We build subscription programs on Recharge, Stay.ai, Skio and Ordergroove. We are a technology partner of all four and we sell none of them, which means the platform recommendation you get from us is not a commission.
Most comparison content on this topic is published by subscription platforms or by agencies with partner links. It is worth knowing who wrote what you are reading.
Under roughly $10,000 in monthly subscription revenue, use Shopify Subscriptions — it’s free and it works. Above that, the choice between Recharge, Stay.ai, Skio and Ordergroove turns on per-order fees against your order count rather than on features, which are close to parity.
The biggest hidden risk in switching platforms is payment token portability. If tokens can’t transfer, every subscriber has to re-authorize their card, and you create your own churn event. Confirm the pathway in writing before you commit.
Pricing verified August 2026. Projects from $20,000. Typical build 4–8 weeks.
A Shopify subscriptions setup is the configuration and engineering that turns one-time products into recurring ones: selling plans on the products, a subscriber portal customers can actually use, dunning logic for failed payments, cadence rules matched to how fast each product is consumed, and retention flows triggered by subscription events. The app is the smallest part.
Shopify has native subscription support through selling plans, and Shopify Subscriptions is free. The paid platforms exist for what sits on top: portal experience, cancel flows, upsell logic, analytics and dunning. Which one you need depends on your subscription revenue, not on which has the best marketing.
Under roughly $10,000 in monthly subscription revenue, use Shopify Subscriptions, which is free. Above that, the choice turns on fee structure against your order count rather than on features, which are close to parity. Per-order fees are the line item that surprises people.
| Platform | Listed pricing, verified August 2026 | Strongest at |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify Subscriptions | Free | Getting started, under $10k/mo |
| Recharge | $25/mo first 50 subscribers (net-new merchants only, App Store listing only); Starter $99/mo + 1.49% + 19¢; Plus $499/mo + 1.34% + 19¢ | Scale, deepest Klaviyo integration |
| Stay.ai | $499/mo + 1% + 19¢/order; Enterprise $1,499/mo + custom | AI-driven churn prediction |
| Skio | $599/mo, or $499 annual, + 1% + 20¢/order; Enterprise $1,499/mo + custom | Passwordless subscriber portal |
| Ordergroove | Custom | Enterprise and multi-channel |
Do the per-order arithmetic before the feature comparison. At 10,000 subscription orders a month, a 20 cent per-order fee is $2,000 on top of the platform fee. That is usually a bigger number than the difference between the platforms.
One note on Recharge’s entry tier. The $25/month plan appears only on Recharge’s Shopify App Store listing, not on its own pricing page, and it’s limited to merchants who installed after 9 February 2026, capped at 50 active subscribers. If you’re evaluating it as a cheap entry point, confirm you qualify.
Platforms we don’t build on. Loop Subscriptions and Smartrr are credible alternatives — both charge no per-order fee, which matters at high order volume. We don’t currently build on either, so we can’t quote you for them. If the modelling points that direction, we’ll tell you rather than steer you to a platform we do build on.
Recharge acquired Skio on 30 April 2026 for $105 million in cash, reported by TechCrunch and PR Newswire. Skio was at roughly $32 million ARR at the time. Skio continues to operate as a distinct product, but roadmap consolidation is widely expected within one to two years.
If you’re choosing a platform for a three-year horizon, that open question is part of the decision rather than a footnote.
Two practical consequences. Skio is no longer an independent bet, which matters if you chose it specifically to avoid Recharge. And the field of independents at that tier has narrowed — Stay.ai remains independent, as do Loop and Smartrr, which we don’t build on but which belong on your shortlist if vendor independence is a priority for you.
Acquired platforms have historically consolidated pricing upward rather than downward. If you’re on Skio today, document your current terms.
Not always, and this is the single most important question in any subscription platform migration.
Shopify Payments normally requires subscribers to re-authorize a stored payment method when it moves between platforms. Apps that support the Shopify native vault can transfer payment tokens without re-authorization. Which pathway applies to your specific move determines whether you keep your subscribers or lose a chunk of them.
This is why platform switching costs more than the software difference suggests, and why brands stay on a platform longer than the math justifies.
Confirm the pathway before you commit to a migration, not after. We check it with both vendors in writing during scoping, because the answer varies by source platform, destination platform and gateway. Getting it wrong means a re-authorization email to every subscriber and a churn event you created yourself.
