The Best Subscription Management Software For Your Business

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Last updated:  August 3, 2022 eCommerce   

The subscription business model has many advantages. After all, who wouldn’t want regular recurring income? But there can be a lot of time and work needed to ensure that your subscription processes work efficiently and securely.

Fortunately, there are many subscription management tools available that can optimize your online store’s subscription processes, leaving you free to focus on your business growth. Let’s take a look at some of the best tools on the market today.

What is subscription management software?

Subscription management platforms allow businesses to easily integrate subscription services and recurring payments into their online stores. From collecting subscribers’ data to billing and invoicing, subscription management software is designed to handle every step of the process with minimal effort on your part.

Why your business needs subscription management software

Although it is possible to manually code in subscription packages, customer information, and a subscription billing system, the process is complicated and costly. It’s far more time and cost-effective to let subscription management software handle the bulk of the work for you.

In addition to lowering the cost and complexity of the subscription management process, some software also offers additional features like allowing you to build a tailored shopping or subscription experience for your customers.

Some of the benefits of a using a subscription management platform include:

• Helping people feel more connected to your brand and products. 
• Gaining recurring revenue.
• Being able to derive behavioral insights from your subscribers.
• Fostering long-term loyalty by building a business around recurring subscriptions, rather than one-off purchases.

More superior software programs come with analytics dashboards that you can leverage to understand the psychology of your customers and create sales strategies accordingly.

Four Sigmatic, an online store selling innovative crash-free coffee and other plant-powered products, was able to use the data they got from their Upscribe analytics dashboard to decrease their customer churn rate.

Using Upscribe’s integration with Klaviyo, customers were automatically sent emails based on their consumer journey.  These emails were designed to retain customers and improve their experience which ultimately led to increased retention and renewals. 

So, this type of software won’t just fit in as a way for you to process payments. The data it provides can propel your business forward by giving you a more intimate look into the purchasing behaviors of your subscribers.

What to consider when choosing subscription management software

Ease of Implementation

One of the main reasons why businesses utilize this type of software is because it is far easier and more cost-effective to implement than having to code everything from the ground up. If the software is difficult or expensive to integrate, it defeats its purpose. 

Subscription Management Tools

After integrating subscription services into your business, it is essential to have software that makes it easy to effect changes to packages, contracts, pricing, and terms. A comprehensive and superior software tool will have these capabilities, and much more. 

After-Purchase Features

Once the customer has subscribed to your service, the management software should have functionality that automatically sends confirmation emails, contracts, and invoices to customers.

Analytics Tools

Every subscription management tool worth its salt should come with a comprehensive analytics dashboard. In addition to keeping track of all the relevant data points, the dashboards should also display data in a concise, exportable format.

Customer Support

For technical tools like these, good customer support is essential. Your subscription management software of choice should feature a Help center and a means for customers to log support tickets that are attended to timeously and efficiently.

The Best Subscription Management Software

1. Upscribe

Key Takeaway

Due to its seamless integration with Shopify, out-of-the-box tools and ease of delivering a powerful customer experience, , Upscribe is the best subscription management software for Shopify users that are focused on growing their online store through subscriptions. 

Features

Upscribe’s integration and management tools are built to work seamlessly with Shopify. The merchant portal has been designed to make every step of the setup process quick and easy. Actions such as setting up the subscription packages to your subscription pages going live, shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.

Via Upscribe’s dashboard, you can set up and customize the subscription package offering, product and cart pages. You’re able to fully customize the customer portal to suit the look and feel of your brand.

Upscribe offers a variety of diagnostic tools that you can use to test your newly-created subscription plans and products before you launch them on your storefront.

Once everything is live, Upscribe’s management dashboard will record and present all essential data points about your subscriptions in an easy-to-read format.

This data includes active subscriptions, total orders, customer lifetime value (LTV), and much more. You can leverage this information to grow your subscription base, engage with your subscribers, and, more importantly, strategize how to best grow your customers’ LTV.

