It is no secret that the COVID-19 global pandemic will have long-lasting implications for the economy and the world. As the situation rapidly changes, so does consumer behavior.
Shoppers who once strolled for hours in shopping malls are having to browse online instead. Moviegoers who frequented cinemas and theaters are scrolling through their streaming devices for new entertainment.
As many of us continue to be in lockdowns, nonessential businesses are being ordered to close, making shopping for both essentials and clothing more difficult. Naturally, this pandemic has caused a large shift in online shopping. Globally, 49% of consumers shop online more now than pre-COVID-19. However, it has changed the buying patterns, specifically for businesses that offer subscription products.
Prior to COVID-19, subscription-based businesses generated between $12 billion and $15 billion in sales. While the pandemic has negatively impacted many retailers, subscription businesses have grown across multiple verticals.
A survey conducted by Coupon Follow showed that 20% of US consumers had purchased subscription boxes during COVID-19, specifically those in self-care, wellness, food, and meal kits.
Other studies, including those from Recurly, illustrate that although the pandemic caused discretionary spending in the first month, April saw a growth of 85% in new subscriptions and up to 145% in Consumer Goods.
With subscription-based businesses continuing to grow even during unprecedented times (and researchers theorizing that subscription services will make up 75% of DTC brands by 2023), this is the time for small and big businesses to consider subscription models or add-on subscriptions.
Why Should You Care About Subscriptions?
Aside from the growth of subscriptions in the past year, there are several benefits to offering a subscription model or subscription products. These are:
- Predictable revenue
- Sales forecasting and inventory planning
- Lower acquisition costs
- Customer loyalty
With any eCommerce store, predictable revenue is often hard to determine. Customers can churn quickly, causing you to spend more time and resources acquiring new customers. Also, acquiring a new customer can cost 5-10 times more than retaining an existing customer.
Past customers repeatedly purchase subscriptions, allowing the store to generate consistent revenue and become more profitable.
But what type of subscription model is right for your store?
Subscription Businesses vs. Add-On Subscriptions
If you’re a new business looking to open a subscription store, you’ll want to research three different models.
Curation Business Model (Subscription Boxes)
The most common subscription business model, these boxes usually provide curated products. However, their unique selling point is sending new items with uniquely personalized experiences. Many popular stores dominate the market, making it more difficult to penetrate.
However, new platforms like Cratejoy have allowed smaller businesses to test the subscription box ecosystem.
Replenishment Business Model
This model is built for convenience and cost savings. Replenishment subscriptions allow consumers to automate purchasing essential items, usually at a discount. This is commonly seen in razors, diapers, vitamins, pet food, etc.
Because these products are essential, conversion and retention rates are generally higher, as the process is mostly effortless for consumers.
Access Business Model
These subscription businesses offer access to unique products, lower prices, or member-only perks for a monthly fee. This model normally offers exclusivity to consumers, which in turn can allow for greater customer loyalty.
For stores that already offer one-time products but would like to transition into recurring subscription products, various tools, and resources can help you explore the subscription ecosystem without committing to one revenue model or pivoting your store.
Regardless of which model you choose, it’s important to ask yourself these questions:
- Do I want to run a subscription store or a store with subscription products?
- Can I differentiate myself from other subscription companies?
- Do I have best-selling products that can benefit from recurring product subscriptions?
And most importantly:
- What subscription tools can I use to be successful?
Luckily, to help you save time and get closer to your goal of making money with subscriptions, we’re sharing our list of the best subscription tools specifically for eCommerce stores.
The Best Subscription Apps for eCommerce
- ReCharge
- Bold Subscriptions
- Ordergroove
The Best Subscription Billing Platforms
- Chargebee
- Recurly
The Best Payment Processors with Recurring Bill
- Stripe
- Braintree
The Best Subscription Commerce Platforms
- Cratejoy
- Subbly
- sticky.io
Analytics for Subscription Businesses
Best Add-Ons for ReCharge, Stripe, or Braintree
The Best Subscription Apps for eCommerce
Suppose you’re a store operating on an eCommerce platform like Shopify and don’t want to switch to a subscription platform. In that case, various subscription apps can be integrated with leading platforms.
These tools allow you to transition one-time products into recurring subscription products, ensuring a seamless experience for both the consumer and yourself.
Although there are several subscription apps designed for leading eCommerce platforms, we wanted to focus on those that offer:
- Seamless integration with leading eCommerce platforms
- Seamless, mobile-friendly customer portal and checkout experience
- Customizable customer portals with options to edit frequency, quantity, and delivery schedules
- Direct integration with native checkout (specifically Shopify)
- Dunning management: automated processes for failed credit card payments
Let’s look at three tools to help your store easily transition from one-time products to recurring subscriptions. These are:
- ReCharge
- Bold Subscriptions
- Ordergroove
ReCharge
Dynamic Recurring Billing Platform
ReCharge offers a seamless solution for transforming one-time products into recurring subscriptions. A powerful merchant and customer portal allows subscriptions to be easily managed, analyzed, and customized.