Commonly cited industry estimates put 20% to 40% of subscription churn in the involuntary category caused by failed payments rather than by customers deciding to leave. Most brands optimize the cancel flow and ignore dunning, which means they are working on the smaller half of the problem. Expired cards, insufficient funds and bank declines are recoverable with retry logic, pre-dunning notification and card updater services.
The rest of the churn work is more familiar: cadence that matches actual consumption, a portal where skipping takes under ten seconds, and a reason to stay that is not a discount.
Before you shop for a new platform, test annual prepay. Across DTC categories, twelve-month retention on annual plans runs roughly double that of monthly. It’s the highest-impact retention lever available and it’s platform-agnostic. It costs you nothing but a pricing decision.
One cadence point worth stating plainly. Skincare replenishes on a four to eight week cycle depending on the product, food and supplements differ again, and a single global cadence setting is wrong for most catalogues. Cadence belongs in a metafield on the product rather than in the app’s defaults.
We model the all-in monthly cost at your actual order volume across all four platforms, then recommend. We are a partner of each and take no commission on the choice.
Subscription options on the right products with the right cadences, including prepaid subscriptions where customers pay upfront for a set number of deliveries, pay-as-you-go where that fits better, and discount structures that do not fight your other promotions. Prepaid changes your cash flow and your retention math — twelve-month retention on prepaid plans runs substantially higher than monthly, which is why it’s worth configuring properly rather than leaving off.
Skip, swap, pause and cancel in under ten seconds on mobile, with passwordless or magic-link login. If skipping is hard, subscribers call support and your churn math gets worse.
Retry schedules, pre-dunning notification, card updater. This is the 20% to 40% of churn most programs never address.
Subscription events wired into Klaviyo as named triggers: upcoming charge, skip, pause, cancellation, failed payment, reactivation. Recharge has the deepest native Klaviyo integration in the category. See our Klaviyo email marketing for Shopify work.
A three-step routine as one subscription with several items on different cadences, not three separate subscriptions. Common in beauty and skincare brands on Shopify.
Moving between subscription platforms, with payment token pathway confirmed in writing before we start and every active subscriber reconciled against the source system before cutover.
Where none of the four platforms does what you need. See custom app development.
Most Solo Media Group design-and-build projects start at around $20,000, quoted as a line-item estimate. Retainers start at 20-hour engagements or $3,000 per month, at $150 per hour. Subscription platform fees are paid directly to the platform and are separate from our fees.
| Factor | Effect on cost |
|---|---|
| New program vs platform migration | Migrations add token pathway work and subscriber reconciliation |
| Number of active subscribers | Reconciliation scales with subscriber count |
| Bundle or routine subscriptions | Multi-item contracts on differing cadences add build time |
| Custom portal work | Beyond what the platform ships |
| Dunning and recovery configuration | Often the highest return work on the project |
| Klaviyo flow build | Subscription events wired to lifecycle flows |
Billing runs against milestones with net 15 invoicing, agreed in the statement of work before work begins. Full rates and platform costs: Shopify Plus cost.
On the published ranges. Operator-reported figures put subscription platform migrations at roughly $8,000 to $15,000 for the platform work alone. If your program is straightforward and your subscriber count is low, that range or a platform’s own included migration service is the right answer, and we will say so.
A new subscription program takes four to eight weeks from scoping to launch. A platform migration typically runs two to four weeks for the data move, plus reconciliation and a parallel period before you switch anything off.
Migrations should never be judged on the transfer alone. The subscriber-facing part, meaning the first renewal cycle after cutover, is where problems surface. We reconcile the first full cycle by hand.
Eight stages, in order. Payment token pathway is confirmed in writing before anything moves.
Subscriber count, subscription GMV, current platform, gateway, and what is actually wrong. Payment token pathway confirmed with both vendors in writing.
All-in monthly cost at your order volume across the four platforms, plus Shopify Subscriptions if you are near the threshold.
Selling plans, cadences, discounts, portal.
Retry logic, pre-dunning, card updater.
Subscription events into Klaviyo.
Contracts, tokens, billing dates, grandfathered pricing, discounts, order history. Reconciled subscriber by subscriber.
