Shopify Subscriptions: A Major Step Backward for Business Users Shopify's subscription offering reveals a concerning lack of understanding of subscription management needs. After migrating over 2,000 subscriptions from our previous platform, we've encountered severe limitations that make this solution untenable for serious subscription businesses. The most egregious oversight is the complete absence of read-only API access to subscription data. Shopify's justification that this information is "too sensitive" for API access contradicts industry standards and their own practice of providing the same data via CSV download. This restriction severely hampers any business's ability to build robust reporting or integration systems. They want you to become a "Partner" and develop your own solution, vs Admin API endpoints. The data accessibility issues compound further: - The provided CSV exports only capture current state data, omitting crucial historical information like creation dates - There's no way to link orders with their corresponding subscriptions - The analytics suite lacks fundamental subscription metrics (expansion, contraction, churn, new subscriptions) The migration process itself is poorly implemented. While Shopify provides an import template, the system offers no meaningful error reporting or validation. Failed imports generate sporadic email notifications without actionable details, leaving teams to guess at composite key issues and other potential problems. After three weeks of migration efforts, multiple support tickets, and account representative meetings, it's clear Shopify has no serious intention of addressing these limitations. Their dismissive attitude toward feature requests suggests these problems won't be resolved anytime soon. The lack of API access to our own subscription data has proven to be a critical dealbreaker. For any business managing more than a handful of subscriptions or requiring proper analytics, I strongly advise looking elsewhere. This product appears designed for app normies with no reporting needs, falling far short of business requirements.

Application doesn't work. I created a plan, but tests didn't work well and clients couldn't use the application correctly as well...so basicly instead of buying a subscription, they ordered a single order.

I am looking to use Shopify's own Subscriptions app. Most of my subscriptions are fixed term e.g. once a month for a year. This app doesn't have ability to put in an end date. Very basic.

only works with new account setup, where users dont have passwords, instead a code is sent to their email every time. not to be funny, but not every customer wants to have to access their emails just to log in or shop. going to have to look for alternative subscription options and found lots of issues with it too, sadly.

The setup process is quite straightforward and user-friendly, which we appreciate. However, we have encountered several glitches, particularly with the subscription not updating from a two-month plan to a monthly one for our skincare products. Additionally, the subscription details are only visible in the footer. I have reached out to customer support, and it appears there is a bug affecting this functionality.

Doesn't work for products that are only subscription - i.e. a one time purchase is not an option. The documentation says it does this, but when you set it up as documented customers get a "Variant can only be purchased with a selling plan" error message and can not buy.

hay un problema de un código que aparece al final del template, que no logran explicar cómo resolverlo en la página de ayuda

Um, it works. Not a lot of customization, options for customers (like change billing/shipping date, add more products, etc) and lacking on analytics and retention capabilities. Best part is - it's free. If you are just getting started its a good app. We've been using it for about 6 months now and probably to the point of needing a more robust app that has more flexibility and features.

Can you make it possible to purchase subscriptions in person through the POS Go machine? It is nice having the option online for customers, but some customers would prefer to start their subscription in person at our store (Dog Daycare).

It's just about OK. We had (and continue to have) glitches moving across from Recharge (that got expensive). Really basic subscription stuff like a customer wanting to postpone an order by a few days just doesn't look possible. Even the support help couldn't do it. Having significant doubts about this after a time-consuming migration. Be careful of this app - if you need anything above a super-basic sub, it's unlikely to be what you want...

Do everyone a favor take this app down and rebuild it, it is not fit to be put on the shopify app store and is concerning it is allowed to be downloaded by its customers.

A bit limited at this time. We were hoping we could do a limited time subscription (for example: a 12 mo. plan), but that is not possible. We also were desiring to send a different product or product bundle each of those months, but you are limited to the same item(s) every month.

Needs to serious improvements. 1. If payment failed and customer updates their credit card there is no way customer can trigger and approve the payment again, they are left contacting us, we then cancel the subscription and then tell them to make a new one on the site. 2. Customer cant change or move the date, eg if they order every 6 weeks and want it to trigger at 5 weeks and reset the schedule from 6 weeks from manual payment they cant do it.

I am using to sell a software service. So I do not actually Delivery anything. But Shopify Subscriptions uses text such as: Delivery every 2 months, $XX flat rate I can not find an easy way to replace the word Delivery with Charge or other phrase. I think it would be better to let user to decide how to describe the subscription fee.

The app is functional and you can't beat the cost...but it leaves a lot to be desired from a subscription app, a few of the issues we've run into: -customers can't edit their subscriptions, so people have to cancel and resubscribe if they ever want to add items, or edit quantities - even if people wanted to 'shift' their subscription delay it by less time than skipping a whole shipment (they can only skip/pause/cancel and update billing info) -when recurring orders are generated, they commit the needed inventory, but when the order then goes through the process and gets fulfilled the committed inventory is stuck as committed and requires a lengthy support ticket to resolve - this is happening with every SKU variant on every subscription order so it very quickly becomes a phantom inventory commitment problem -There's no forecasting or upcoming order view, even if you export the contracts it exports in Shopify's variant ID (not our SKU#s or UPCs that we would need to cross reference for forecasting purposes) -There's no way to contact the current subscribers or a given item with a message or new item (i.e. one item is being discontinued and replaced with a like item that they'd likely want to subscribe to) -There's no setting/way to apply price change logic, if you have prices change, your current subscriptions are stuck at the old price unless you manually change each individual one (I understand how this might be a desired behavior, but that should at least be a setting or option "use current price" or "use original price") -The app auto-tags orders which is handy, but we have no control over what the tags are, the logic applied, or anything....it's stuck with what the developer set (and you can't even see/change it, you just have to guess based on observed behavior) Those are just a few of the pain points to managing it as we grow (for context we've been using this app since its 'early access' days and have several hundred active subscription contracts). But again....you can't beat the price.

Customer said they want to cancel their subscription, when I looked in my subscription app it shows I have 0 contracts. All this time I thought nobody wanted to subscribe. I wonder how many people think they have a subscription to my products but instead this app is not working and making me look like an idiot and more importantly losing long term customers. This makes my business look incompetent. This should be seamless seeing as Shopify's baseline business model is subscriptions.

Overall this is a great app that has had very few kinks. Just really wish there was a way for store owners to easily look ahead on future orders. This would allow operators to better prepare and create a more efficient fulfillment process