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Since it launched back in 2006, Shopify has become famous for making it as easy as possible for business owners to build and operate websites that are as user-friendly as they are profitable.
But while Shopify comes with a ton of functionality “out of the box”, there’s one essential element you’ll have to add on your own if you really want to see your profits reach their full potential.
Adding the right Shopify subscription app to your website means enjoying ongoing profits from recurring billing without doing more work or – in many cases – taking on more overhead.
But which subscription app is the best choice for your Shopify website?
While there are countless subscription billing platforms on the market, in this post, we’re going to specifically focus on the best apps for Shopify sites.
So, if you’re ready to reap the benefits of recurring billing ASAP, here are the best 14 apps for the job.
At Dominate, we really believe that one of the most important ways eCommerce business owners can improve their revenues is by offering subscriptions to their customers. While building traffic to your Shopify site is essential, it’s just as important that you make the most of each click that comes to your site.
And that’s why we made our Shopify subscription plugin as easy-as-possible for business owners to install and start using right away. You definitely don’t need to be a technical whiz to benefit from Dominate ASAP.
So, whether you own a Fortune 500 company or are currently a business-of-one, this subscription plugin is the perfect method for receiving recurring payments from your customers – without any headaches (or even overhead).
That’s right.
The Dominate Subscription Plugin is completely free.
Even better, it will always be free to maintain and update, too, because we built it on the cloud. So, our team takes care of any upgrades that ever need to happen. You just stay focused on enjoying your new recurring revenue streams.
Of course, we also appreciate that most business owners don’t want a one-size-fits-all solution for ANY aspect of their websites, much less one as important – and potentially profitable – as their subscriptions.
This is why our subscription plugin places such an emphasis on customization.
Choose your plan’s pricing:
Or any other option that makes sense.
Decide on the billing cycle you want to use (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly, etc.), when it starts, if/when it stops, or even if you want your customer’s subscription to start at some future date.
And no matter what kind of subscription plan – or plans – you decide to create, you can run all of them from the same dashboard you’re already using. We built our plugin on PayPal Commerce, which means you can just use your normal business’s PayPal account to manage every aspect of your new subscription service.
Finally, while this article is strictly about Shopify subscription apps, we’ve actually made four different versions of our subscription plugin for each of the most popular eCommerce platform. So, in case you have other sites, we also have three other versions:
Not running your website on one of these popular eCommerce platforms?
No problem.
Just contact us and we’ll walk you through how you can install Dominate on your site – even if you coded yourself from scratch.
Before we move on to the next subscription plugins on this list, let’s quickly run through what makes Dominate so special.
Our app is:
As we already mentioned, Dominate is 100% free.
So, even though we’ve packed it with powerful features that will make it as easy as possible to turn customers into subscribers, it won’t cost you a penny to download, install, and start using our plugin.
Ongoing strives to make subscriptions easy with ongoing automatic payments. This is a big plus for loyal customers who do not want to go through a monthly re-ordering process.
With Ongoing, your customers can:
As a business owner, leveraging these features means streamlining the entire billing process. It also makes it easier to set financial projections and plan budget spending. Ongoing's unique value proposition is its creative discount incentives.
You can offer subscriptions as a set price, percentage discount, or monetary deduction. This motivates consumers to sign up if they purchase from you regularly.
Ongoing has a free and paid subscription plan. The free "standard" plan charges a 2% transaction fee for every subscription. On the free plan, after your first $1,000 in subscription sales, 1% is added.
The enterprise plan is $299 a month. Quite a jump from the free plan, but it only has a 1% transaction fee and comes with more features. In addition to the standard plan, you get API access, purchase order info, custom fulfillment, advanced analytics, and VIP customer support.
PayWhirl is dedicated to helping subscription-based businesses, which is why they focus on doing one single thing really, really well: offering flexible recurring payment options on your site.
With PayWhirl, automatic billing can be set to any schedule. PayWhirl is compatible with several different payment solutions. It only takes minutes to set up on the backend.
Customers can easily choose their preferred subscription option. They sign up for recurring orders on a schedule that best suits their needs.
PayWhirl has more tiers than most apps. Their four plans are mentioned below:
PayWhirl does offer a free 14-day trial so you can try it before you buy!
Recharge is one of the most used subscription apps for Shopify. It has over 1,000 reviews (which is a lot for a Shopify app). Well-known brands like Bokksu and LOLA use Recharge for their subscription-based services.
One of the best features about Recharge is how it lets customers easily and quickly adjust their subscriptions at any time. From their mobile devices, they can add a one-time purchase or elect to skip a shipment altogether.
Giving the customer autonomy over their purchasing power makes them more likely to subscribe, knowing the plan is flexible and can change at any time.
The one downside of Recharge is you need CSS skills to configure the app to match your theme.
Recharge has two plans: a paid and free option.
The standard tier is free with a 1% transaction fee, plus $00.10.
The pro plan is $300 a month with a 1% transaction fee, plus an additional $00.19.
