Recharge Subscriptions Shopify App – Recurring Revenue for your Ecommerce Business

The Recharge subscriptions app for Shopify enables you to setup recurring orders and create a predictable revenue stream for your business.

Recharge is the leading subscription solution on the Shopify platform and as a result has the backing of a great community and proactive customer support.

The app is easy to use, flexible and feature-rich allowing you to launch engaging subscription offers in a short timeframe. And, in-app reporting and analytics helps you optimise your subscription products to maximise your recurring revenue.

ReCharge Subscription Payments

Summary

  1. Highlights
  2. Use cases
  3. Competitors and alternatives
  4. Plans and pricing
  5. Integrations
  6. Customer service
  7. Pros and cons
  8. Rating
  9. Conclusion
  10. FAQ

Highlights: Why Recharge Subscriptions?

One of the biggest opportunities to grow your eCommerce business is by increasing customer lifetime value.

Too often your customers will buy once and not come back to purchase again. One solution to this problem is to setup a subscription program and sell products on a recurring basis.

Developing a custom solution for your Shopify store would be expensive and time consuming. That’s where the Recharge Shopify app comes in.

Recharge fully integrates with Shopify and is hugely customisable allowing you to add a recurring revenue stream to your business with relative ease.

We built this custom Coffee Pods app for one of our agency clients:

Recharge Subscription - Custom App

And, the Recharge blog is an excellent resource for ideas on how to leverage the app. For example, there is a really interesting use case on a membership program, that you could apply to your ecommerce business.

Finally, if you’re using Shopify Payments, Recharge integrates perfectly.

And the best part – there’s no monthly fee! They take a small percentage of the transaction of each subscription order processed.


Recharge Use Cases

Recurring Deliveries

Classic recurring deliveries – these work great if you’re selling daily staples such as coffee, deodorant or grooming products.

Customers can decide on the delivery frequency, switch products, and add one-off products.

Recharge’s customer portal makes managing subscriptions a breeze and depending on your plan there are a number of ways of customising it to match your branding.

Something you should be aware of – it can be a little tricky for customers to add one-off products to their shipments as they’re not categorised so well.

It’s not a massive drawback, but just something to be conscious of. Here’s a grab:

Membership pricing

I’d never really thought of this before but it could be interesting for your business.

Recharge laid this use-case out on their blog.

Your customers sign up for a monthly subscription and they get store credit in exchange.

Now you’d have to make sure that it’s a good enough deal for the customer.

And if it’s a good enough deal then you need to make sure your margin is sufficient enough to cover the cost.

But then you’re not having to pay cash for every recurring order like you are for new customers.

Run the maths and see if this could work for your business!

Digital Subscriptions

It’s not an area that I’ve had personal experience in but if you’re in the digital products space the integration between Recharge and Klaviyo could be really interesting.

For example, say you have a digital magazine or content subscription, this could exist as a subscription product in Shopify.

Once someone purchases the product they get added to a list of ‘active magazine subscribers’ in Klaviyo.

Every month, when you send out your digital magazine you simply email these people with the content.

If someone stops their subscription Klaviyo will recognise it and remove them from the “active” list.

PS – as a separate thought you can ‘gate’ content in Shopify based on Customer Tags.

Let us know if you’d like a tutorial!


Competitors & Alternatives

Bold Subscriptions – An app from a well-established developer. Be careful of sneaky upsell and messy code injected into your site.

Appstle℠ Subscriptions – A large amount of positive reviews on the Shopify app store. I haven’t yet used it. Buy let us know if you’d like it reviewed.

Seal Subscriptions & Loyalty – European based operation with integrated build-a-box subscription functionality. Worth a look!


Recharge Plans & Pricing

Free Plan

Recharge starts with a $0 / month plan. They then charge 1% + $0.10 per transaction.

The free plan is a great way to get started.

But once you start getting to a few hundred subscribers, the basic analytics quickly become insufficient.

If you find yourself spending lots of time exporting multiple data sheets and blending them in Google Sheets, it’s probably time to upgrade to the Premium plan.

Premium Plan

Next up is the premium plan at $300 / month

For this, you’re paying for detailed analytics and advanced customisations.

The increased visibility of data and the multiple views save a huge amount of analysis time.

In addition you will still be charged per transaction which is slightly more than the basic plan at 1% + 19¢ per transaction


Integrations

Here are the main apps that integrate with Recharge

  • Klaviyo – Customer Retention, Email and SMS
  • ReBuy – Recommendations and Upselling
  • Gorgias – Customer Service
  • Google Analytics
  • MailChimp
  • Refersion
  • Yotpo Rewards

Be sure to check out the Integrations page on Recharge’s site for the most up to date list.


Support & Customer Service

We’ve found the customer service to be reactive and knowledgeable. Often we’ve had more technical questions and the Recharge team has answered well.

When I’ve had unclear answers it has most of the time been a lack of detail or poor explanation on my side.


Conclusion

Overall, the Recharge Shopify app is a great subscription tool for adding a recurring revenue stream to your eCommerce business.

Yes, there are a number of shortfalls and areas for improvements but overall it’s great value for money, especially on the free plan

I really like how you can build custom subscription apps and venture into the world of digital products and memberships.

The basic analytics are limited, but until you can justify the premium plan, exporting and analysing Google Sheets works fine.

If you’re a Shopify merchant I would seriously consider using Recharge for your subscription business.


Recharge Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Recharge Subscriptions Cost?

Recharge basic plan is $0 / month plan plus 1% + $10¢ per transaction.
The premium plan is $300 / month plus 1% + 19¢ per transaction.

The premium plan includes detailed analytics and advanced customisations.

How customisable is Recharge?

It’s very customisable and merchants have created unique and engaging ways to sell their subscription products.

Is Recharge payment legitimate?

Recharge has been going since 2014, has processed over $10B in orders and has over 15,000 merchants onboard. I’ve personally been using Recharge for just over 5 years can recommend it.

Where is Recharge Payments based?

Recharge is based in Santa Monica, California.
Here is there most recent address – 1507 20th St, Santa Monica, CA 90404, United States


ReCharge Subscription Review

ReCharge Review
  • Features
    (4)
  • Customisations
    (5)
  • Usability
    (5)
  • Support
    (4.5)
  • Value for Money
    (5)

Summary

Overall ReCharge Payments is a great subscription tool

Yes, there are a number of shortfalls and areas for improvements but overall it’s great value for money, especially on the free plan

If you’re a Shopify merchant I would seriously consider using ReCharge for your subscription business.

Pros

  • Great support
  • Infinite customisations
  • Clean install
  • Integration with Shopify Payments

Cons

  • Poor navigation for adding one-off-products
  • Basic plan analytics are limited
  • Requires creation of duplicated product
Overall
4.7