $5000 processed, then 3% off the top thereafter)
Bold Subscriptions
Bold Subscriptions is a comprehensive Shopify app that empowers online businesses to build, launch, and scale recurring subscription models. This app is known for its ease of management, allowing customers to pause, swap, skip, snooze, or edit their subscriptions. It facilitates adding subscriptions to individual products, collections, or the entire store with just a few clicks. Key features include customizable subscription pages and customer portals, passwordless login, flexible frequency logic, subscription discounts, powerful cancellation management, and advanced credit card dunning. Additionally, Bold Subscriptions offers robust APIs to extend subscription capabilities, making it a versatile and user-friendly solution for businesses aiming to leverage the power of recurring revenue models.
- Generous 60 day free trial
- Makes it easy for customers to manage their subscriptions, with options to pause, swap, skip, snooze, or edit their subscription plans
- The app allows store owners to add subscription services to individual products, entire collections, or across the whole store, just with a few clicks
- It offers fully customizable subscription pages and customer portals, enabling a personalized subscription experience
- The app includes a passwordless login feature, enhancing both user experience and security
- Bold Subscriptions provides flexible options for setting subscription frequencies and offers discounts to subscribers
- It comes equipped with powerful features for efficiently managing subscription cancellations
- The app handles failed payment attempts and updates payment information effectively with its advanced credit card dunning system
- Bold Subscriptions also offers APIs for further customization and enhancement of subscription functionalities
- No free plan
- Reports of the newest version having compatibility issues with some stores (quickly resolved by customer support)
Recharge Subscriptions
Recharge Subscriptions is a Shopify app that provides a comprehensive platform for managing subscription and recurring payment models for e-commerce businesses. Launched to help brands maximize the value of their shoppers, Recharge offers a variety of features to support the growth of customer lifetime value (LTV). These features include the ability to build and scale a recurring revenue stream, offer exclusive loyalty rewards and experiences, sell curated product bundles, and personalize customer journey flows. As such, it is trusted by over 10,000 merchants, including some of the largest subscription stores on Shopify (LOLA, Dr. Axe, and Death Wish Coffee, to name a few).
The 30-day free trial is one of the most generous around. The app also integrates with over 20 other apps out-of-the-box, including Klaviyo and Gorgias.
- Generous 30 day free trial
- Provides an all-in-one subscription platform for Shopify to grow recurring revenue
- Helps you transform one-off sales into recurring monthly sales
- Includes checkout, order flow, customer accounts, and third-party apps
- Increase subscriptions to your store by offering incentives
- Allows your store to scale to a seven-figure subscriber count using their API, webhooks, integrations, and enterprise features
- Helps you create a fully customized portal that allows customers to manage their own subscriptions, reducing the volume of support tickets
- Allows you to manage everything from a single admin portal
- Provides enhanced analytics and opportunities for upsells/cross-sells
- No free plan
- Entry level paid package might be too expensive for some smaller stores
RecurrinGO! Subscriptions App
RecurrinGO! is a Shopify app designed to enhance the e-commerce experience by offering subscription-based services. This app allows Shopify store owners to skyrocket their customer lifetime value by 1.5x on average through automatic subscriptions. Key features include invoices and auto-charging subscriptions, simple integration with Shopify Checkout, and a variety of tools to manage and customize subscription rules, customer engagement, and analytics. RecurrinGO! is trusted by over 4,000 subscription businesses and is known for its user-friendly approach, making it ideal for merchants looking to increase recurring revenue and build customer loyalty through subscriptions.
- Free plan available
- 14 day free trial
- Automates the subscription process by auto-charging customers or sending them invoices with a payment link, supporting mixed subscription types in one cart
- The app provides an all-in-one subscription management platform, allowing creation and customization of subscription rules for products or collections, and enabling adjustments in product pricing, shipping costs, payment schedules, and shipping addresses
- It includes a cancellation and dunning management feature, offering automated questionnaires to understand customer motivations upon cancellation and handling unsuccessful payment attempts
- Allows for the customization of email notifications, tailoring them to various subscription-related activities
- Offers early-stage analytics, providing valuable data on subscription rules and customer behaviors
- It features a fully customizable design for the subscription widget, which can be adjusted to fit any theme and placed on different parts of the product page with a built-in editor and online preview
- Reports of of clashing with other apps when integrated (customer service quick to resolve these issues when they occur)
BSS: B2B Subscriptions
BSS: B2B Subscriptions is a comprehensive subscription solution designed to enhance the capabilities of merchants on the Shopify platform. Launched in April 2021, this app is tailored to enable merchants to offer various subscription-based products and services to their customers. It supports multiple languages, primarily English, and is categorized under Subscriptions and Promotions on the Shopify App Store. The app offers flexible subscription models, including pay-as-you-go, standard and advanced prepaid options, as well as discounts. This flexibility enables merchants to cater to a wide range of customer preferences and business models. Customers can control their subscription status through a dedicated subscription page on the online store, enhancing their experience by providing them with autonomy over their subscriptions.
Merchants can monitor subscription performance through the app’s dashboard, which provides insights into total order amounts, average order value (AOV), and other relevant metrics. The app supports popular payment gateways such as Shopify Payments, PayPal Express, and Authorize.net, and integrates well with Shopify, ensuring a smooth transaction process for both merchants and customers. The app is noted for its user-friendly interface and responsive customer support. Merchants have reported efficient and quick assistance from the BSS Commerce team, enhancing their overall experience with the app. BSS offers a variety of pricing plans, including a free plan with basic features, and more advanced plans (Starter, Pro, and Advanced) ranging from $5 to $20 per month, designed to cater to different sizes and types of businesses.
