Choosing the right subscription solution for your business

We’ve built our fair share of subscription services, some simple, some seriously complex. Here’s a breakdown of your options, from plug-and-play solutions to bespoke builds so you can choose what’s best for your business. 

Platform-native capabilities 

With subscriptions being so popular, it’s no wonder that some platforms offer native subscription capabilities, allowing businesses to manage recurring orders directly within their existing systems. For retailers that want to explore subscriptions that will fully be integrated into their ecommerce tech stack at the lowest cost, your ecommerce platform might already have what you need.  

Shopify offers a built-in subscription app, included in your license. It’s turnkey and comes with an admin console, subscription UI, and APIs for extensions. 

SAP Commerce Cloud has its own model toward recurring orders in the form of replenishment orders that are automatically fulfilled based on a preset schedule. 

Adobe Commerce and BigCommerce are born in the realm of payment management, billing platforms that can tackle recurring billing often provide advanced capabilities for handling subscriptions. 

Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers billing capabilities within its broader ecosystem. 

Off-the-shelf subscription engines 

Need something a little more advanced, but still want speed and scalability? These plug-and-play solutions are purpose built for subscriptions. As subscriptions require a unique set of capabilities, many retailers have opted to utilise specialist applications that are either built on top of their ecommerce platform. 

Recharge is a leading subscription management solution offering end-to-end capabilities. Built for Shopify and BigCommerce, Recharge handles everything from offer management to retention. Pricing is based on a percentage of your subscription revenue. 

Ordergroove is a platform agnostic challenger in this market. Known for its scalability and rich promotional engine, it has built-in integrations to most ecommerce platforms while providing a rich set of APIs for custom integrations. 

These tools offer an intuitive experience and deep integration with your ecommerce platform. They’re your go-to if convenience is what you're after, only downside being their license cost. 

Billing Platforms: Powerful, but not plug-and-play 

A similar alternative is billing platforms which can be born from billing management and payment workflow. This platform goes deep into billing logic and subscription complexity. 

Maxio was born from the merge between SaasOptics and Chargify, Maxio has a unique set of capabilities, mixing Chargify’s Saas subscription expertise with more advanced revenue recognition and financial reporting. It’s big on finance features but light on native ecommerce integration. 

Chargebee was born in the SME market, Chargebee is flexible and integration-heavy. Able to handle complex workflows and has a pricing structure that includes a flat monthly rate up to a revenue threshold. 

Stripe Billing is an extension of Stripe’s payment platform designed for handling subscription products and recurring billing. It has unique payment handling and recovery features inherited from its payment DNA. It’s sleek, payments-first, and packed with smart retry features and hosted checkout options. 

Billing platforms may be more complex to deploy than off-the-shelf subscription plugins, but they do provide more advanced capabilities around payment workflows and usage pricing, revenue recognition and analytics. These solutions are perfect if you’ve got multi-layered billing logic or if your architecture needs a subscription engine that’s fully decoupled from your ecommerce stack. 

Bespoke subscription engines 

Sometimes off-the-shelf just won’t cut it. Whether it’s highly specific workflows or just needing something lightweight, going bespoke gives you full control. Ecommerce platforms such as Adobe Commerce and SAP Commerce Cloud are built to be extended and can easily support custom subscription modules. 

For platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce, they will require the bespoke subscription engine to sit in an external application that can be built on a separate middleware service that communicates with the ecommerce website. Whatever the option, the key is calculating the total cost of ownership. What you save in dev hours using plug-ins may get eaten up by hefty transaction fees down the line. 

It all comes down to priorities 

Need something fast and integrated? Go native or off-the-shelf. Looking for deeper control over billing and payments? Billing platforms are your friend, and if you're building something completely unique, go bespoke. 

Want to figure out the best-fit model for your business? Drop us a line.