SHOPIFY
Subscription commerce
An ecommerce model where customers pay on a recurring schedule (monthly, quarterly) to receive products, instead of paying per order.
On Shopify, subscriptions run through ReCharge, Bold Subscriptions, Loop, or Shopify's native Subscriptions API. Each has different strengths: ReCharge for complex flows, Loop for retention features, native for simplicity.
The hard part isn't the tech, it's the unit economics. Subscription churn compounds, a 5% monthly churn rate means you lose roughly half your subscribers in a year. CAC has to be earned back inside the average customer lifetime.
When subscription works it's the best business model in DTC: predictable revenue, higher LTV, smoother cashflow. When it doesn't work, it papers over a product problem with a billing trick.
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