As an advancing business model, Subscription is being applied by many retailers, mostly in the eCommerce field owing to its benefits. Do you know the various advantages of selling eCommerce subscription services? There’s more than one. It can help the merchants to gain the loyalty of their customers, amplify marketing options, improve financial speculating capacities, and it is more convenient for the customers. If you are interested in business models and want to focus on eCommerce subscription services, you must be wondering what are the best subscription eCommerce platforms?
What you will be getting from the best eCommerce subscription service platforms are the aids that you will need to successfully sell your online subscriptions. You might sell either digital or physical products, but you will need assistance with the payments in progress, customer relationship management, and so on.
Some Basic Features That a Subscription eCommerce Platform Must Have
Now let’s see what are the basic features a subscription eCommerce platform must have –
- Making and managing subscriptions.
- Automatic collection of payments from subscribers regularly.
- Permit the subscription holders to extend or cancel their subscriptions.
But maybe you are still left with the thought what are the best subscription eCommerce platforms? Let’s find out the answers.
7 Best Subscription eCommerce Platforms
1. WooCommerce
There’s no doubt that WordPress is the top website builder that has over 1.3 billion websites, which results in WooCommerce Subscriptions being the most famous tool to bring subscription capacities quickly to your website. WooCommerce Subscriptions, however, is not an autonomous system but is linked to WordPress. Having a WordPress website is a must in case you want to install WooCommerce Subscription. Even though WordPress is a free content management system, WooCommerce will charge you an amount of $199 annually if you want access to all its features. WooCommerce helps you to offer your customers various payment ways, and variable subscription options, it also provides an automatic payment mode and will let you keep a track of your active subscriptions, cancelations, and more.
2. Magento
You have to set up an extension from Magento MarketPlace to make Magento a subscription eCommerce platform. Even though no charges are levied for Magento Open source, you need to pay for hosting a website just like WooCommerce. You must be wondering how much you have to pay to install the Magento extension. It’s $249 and an additional $50 as the installation fee. You only need to pay once, there’s no necessity to renew your payment. Magento allows subscribers to reorder products automatically, offers a free trial to customers, also allows subscribers to renew, or cancel subscriptions, etc.
3. Recurly
At present, many companies globally are using Recurly to control and develop their subscription businesses which are growing rapidly. It provides amazing features that help to boost revenue for subscription companies. Recurly offers more than one plan, with extended features. The core plan will cost you $199 per month, and if you want to incorporate more subscribers, add more payment gateways, contact their sales team and get a customized plan. Do you know that Recurly will let you create unlimited plans, offer free trials, and so on? Recurly supports around 16 payment gateways in the US. In the case of international sales, you can easily check which payment gateways are available. Recurly offers 5 different billing methods, and it has an automated invoice-creating system for all billing purposes.
4. Shopify
Technically, Shopify isn’t a subscription eCommerce platform as it doesn’t have any built-in subscription features, but the Shopify App Store does provide a good number of Shopify apps that allows you to search for this function. You must be wondering what you have to do to sell Shopify subscriptions. Well initially, you need to create a Shopify store. After a free trial, you have to select a plan to make the payment. Shopify provides 3 tiers of pricing plans. Bold Subscriptions and Subscriptions by ReCharge are Shopify apps widely suggested for a subscription. Bold Subscriptions help retailers who are selling orders at regular intervals. Subscription by ReCharge is equally famous for its all-inclusive subscription resolution.
5. BigCommerce
It is a user-friendly and popular eCommerce platform, even though it doesn’t have a built-in subscription feature, you can easily add an app that will help you to sell and process your payments regularly. You can also provide a BNPL option to your customers. BigCommerce offers a free trial as well for 15 days after which you can choose from their three paid plans, prices ranging from $29.95 – $299.95 / month. Other BigCommerce features include various payment methods, easy installation, customized payment options, discounts, recurring billing functions, and more.
6. Wix
The best platform for startups, which is user-friendly and offers various advanced features to increase subscription sales like flexible purchase options, auto-renewals, and customization is also available. Creating a Wix website won’t cost you anything, but to use eCommerce functions, you’ll be asked to pay around $23-$49/month. Higher-priced plans guarantee subscription sales. Wix provides four payment gateways that allow recurring payments. If you are just getting started with your business, Wix is the most affordable option for you.
7. Subbly
Subbly focuses on the subscription business as it is essentially a subscription eCommerce platform. You can effortlessly combine Subbly’s checkout to your existing eCommerce store which can be on Shopify, Wix, or WordPress, or you can build your online store with Subbly from scratch as well. Subbly provides various features like flexibility in billing for subscriptions, smooth shipping, offers discounts and coupons to customers that will help let them subscribe and buy your products, and Subbly also provides CRM for customer management, orders, and other information on subscriptions. They even offer templates for subscription sites that can match your brand and its overall design.
The Takeaway
Each eCommerce subscription platform has some pros and cons. The platforms that provide comprehensive subscription options like Subbly, will generally have fewer features than Magento, Wix, or Shopify. What you initially need to do is find out what is the most suitable subscription eCommerce Platform for your business that will be beneficial to your future plans, to sum up, Shopify helps to grow a business at a quick pace, and WooCommerce is best for high-risk taking industries, BigCommerce provides a user-friendly experience to the customers, Wix is best for those who are starting their business. Hence, you must focus on your needs and choose the platform which will be beneficial for you.
