Quick summary
Merchants setting up or migrating subscription programmes on Shopify face meaningful differences in transaction fees, feature depth, and migration complexity across five main options. This post compares Recharge, Bold Subscriptions, Skio, Seal Subscriptions, and native Shopify Subscriptions on pricing, features, and best-fit merchant size so you can make the right call before you commit.
Merchants who add subscriptions to their Shopify store report an average of 30–40% increase in customer lifetime value within twelve months. The problem is not whether to offer subscriptions, it is which app to choose, because picking the wrong one costs you in transaction fees, stunted features, and a painful migration you did not plan for.
The five main options, Recharge, Bold Subscriptions, Skio, Seal Subscriptions, and Shopify's own native subscriptions, look similar on the surface. They are not. The differences in pricing structure, checkout integration, and feature depth have real consequences at different revenue levels.
What is Shopify's native subscription offering and is it enough?
Shopify launched its native subscription infrastructure in 2022. It works through the Subscriptions API and requires a compatible app to surface it in the merchant admin. On its own, "native Shopify Subscriptions" is not a standalone product, it is an infrastructure layer that third-party apps build on top of.
The closest thing to a native product is Shopify's own lightweight subscription interface, which handles basic recurring billing. It costs nothing in additional app fees and uses Shopify Payments natively, meaning no extra transaction fees if you are already on Shopify Payments.
What it lacks: dunning management, subscriber portals, upsell flows, prepaid options, bundle subscriptions, and analytics beyond basic order data. For merchants doing fewer than 50 active subscribers and selling a single SKU on a simple schedule, it can work. For anyone building a subscription-first business, it runs out of road quickly.
Verdict: Free, functional for simple setups, not suitable for growth-stage subscription merchants.
How does Recharge compare to the alternatives?
Recharge is the market leader. It processes over $5 billion in subscription revenue annually across more than 15,000 Shopify merchants. That scale brings real advantages: deep Shopify integration, a mature feature set, and a large ecosystem of certified partners who can handle complex migrations.
Pricing
- Standard plan: Free to install, 1% + 10 cents per transaction
- Pro plan: $99/month, 1% + 19 cents per transaction (adds analytics, API access, and priority support)
- Custom/Enterprise: Negotiated pricing, lower transaction fees, dedicated support
The transaction fee model means Recharge gets more expensive as your subscription revenue grows. A merchant doing £50,000/month in subscription revenue pays £500 in Recharge transaction fees on top of the plan cost. At £200,000/month, that is £2,000/month in fees.
Key features
- Subscriber portal where customers manage their own subscriptions (reduces support volume significantly)
- Dunning management with configurable retry schedules
- Prepaid subscriptions and prepay discounts
- Bundle subscriptions (mix-and-match products)
- Upsell and cross-sell flows within the subscriber portal
- Analytics dashboard with churn reporting, LTV by cohort, and MRR tracking
- Shopify Checkout integration (since 2022, Recharge moved off its own checkout to Shopify's native checkout)
Who Recharge is best for
Mid-market and enterprise merchants doing £20,000+ per month in subscription revenue who need the full feature stack and have the budget to pay higher transaction fees in exchange for capability and reliability.
Is Bold Subscriptions still a competitive option?
Bold Subscriptions had a difficult few years. It went through a major rebuild between 2021 and 2023, during which many merchants migrated away. The rebuilt Bold Subscriptions V2 is genuinely better, but Bold has lost significant market share and mindshare to Recharge and newer entrants.
Pricing
- Starts at $49.99/month + 1% transaction fee (or $199/month for the flat fee plan with no transaction fee)
- The flat fee plan at $199/month makes Bold competitive for merchants doing high subscription volume where a 1% fee would cost more
Key features
- Recurring subscriptions with flexible billing intervals
- Subscription boxes and curated box features
- Customer self-management portal
- Integration with Bold Upsell and Bold Loyalty for cross-sell within the Bold ecosystem
- Dunning and failed payment recovery
- Shopify Checkout integration
Who Bold is best for
Merchants already using Bold's wider product suite (Bold Upsell, Bold Loyalty) who want a unified ecosystem. Also good for high-volume merchants where the $199 flat fee plan beats per-transaction models.
Bold's weakness is that its third-party integration ecosystem is thinner than Recharge's, and migration support is more limited.
What makes Skio worth considering?
Skio launched in 2021 and positioned itself as the merchant-friendly alternative to Recharge: better UX, faster setup, and a subscriber portal that reduces churn without requiring developer work.
Pricing
- Growth plan: $299/month + 1% transaction fee
- Enterprise: Custom
Skio is more expensive at entry than Recharge's standard tier, which makes it unsuitable for merchants just getting started. But Skio's subscriber portal consistently receives higher ratings for ease of use, and the app has a strong focus on reducing involuntary churn through smarter dunning.
Key features
- Password-less subscriber portal (login via SMS or email, no account creation required — reduces portal abandonment)
- Smart dunning with ML-based retry logic
- Subscription analytics dashboard with churn analysis
- Shopify Checkout native integration
- A/B testing for subscription offers
- Prepaid subscriptions
Who Skio is best for
Growth-stage merchants spending £1,000+ per month on an app who want a subscriber experience that reduces churn without ongoing developer effort. Skio is particularly strong for DTC brands where subscriber experience is a meaningful brand differentiator.
Is Seal Subscriptions the right choice for smaller merchants?
Seal Subscriptions is the most affordable full-featured option. It is built entirely on Shopify's Subscriptions API and uses Shopify Checkout natively, which means the experience is seamless for both merchant and customer.