While the program integrates with leading eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce, the company has continued to build a comprehensive solution and seamless experience specifically for the Shopify platform.
Features
- Subscribe & Save discounts
- Subscriptions managed within Shopify
- Seamless, mobile-friendly customer portal and checkout experience
- Allow subscribers to modify frequency, quantity, and delivery schedules
- Automated workflows
- Dunning management
- Integrates with Stripe, Braintree, and Authorize.net.
- Integrates with top email marketing, loyalty, and chat providers
- Flexible API to tackle custom requirements
- Direct integration with Shopify’s native checkout
Pricing
With Shopify’s new checkout API integration, ReCharge does not currently support self-service setup. Upon install requests, merchants will be added to a waitlist and onboarded accordingly.
For all other platforms, Recharge Payments offers a 60-day free trial. Plans begin at $60USD per month plus 1% + 5¢ per transaction. Its Pro plan, which features a custom domain, enhanced analytics, customized customer portal, and Avalara integration, begins at $300USD per month plus 1% + 19¢ per transaction.
Bold Subscriptions
Customizable Subscription Program
Bold Commerce specializes in a variety of eCommerce apps, including subscriptions. The app provides more flexibility for subscription models that require upsells, discounts, and single purchases, allowing stores to customize and process subscriptions fully. Bold subscriptions also offer stores the option for prepaid and gift subscriptions.
Subscriptions integrate with over a dozen payment gateways on Bigcommerce, Commercetools, and Woocommerce. However, they only integrate with Shopify Payments on Shopify.
Features
- Subscribe & Save discounts
- Prepaid and gift subscriptions
- Customizable customer portal
- Allow subscribers to modify frequency, quantity, products, and delivery schedules
- Dunning management
- Automated email updates
- Direct integration with Shopify’s native checkout
Pricing
Bold subscriptions offer a 60-day free trial. Their plan begins at $49.99USD per month + 1% of orders containing subscription products.
UPDATE: ReCharge and Bold Subscriptions have been recently upgraded to integrate with Shopify’s new API, allowing partners and developers to build new subscription experiences directly within Shopify’s native checkout. This groundbreaking update will allow consumers to experience a one-time checkout regardless of purchasing a one-time or recurring product.
Before this update, ReCharge and Bold Subscriptions used their Shopify-emulated checkouts to process subscriptions.
Ordergroove
Enterprise Level Subscription App
Ordergroove provides an all-in-one solution for mid-sized to enterprise-level businesses looking to build their recurring revenue stream. Powered by their trademarked Anticipate AI, the app provides personalized offers to reduce churn rates and increase subscriber retention across your stores’ most valuable channels.
Features
- Subscribe & Save discounts
- Product-specific discounts, gift with purchase
- API access for advanced customizations and unique brand experiences
- Available on Salesforce, Magento, Bigcommerce, and Shopify Plus (direct integration with native checkout)
Pricing
Request a demo for pricing.
The Best Subscription Billing Platforms
A few subscription billing software programs can help any store add simple subscription options, such as recurring billing or auto-invoicing.
Although originally developed for SaaS businesses, more eCommerce stores (specifically those operating with headless commerce) are searching for more flexible subscription options that meet customers’ needs.
Both Chargebee and Recurly are subscription billing platforms that offer more complex solutions. They also offer:
- Gift subscriptions
- Integration with leading payment processors
- Customizable API & webhooks
Chargebee
SaaS Subscription Billing Software
Chargebee is a subscription billing software that allows end-to-end recurring billing, subscription management, and auto invoicing. Although built originally for SaaS businesses, the company has also shifted to providing an eCommerce subscription solution.
Like other leading subscription billing software, Chargebee can synchronize data with Shipstation, WordPress, and Shopify. It is also fully customizable via API and webhooks, which makes it an excellent choice for headless subscription commerce.
Features
- Subscribe & Save
- Monthly memberships, set boxes
- Bundling subscriptions with single products
- Gift subscriptions
- Customizable customer portal
- Integrates with Stripe, Authorize.Net, Braintree, PayPal Payments Pro
Pricing
Request a demo for pricing.
Recurly
Headless Subscription Billing Management
For subscription-based businesses operating on headless commerce, Recurly is a robust subscription billing and management platform with experience integrating with various tech stacks.