In addition to all of the above, you will enjoy 24/7 customer support at no extra charge.

For its ease of use and fast deployment, Upscribe is particularly useful for Shopify businesses that are new to the subscription model. In 2020, Upscribe helped LA-based online store, Ready, Set, Food!, transition over to subscriptions. Slow loading pages and checkout issues were solved, and the result was a significant increase in margins by 25% to 35% per order.

Pricing

Upscribe offers a straightforward payment plan and far more bang for your buck compared to other services. Upscribe charges $300 a month plus 1% of subscription transactions, they offer free support and onboarding.

Pros

• Rapid and easy integration
• Has all of the essential tools you’d want from a subscription management software
• Ability to deliver your subscribers a powerful customer experience out-of-the-box
• Straightforward pricing structure
• No flat transaction fees
• No extra fee for support

Cons

• Works only with Shopify

2. Chargebee

Key Takeaway

Chargebee is a decent alternative for SaaS, PaaS businesses, or ecommerce sellers looking for a versatile subscription management platform.

Features

Its chief advantage is its ability to work with many third-party tools like Shopify, Salesforce, MailChimp, Zendesk, Slack, and more. If you’re already using these tools in your day-to-day business, Chargebee can fit right in.

And of course, it also does everything else that you would expect a billing management service to do, like automatically logging payment information, generating invoices, and collecting payments every service cycle. Chargebee can work with many popular payment gateways to collect the amount due.

As a subscriber, you will also get many extra features like tax management, usage tracking, trial management, cancellation management, and more.

However, as trusted and popular it is, their onboarding process is notorious for being complicated. Unless you have a separate IT department or person that is already skilled with Chargebee, it may take a lot of time to integrate it into your business.

Comparing ChargeBee’s onboarding process to Upscribe, Upscribe takes the cake by a wide margin. One of the most impressive parts about the Upscribe service, according to a client (Caldera + Lab), is its simpler portal and easier-to-implement dashboard.

Pricing

The company offers a diverse pricing structure, featuring four plans that can be paid monthly or annually.

Pros

• Can be integrated with many other third-party tools
• Comes with many extra features
• Good customer and technical support
• Comprehensive payment structure

Cons

• The on-boarding process is difficult
• Complicated dashboard

3. ReCharge

Key Takeaway

ReCharge is a good service if, other than managing subscriptions, you’re also looking for a tool to help you build relationships with customers.

Features

ReCharge offers all the standard subscription management software features like the ability to integrate, manage, and analyze your subscription packages from one simple portal. It also works in conjunction with third-party platforms like Shopify.

Setting up your subscription packages and deploying them onto your website takes a few minutes, with real-time performance updates available on the software dashboard shortly thereafter. 

You also get engagement features like the ability for subscribers to manage their subscriptions via SMS or a personalized customer portal. Notably, the software is also built with features that can reduce churn rates by giving customers alternatives to canceling. 

For example, subscribers can skip a certain amount of payment cycles or delay their payments instead of churning. Alternatively, they can re-subscribe to a different product package that works better for them.

However, all of the extra features the software offers can be difficult and confusing to use.

Additionally, you need to pay extra for the best level of technical support—an obvious disadvantage for small Shopify startups that may not have the necessary capital for these vital services. Upscribe, in contrast, provides full-level support at no additional cost.

Pricing

The company currently offers two paid plans with one free option that you can use to try out their services.

Pros

• Comes with powerful communication and customer outreach tools
• Has features that can reduce churn rate
• Has a free tier
• Relatively straightforward pricing structure

Cons

• Has many complex tools that can be confusing (including building the customer portal) 
• Extra fees for support

Ready to take your subscription-based business to the next level?

Upscribe can deliver a simple, fast, and easy integration process for your business built on the foundation laid by Shopify. Contact us today to schedule your free Upscribe demo and check out our range of comprehensive subscription management features.