Pricing
- Free plan: Up to 150 subscribers, basic features
- Superseal plan: $4.95/month, up to 750 subscribers
- Rising Star plan: $7.95/month, unlimited subscribers, no transaction fees
- Legend plan: $20/month, includes advanced analytics and priority support
Seal Subscriptions charges no additional transaction fees on any paid plan. For a merchant doing £20,000/month in subscription revenue, that is £200/month in savings compared to a 1% fee model.
Key features
- Recurring subscriptions with flexible billing intervals
- Customer self-management portal
- Basic dunning and failed payment recovery
- Tiered discounts for longer subscription commitments
- Cancellation flow with retention offers
- Product swap and skip options for subscribers
- Loyalty rewards integration
What Seal Subscriptions lacks
Seal is lighter on analytics than Recharge or Skio. Cohort analysis, MRR dashboards, and churn forecasting are limited on lower-tier plans. It also has less flexibility for complex subscription models like boxes, prepaid gifting, or bundle subscriptions.
Who Seal Subscriptions is best for
Merchants just launching subscriptions, or those with straightforward subscription models (single product, one or two billing intervals) who want to avoid transaction fees. Seal Subscriptions is the strongest entry-level option in the market.
Comparing the five options side by side
| App | Starting cost | Transaction fee | Shopify Checkout | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native Shopify | Free | None (with Shopify Payments) | Yes | Simple, low-volume setups |
| Seal Subscriptions | Free | None on paid plans | Yes | Small to mid merchants, tight margins |
| Bold Subscriptions | $49.99/month | 1% (or $199/month flat) | Yes | Bold ecosystem users, high volume |
| Recharge | Free (1% fee) | 1% + $0.10 per transaction | Yes (since 2022) | Mid-market and enterprise |
| Skio | $299/month | 1% | Yes | Growth DTC brands, churn-focused |
How do you migrate from one subscription app to another?
Migration is the most underestimated challenge when switching apps. Active subscribers have payment methods tokenised to the outgoing app's payment gateway. Moving them without disruption requires the new app to either re-collect payment details or handle a token migration.
What a migration involves
- Export subscriber data: names, email addresses, products, billing intervals, next billing dates, discount codes
- Token migration: this is the critical step. Recharge, Bold, and Skio all support token migrations from each other in most cases, meaning existing subscribers do not need to re-enter payment details. Confirm this with the incoming app before you start
- Test environment: migrate a small cohort (10–20 subscribers) and run them through a billing cycle before migrating the full list
- Communication: email subscribers before the migration date, even if nothing visible changes for them. Unexplained changes to billing statements cause unnecessary support queries and cancellations
- Failed payment handling: some subscriptions will fail on the first post-migration billing cycle. Have your dunning sequence configured before launch
Migration complexity scales with subscriber volume and product complexity. A 500-subscriber list migrating from Seal to Recharge can be done in a day. A 10,000-subscriber list with bundle subscriptions, multiple discount tiers, and prepaid commitments requires a planned project with testing time.
Which subscription app is right for your revenue level?
Under 200 active subscribers
Start with Seal Subscriptions on the free or £7.95 plan. Avoid paying transaction fees at low volume. Learn what your subscribers actually need before committing to a higher-cost platform.
200–2,000 active subscribers
Seal Subscriptions still works at this range if your subscription model is straightforward. If you need better analytics, cancellation flow testing, or complex product configurations, move to Recharge Standard. The 1% transaction fee is meaningful but manageable.
2,000+ active subscribers
At this level, the per-transaction fee model starts to bite. Run the numbers: if Recharge or Skio's transaction fees exceed £300–500/month compared to a flat-rate alternative, migration to Bold's flat fee plan or Skio's fixed-cost structure may make sense. Skio's churn-reduction features can also pay for the higher monthly cost at scale.
Key actions to take now
- Calculate your current or projected subscription revenue per month and model the fee impact across each app's pricing structure
- If you are starting from scratch, install Seal Subscriptions on the free plan and validate demand before committing to a paid platform
- If you are already on Recharge and approaching £30,000+ per month in subscription revenue, run the numbers on whether a flat-fee alternative saves more than the migration cost
- If subscriber churn is your main problem, Skio's dunning and portal features are worth the higher price for growth-stage merchants
- Before any migration, confirm token migration support directly with the incoming app's team — do not assume it is available
Frequently Asked Questions
Do Shopify subscription apps work with Shopify Payments?
Yes. All the apps listed here support Shopify Payments and use Shopify's native checkout. Recharge moved to this model in 2022. Seal Subscriptions is built on the Shopify Subscriptions API, so it is native by design. Bold and Skio also integrate with Shopify Checkout. Using Shopify Payments avoids Shopify's additional transaction fee (0.5–2% depending on your plan tier), which is separate from the subscription app's own fee.
Can you offer a free trial with subscriptions?
Yes. Recharge, Bold, and Skio all support trial periods as part of the subscription offer. Seal Subscriptions supports a first-order discount rather than a true trial, so the mechanic is slightly different. Make sure your terms clearly state when the first paid billing date is, or you will get a wave of cancellations and chargebacks from customers who did not realise they were signing up for ongoing billing.
How do failed payments affect subscription revenue?
Failed payments are one of the biggest drivers of involuntary churn. Industry benchmarks suggest 5–10% of subscription charges fail on the first attempt due to expired cards, insufficient funds, or bank declines. Without dunning (automated retry logic), these translate directly into lost revenue. All the apps compared here include dunning, but the sophistication varies. Skio's ML-based retry logic is the strongest. Seal's dunning covers the basics. Configure your dunning sequence before your first billing cycle, not after your first wave of failures.
How long does a subscription app migration take?
For a small merchant (under 500 subscribers, simple product setup), expect two to four days from planning to launch. For larger operations, budget two to four weeks to include data export, token migration testing, subscriber communication, and a parallel billing cycle test. The migration itself is rarely the slow part, finding the right window to switch without disrupting active billing cycles is.