Building on leading subscription apps within the eCommerce space, Recurly also offers one-time purchases and subscriptions in the same checkout flow. This allows stores to offer subscriptions and one-time products in the same transaction.
Features
- Upsell one-time products and services into subscription plans
- Promotional offers like discounts, offer lengths, and more
- Gift subscriptions
- Automate subscriber communication
- Customized customer portal
Pricing
Recurly offers a free trial. Request a demo for pricing.
The Best Payment Processors with Recurring Billing
Along with subscription billing platforms, several common payment processors, like Stripe and Braintree, have introduced recurring billing over the years.
Although some of these platforms offer more basic subscription offerings and are lower-cost, there are more advanced options for users already using 3D Cart, Magento, Bigcommerce, or Woocommerce.
Both Stripe and Braintree are payment processors that offer recurring billing. They also offer:
- Support for coupons and add-ons
- Dunning management
- Integrations
- Reporting
Stripe
Already a leading payment processing platform that integrates with several eCommerce platforms, Stripe also allows businesses to accept recurring payments.
Although the platform can be easily integrated within any SaaS or marketplace to manage recurring orders, many popular subscription apps, such as ReCharge and sticky.io, already use it for payment processing.
Features
- Subscriptions or payment plans
- Support for coupons, add-ons, etc.
- Dunning management
- Automatically generate reports
Pricing
Stripe charges 0.5% on all recurring charges on its most basic plan and 0.8% on recurring charges on a custom-built scale plan.
Braintree
Like Stripe, Braintree is an online payment gateway created by PayPal that allows eCommerce transaction processing, including those with repeat payments. Small and large businesses can create custom customer pricing plans, including discounts, add-ons, promotional periods, and rewards.
Braintree also helps reduce churn rate with its own Account Updater, a feature that automatically updates users’ card details whenever information changes.
Features
- Subscription-based products, donations, and services
- Prorated subscriptions
- Integrates with 3D cart, Magento, BigCommerce and WooCommerce
Pricing
Request a demo for pricing.
The Best Subscription Commerce Platforms
If you are a relatively new business or looking to start a new subscription store (specifically a subscription box), consider an all-in-one solution for the subscription model.
Although many eCommerce add-ons, recurring billing platforms, and payment processors offer options that can easily handle subscriptions, there are some benefits to sticking to a platform that was built specifically for subscriptions, such as:
- Subscription CRMs and KPIs
- Subscriber specific tools
- Referral campaigns
- Marketplaces
To give you a better idea of the subscription platform ecosystem, we’ll take a look at the following most popular offerings:
- Cratejoy
- Subbly
- sticky.io
Cratejoy
Subscription Marketplace For Small Businesses
Although many eCommerce platforms provide subscription tools to convert one-time products into recurring subscription products, Cratejoy was created as a marketplace for smaller subscription box brands.
The platform offers various options, including listing on the marketplace, using Cratejoy’s checkout and back-end only, or an all-in-one solution that includes a custom website and subscription tools.
If you’re a small business looking to explore the subscription ecosystem, Cratejoy can be an affordable option.
Features
- Designed for small businesses
- Subscription CRM and KPIs
- Subscriber support tools
- Referral campaigns
- Customized emails and coupons
- One-time product add-ons
- Integrates with MailChimp, ShipStation, SumoMe, CartStack and more
Pricing
All listings on Cratejoy are free, but there are 11.25% + $0.10 transaction fees. For businesses using their subscription checkout only, the fee is $19USD per month and 1.25% + $0.10 transaction fees. For businesses looking to build their website on the Cratejoy platform, the fee is $39USD per month and 1.25% + 0.10 transaction fees.
Subbly
Subscription eCommerce Platform
While Cratejoy offers a marketplace for subscription businesses, Subbly is specifically focused on selling subscriptions through its hosted platform or embedding its checkout on any existing website like Wix, WordPress, Squarespace, and even Shopify (although this will not be as streamlined).
The platform offers over 50 features, including flexible subscription billing, build-a-box solutions, order management, and more.
Features
- Manage logistics, fulfillment, and inventory
- Set up automation and workflow
- Loyalty programs, SMS marketing
- Analytics and insights
- CRM Management
- API for custom integrations
- Integrations with Zapier, Drip, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Facebook Pixel and more
Pricing
All plans offer a 14-day free trial. Subbly offers a $14USD per month plan for checkout only when paying yearly. The platform also offers a website and checkout plan for $29USD per month when paying yearly.
For automation, inventory tracking & management, white labeling (removing the Subbly logo), and cart abandonment, businesses must purchase these as add-ons.
sticky.io
Enterprise Subscription eCommerce Platform
sticky.io is a unified eCommerce platform for advanced order management and recurring billing. Built for enterprise stores, specifically those who choose headless commerce, the app organizes and manages multi-channel selling while offering customized checkout experiences that integrate with any front-end storefront.