Additional features include comprehensive email notification features for both customers and administrators, keeping all stakeholders informed about subscription changes and updates, and no transaction fees on recurring orders, regardless of the chosen plan. The app also offers managing subscription orders in Shopify admin page or BSS’s portal, dashboard analytics for actionable insights, and the ability to handle mixed cart checkout.
- 14 day free trial
- Free plan available
- Offers multiple subscription models like pay-as-you-go and prepaid
- Enables customer self-management of subscriptions
- Provides a dashboard for monitoring business metrics
- User-friendly with responsive customer support
- Sends email notifications to customers and admins
- No transaction fees on recurring orders
- Flexible subscription order management
- Premium plans with additional features like 24/7 support
- Some users found it challenging to understand and use app features, possibly due to translation issues
- The time zone difference with the support team has caused delays in receiving support
How to Find The Best Subscription Shopify App?
These five subscription apps for Shopify are ranked based on the following criteria:
- Features
- Price
- Rating on the Shopify app store
- Free trial availability
- Free app options
- Compatibility with other top apps
- Number of apps the app provider operates
- Pros and cons
- Built for Shopify badge
- Reviews and assessment by AcquireConvert
What are Shopify subscription apps?
Shopify subscription apps are tools that enable e-commerce store owners to offer subscription-based products or services. These apps allow for subscription management, billing tracking, and payment processing. In this model, customers pay recurring fees for continuous access to products or services, such as streaming platforms or monthly consultancy services, creating a predictable revenue stream for businesses.
What are the pros of a subscription business model?
With a subscription model business you can (as close as possible) predict the future, thanks to these key metrics:
- Monthly recurring revenue
- Monthly churn rate (cancelled subscriptions per month)
- Net monthly growth rate (new customers – cancelled subscriptions per month)
- Customer lifetime value (AOV X subscription length)
The more uniform your offerings in terms of revenue and costs and the fewer SKUs, the simpler predicting cash flow becomes.
This means you can
- Focus on a niche market, which is typically cheaper to market to and acquire customers
- Hire with confidence and at the right time
- Budget effectively for marketing
- As you’ll know how much you can afford to spend to acquire a customer profitably
- Discount heavily on customers first purchases and grow more aggressively
- As you’ll know the tail end value of a subscriber
- Batch Shipping: Monthly orders shipped on the same day, in the same box, same weight and cost, can keep shipping costs and logistics predictable and consistent
- Get ahead on cash flow by creating offers for those who subscribe for 1 year in advance and pay upfront for larger discounts.
- Increase customer retention, as it’s baked into your business model
- Reduce waste with predictable stock level needs, removing the need for clearance sales
What are the cons of a subscription business model?
Of course, subscription business models can have drawbacks.
- High churn rates can occur without prior warning, like in the economic downturn due to COVID-19 most recently.
- Just like the January fitness industry peak, some niches can see seasonal churn as people drop off subscriptions due to changing weather or economic factors.
- Retention can be hard if you’re not constantly innovating and maintaining your edge on the competition or freshness for the customer.
- Can you source new products before competitors or exclusively?
- While it’s cheaper to retain customers, acquisition costs can increase due to the friction of commitment. Sales will require social proof, testimonials and other final reservation removing tactics.
- Increasing average order value is hard in a fixed price system. You can experiment with upselling and cross-selling, however insure this doesn’t hurt your overall conversion rates and profits. Larger stores with 600+ monthly transactions will want to statistically test changes to the core ecommerce funnel to ensure revenue doesn’t drop.
What are the different types of subscription products?
There are typically 3 preferred product types. However a few newer entrants are disrupting the market further.
Replenishment
Commodity automation aka replenishment has seen the most revenue. Unsurprisingly as these are consumer packaged goods with larger markets. These types of brands still require enormous investments into brand equity and recognition.
Curation
Product discovery aka curation sees the customer receive different items each month. With varying levels of personalization and decision making needed. (Warning: decision are frictions to sale)
Access
Exclusive deal aka access sees customers subscribing to get VIP treatment and unique offers.
One newer category is:
Product / Content Hybrid
Peloton is a great example of this model. First you buy their exercise bike, then you subscribe to classes and monthly content.
Why Do You Need Shopify Subscriptions Apps?
Subscription apps benefit both customers, who regularly receive their favorite products, and merchants, who can easily manage and track these subscriptions. This creates a situation where customers enjoy convenient access to services and products on a monthly or yearly basis, while merchants benefit from steady revenue. These apps are more than just tools; they significantly aid in business growth. They save merchants time and effort, freeing them to focus on other business areas. Additionally, features like customizable subscription plans and account management for customers further enhance the appeal of these apps.
Conclusion: Best Shopify Subscription Apps
It requires time and effort to compare and evaluate features of the various different subscription Shopify apps to find the ideal option.
Shopify store owners must evaluate relevant information to make the optimal choice for their needs.
This guide does the challenging work for merchants by comparing and evaluating the top choices for different subscription Shopify apps. The results of our analysis of the best subscription Shopify apps are listed below:
Hi, I’m Giles Thomas.Founder of AcquireConvert, the place where ecommerce entrepreneurs & marketers go to learn growth. I’m also the founder of Shopify agency Whole Design Studios.