Recurpay prides itself on an easy and simple setup. With Recurpay, you can start collecting recurring payments in minutes. It also features a customizable and multi-lingual portal which is a huge plus if you have a diverse customer demographic.
Recurpay is a great choice if you have a large international customer base as it is available in over 40 countries.
The plan is completely free forever.
Seal Subscriptions is a relatively popular subscription app with almost 500 Shopify reviews. The configuration is quick and easy. With this app, customers have the authority to self-manage their subscriptions.
This means less work for you on the backend as there are fewer customer service requests.
Seal integrates with many analytics like Google, Bundler, Pagefly, and Klaviyo. They also offer the ability to add loyalty gifts and discounts for recurring customers.
Seal Subscriptions offers four plans. They all have 0% transactions fees, which is a big plus compared to competitors:
Subscription & Recurring Order’s name pretty much sums up the app's features. The unique thing about this app is it has no tiers and is currently free to all users.
They have flexible subscription customization on the backend and automatic subscriptions for scale.
As I mentioned, Subscription & Recurring Order is completely free. It doesn’t even have tiers, so you’ll get the same access to all of its features as every other company that uses it, regardless of your budget.
Native Subscriptions seamlessly integrates with your Shopify store admin. The subscription model is customizable, allowing you to make something that suits your brand and customers.
Native works with Shopify 2.0 themes. It comes with the ability to survey consumers who stop subscriptions. This unique "cancellation reason" feature provides insights on why a subscriber is dropping.
It provides the opportunity to learn and improve.
Native has a free standard plan that charges a 1% transaction fee on all orders and supports unlimited subscriptions. No matter how many subscriptions you receive, Native will never charge you more than $49/month for their free plan.
The pro plan is $25 a month or $250 annually. It has 0% transaction fees and unlimited subscription orders.
Subscriptions by YotPo is designed to install quickly and with ease, so you can scale your subscriptions fast. You can easily start selling subscriptions in a few minutes and YotPo's 24/7 live chat support is always there to assist you.
The intuitive self-management feature empowers consumers to take control of their subscriptions. They can easily make any adjustments through the customer portal. YotPo also has features to nurture loyal customers into subscribers.
If you've been looking for a new subscription app, YotPo offers seamless migration from other subscription apps. Their safe and secure migration is imperceptible to customers.
The app is completely free to install. Once you reach your first $500 in subscription sales, you'll get charged 1% per transaction.
Recurring Membership Payments brands itself more as a wholesale membership subscription plan, similar to Costco or BJ's Wholesale.
The app is from AAAeCommerce and functions similarly to an Amazon Prime membership. This app offers a subscription portal that unlocks access to members' unique benefits.
It’s unique to retailers that want to create wholesale portals with discounted pricing, larger order options, or faster, automatic shipments. Recurring Membership Payments does this by limiting product and collection pages to members only.
The one downside to this app is that it is not yet integrated into Shopify's checkout system. You can accept payments via PayPal or Stripe within your portal, which works for recurring automatic payments.
After the seven-day free trial, the pricing for their plans are as follows:
Appstle is up there with Recharge as one of the most used and most reviewed subscription apps. Currently, it has about 1300 reviews and counting.
They refer to themselves as the "go-to" for subscription services.
Among other things, customers can combine their subscription purchases with one-time purchases, creating an easy point of sale checkout. Appstle also gives you a full control panel for sellers over the subscription service.
The app offers a 30-day free trial. After that, you can continue on the free plan. Or you can switch to the following paid plans below:
Bold enables you to set your subscriptions up for easy scaling. A unique feature of Bold is its self-manageable delivery options. Customers are a big fan of this feature as they can adjust as needed.
This app has been around since 2014, so it is a long-standing subscription app. Bold offers seamless migration and integration. You can even use their advanced features that integrate with Alexa voice and SMS as you scale.
Bold has a 60-day free trial. After that, there is one plan known as Bold Core. It is $49.99/month, plus the 1% transaction fee.
Loop offers subscriptions, autopay, recharges, and repurchases. The comprehensive app has migrated over 200 brands. There is also dunning management, which automates email and SMS notifications.
These tools help reduce payment failures by nearly 50%. You can create as many unique subscription options for customers as you want and then they can pick the best one for them. This empowers you to create something that works for you and them.
The $499 a month is the most expensive plan on this list, but it does come with custom engineering as needed and API and webhooks assistance.
Charge Rabbit securely, safely, and easily integrates with your Shopify store to offer subscriptions and recurring payments. The app is user-friendly on both ends.
Charge Rabbit has a free plan or a startup plan for $75 a month. They also have a more advanced professional plan for $250 a month.
If you run your company’s website on Shopify, you already know what an amazing platform it is for growing your online business.
And yet, one simple addition could still dramatically change the trajectory of your company’s revenue.
Now that you know which subscription apps are best for Shopify, make the right decision for your unique business and get ready to see your profits immediately skyrocket.