This is particularly useful for enterprise-level subscription brands that require unique subscription and checkout customizations.
Features
- Product and order management, including dynamic product bundling
- Revenue maximization tools such as chargeback representation and payment routing
- Retention and loyalty capabilities, including advanced rebilling and membership portals
- Checkout and upsell tools for eCommerce and headless commerce
Pricing
Request a demo for pricing.
Analytics for Subscription Businesses
Perhaps you’re wondering whether you should start offering your customers subscription products.
We suggest exploring platforms offering advanced reporting and actionable insights with any eCommerce store. By analyzing your store’s strengths and weaknesses (primarily through data), you can develop new retention strategies that fuel your store’s growth.
Many of these analytical tools are also beneficial for stores that are currently selling subscriptions by offering several reports not available through eCommerce platforms or subscription tools like:
- Cohort Analysis
- Advanced Segmentation
- Lifecycle Grids
- Pricing Strategies
Our top tools for delving into subscription and retention data are:
- Peel Insights
- Segments
Peel Insights
Hyper-Segmented Analytics
If you’re looking for more advanced reporting and analytics outside of the Shopify dashboard, Peel Insights offers automated analysis of over 35 key eCommerce metrics. The tool can be easily set up for any Shopify store and integrated with ReCharge to analyze customer retention and subscriptions.
Features
- Offers advanced reports like cohort analysis, segmentation, goals & tracking
- Calculates critical KPIs like Lifetime Value, Purchase Frequency, and Customer Acquisition Cost
Pricing
All plans start with a 30-day free trial. Peel’s most popular “Medium” plan begins at $99 per month and includes 501-2k orders per month. For 80k orders or more, stores will require a custom plan, which is over $799 per month.
Segments
Prebuilt Customer Segments
For stores looking to delve into customer data, create advanced segmentation, and sync across multiple marketing channels, Segments is an excellent option. The tool provides a wealth of insight for stores considering a subscription model by offering 30+ prebuilt customer segments and actionable insights.
Features
- Lifecycle grids, customer cohorts, and product combinations for upsells and crossells.
- Integrates with Klaviyo, MailChimp, Facebook, Google and more
- Integrates with Shopify ONLY
Pricing
For small businesses generating up to $200k USD annually, Segments offers a $79USD per month “Small Business” plan that includes 1 year of data analysis, $5,000 users/segment, and email channel integration. Its “Growth” plan, recommended for businesses generating up to $1M USD annually, offers 2 years of data analysis, 25,000 users/segment, email channel integration, and monthly priority data processing for $239USD.
The Best Add-Ons for ReCharge, Stripe or Braintree
If you’re considering using ReCharge, Stripe, or Braintree for your subscriptions or already use them, several add-ons can improve your retention rates.
For these apps, we’re particularly focused on:
- Reducing churn rates
- Increasing retention rates
- User-friendly integrations and setup
Our top choices are:
- Churn Buster
- ARPU
Churn Buster
Subscriptions Churn Prevention
This app is necessary for any store that uses ReCharge, Stripe, or Braintree for subscriptions. Churn Buster recovers more failed payments while preventing customer frustration using a mix of charge attempts, high-quality email outreach, support escalations, and SMS.
Features
- Reduces churn from failed subscription attempts
- Optimized email automation
- Exports for retargeting
- Integrates with ReCharge, Stripe, and Braintree
- Churn and recovery reporting
Pricing
Churn Buster pricing is based on monthly recurring revenue and offers a 14-day free trial.
ARPU
Pre-Shipping Reminders for ReCharge
Specifically designed for stores using ReCharge, ARPU offers pre-shipping email reminders three days before a subscriber’s next billing cycle. This helps reduce churn rate and increase revenue, and ARPU also offers upsells within its emails to help increase average order value.
Features
- Allows users to skip orders without having to login to the customer portal
- Allow users to add one-time purchases to their upcoming subscriptions in two clicks
- Easy installation and setup
- Designed for Recharge payments ONLY
Pricing
ARPU offers a 14-day free trial and $0.05 per active subscriber (with a minimum of $40USD per month). Custom pricing is offered for stores with over $10,000 active subscribers.
Next Steps
With subscriptions growing, this is an opportunity to assess whether you’d like to start a new store or offer recurring subscription products.
With any subscription model, thinking critically about your store and resources is important.
For example, will you have the logistical capacity to handle one-time and recurring products? How will you market these subscriptions to new consumers and past purchasers?
It’s important to remember that building a subscription model or moving to subscription products can be challenging, yet several tools (as mentioned here) can help you make the transition.