Both systems reconciled through one full renewal cycle before anything is turned off.
Support window on original scope, then retainer.
Who works on your project: a Shopify solution engineer on architecture, engineers on the platform and portal work, a Klaviyo specialist on retention flows, and a project lead. The same team throughout.
Wild Planet Foods. Subscription platform work alongside a WordPress to Shopify migration, plus SEO crawls and fixes through the transition.
Time4Learning. Subscription platform work delivered alongside their in-house engineering team through a migration to Shopify.
Food and beverage · Subscriptions and replatform
Food and beverage · Subscriptions and replatform
Education · Subscriptions with in-house engineering
Education · Subscriptions with in-house engineering
Beauty · Custom bundle builder
Beauty · Custom bundle builder
Food and beverage · Redesign and migration
Food and beverage · Redesign and migration
Colour cosmetics · Variant architecture
Colour cosmetics · Variant architecture
Education · Complex product backend
Education · Complex product backend
Education · Complex product backend
Education · Complex product backend
Apparel · DTC and wholesale
Apparel · DTC and wholesale
It depends on subscription revenue and order count rather than features, which are close to parity. Under roughly $10,000 monthly subscription revenue, use Shopify Subscriptions, which is free. Above that, Recharge suits scale and has the deepest Klaviyo integration, Stay.ai leads on churn prediction, Skio on portal experience, and Ordergroove on enterprise and multi-channel. Loop Subscriptions and Smartrr are credible alternatives with no per-order fee, though we don’t build on either.
As listed in August 2026: Recharge from $25 per month for the first 50 subscribers on a restricted entry tier, rising to $499 plus 1.34% plus 19 cents per transaction on Plus. Stay.ai at $499 per month plus 1% plus 19 cents per order. Skio at $599 per month, or $499 annual, plus 1% plus 20 cents per order. Both Stay.ai and Skio list Enterprise at $1,499 per month plus custom. Verify current pricing directly, as these move.
Yes. Recharge acquired Skio on 30 April 2026 for $105 million in cash, reported by TechCrunch and PR Newswire. Skio was at roughly $32 million ARR at the time. It continues as a distinct product, with roadmap consolidation widely expected within one to two years.
Not necessarily. Shopify Payments normally requires re-authorization when a stored payment method moves between platforms, but apps supporting the Shopify native vault can transfer tokens without it. The answer varies by source platform, destination platform and gateway, so confirm the pathway in writing with both vendors before committing.
Two to four weeks for the data transfer, plus reconciliation and a parallel period. Judge it on the first full renewal cycle after cutover rather than on the transfer itself, since that is where billing date and pricing problems surface.
Commonly cited estimates put 20% to 40% of subscription churn in the involuntary category — failed payments rather than cancellations. Most brands optimize the cancel flow and never build dunning, which means they are working on the smaller half. Retry logic, pre-dunning notification and card updater services recover a meaningful share of it.
Test annual prepay before changing anything else. Across DTC categories, twelve-month retention on annual plans runs roughly double monthly, and it works on any platform. After that, dunning and payment recovery typically return more than cancel-flow optimization.
Yes. Shopify Subscriptions is free and uses native selling plans. It handles straightforward recurring purchases well. Paid platforms add portal experience, cancel flows, upsell logic, analytics and dunning, which start to matter above roughly $10,000 in monthly subscription revenue.
We are a technology partner of Recharge, Stay.ai, Skio and Ordergroove, and we take no commission on the choice. The recommendation comes from modelling all-in monthly cost at your actual order volume. Most comparison content on this topic is published by subscription platforms or partner-linked agencies, which is worth knowing when reading it.
Yes, and it should be one subscription with several items rather than several subscriptions. A three-step skincare routine on differing cadences is one contract. This is common in beauty and supplements and it is a build decision rather than a setting.
Yes. Upcoming charge, skip, pause, cancellation, failed payment and reactivation all pass into Klaviyo as named events that trigger flows and update segments. Recharge has the deepest native Klaviyo integration in the category, available on all its plans.
Yes. Prepaid subscriptions, where a customer pays upfront for a set number of deliveries, are supported through Shopify selling plans and by all four platforms we build on. They improve cash flow and typically retain better than pay-as-you-go, but they need careful configuration around discounts, cadence, and what happens at the end of the prepaid term.
