Recharge Subscriptions

I wish I could get fixes to dev issues. I still have to request from CS to get orders manually processed, I used to have permission but it changed somehow and now I don't. I asked to get permission and was not able to because it is under an email my team doesn't have access to. ReCharge could not edit permission for me.

There is a lot of room for improvement. It gets the job done but how much they charge in fees should be much better. Surprisingly this is the top app in this category. As they have grown over the years, their support has not kept up with quality. Lot of back and forth before the issue is looked at or taken seriously. More apps are being developed in this category and hopefully, a more competitive selection will be offered.

It seems like a great app and we would have loved to stick with it, but it appears that unless you pay the extra $99 for the enhanced support option they'll only provide limited responses which are often delayed. Our questions have been simple - around setting up separate shipping options for subscription members only (which you can't do directly within the app). However, our ReCharge dashboard doesn't match the guides they provide so I think that we're experiencing a bug/compatibility issue as we have options missing (they previously fixed something similar that wasn't showing up and we were initially impressed by the support). Sadly 3 emails later and no response, I think we've exceeded our free help (we can do minor coding and tweaks ourselves so we're not expecting them to do anything for us). We're hesitant to pay for support for something that doesn't appear to be compatible with our theme, and we don't want to crash our site, so sadly we're going to install what is in all honesty not as good an app but with better and faster support.

Account login functionality for the consumer (front end) can be faulty. The analytics are good, but could be enhanced.

Recharge seems to be the standard subscription app for Shopify. It does its job, but from the customer's point of view, it's not intuitive. We receive a lot of customer support requests asking for help changing ship date, flavor, etc. However, they are continually updating and it is improving. The customer support has been very good, but it does not always integrate as seamlessly as I would expect.

Our subscription business was previously with Bold. We transitioned to Recharge last year, largely based on the aesthetics of their customer portal - it looks slicker and we thought it would make for a better customer experience. Unfortunately, the back-end of Recharge has been a disaster for us. Our subscribers have been unable to update their payment method since DEC 27, 2021. It is now FEB 21, 2022. That's nearly two months since we've alerted Recharge to this issue, and unfortunately the problem still persists. We receive daily emails from our subscribers (who WANT to continue) but they're unable to update to their new credit card - and they have no choice but to let the subscription expire. I continue to follow up with Recharge every other day or so, and am told that they're "working on it." They've offered up a few workarounds, none of which worked. Needless to say, it's been a pain managing irritated customers (loss of time), and it has resulted in a loss in our subscription revenue (loss of money). But more importantly, it has been a such a poor experience for our most loyal, long-term, avid users. The last two months of listening to our subscribers' frustration, and watching our subscriptions decline has left us feeling unsupported and powerless, since there's still no fix. Below is just one of the endless customer emails we've received. This experience has been everything you want to avoid as a business owner - it's embarrassing and a poor reflection on everything we've been working to build. Recharge might look better, but Bold actually worked. CUSTOMER EMAIL: I have tried three separate times to access the subscription page with no luck, always a "third party access" issue. My card I used to pay for the subscription is expiring and since I can't update it I suppose I will just let you figure that I am cancelling my subscription. Thanks for the great soap that I have had and good luck. ***MARCH 28TH 2022 UPDATE*** Unbelievably, this issue still persists -- THREE MONTHS LATER. I have been passed along to six or seven different support reps. There has been no correction - nor any indication that they have even been able to identify the issue. It's been a constant flow of "our team is looking into it", "we're getting close", "we need an API key" (which has been supplied three times now) then the next rep steps in and repeats all the same responses. It is absolutely crazy that it's been three months; you'd think someone at Recharge would acknowledge this absurdity of this, and simply dedicate some time & thought to correct the issue - but it's obvious our business doesn't matter to Recharge. We'll await the next email of "we're working on it...." ***One Year Later Update***: While I still cringe at how painful our transition was to Recharge, we've since had an incredibly positive experience working with their team that manages their Bundles product. ADOLFO & PAOLA specifically are WONDERFUL. Since they are worth five stars and my migration is still one star, I'll change my rating to three stars. Long story short, I would not recommend migrating over to Recharge from an existing subscription platform, but if you're starting fresh, Recharge is certainly an option.

The support was very helpful. The support team's response quickly provided responses and solutions to my question.

I signed up for this product when we had just a small handful of subscription customers. Now, 95% of our sales are subscriptions (thousands of subscriptions per year). As it is, my monthly bill from ReCharge is higher than Shopify, Shipstation, Quickbooks, Mailchimp, and all other Shopify apps **COMBINED**. This is, by far, the biggest money pit in our business operations. While the analytics have improved slightly since we first signed up, I am still having to manually assemble data to even understand what the app is doing. Combine that with it crashing this week... Ugh. I understand that ReCharge as a company is primarily focused on large enterprise accounts and that this Shopify app is a fairly new entry for them. However, there are significantly better choices on the Shopify App Store for subscriptions at a FRACTION of the cost. (ReCharge collects a flat fee PLUS a percentage of all dollars that flow through their system, including shipping! It gets expensive fast!) However, the actual people who work there are a delight. The support team is great and responsive and are always interested in keeping things up and running -- kudos to them! They're the real heroes here: they get all the stars in this review.

There were a lot of underlying issues that were not clarify up-front. We had to contact support back and forth for help (some even took 3-4 days to respond which affected our store performance).

For over 5 weeks now I go back and forth with many many emails being sent to implement Recharge with my custom bought theme. The support was kind of fast 1-2 days reply time - but the answers weren't always helping 100%. Especially with requesting customization of any kind to make this app work like I wished - but I understand that policy. They were really helpful in providing articles to their knowledge base (which I have read for hours and days now) and finally resolved an issue I had with currency conversion, where the subscription widgdet didn't show properly. AMAZING! So Kudos for the customer service! :)

We are not live yet, but so far everything seems to work for now. I love the integrations with so many other apps. Im also using Goaffpro for Affiliate marketing - The PRO is that coupon codes that are created in Goaffpro only automatically sync with Recharge - no other Subscription Service App here on Shopify. But I expected much more from the leading company for subscriptions on Shopfify with 60$ a month + percentage on sales.
Features that are missing and should be added/improved in my opinion:

- Custom Tags: Why is that not possible? They only Tag customers with 3 of their predefined tags!!
I have several subscription plans that I want to give customers access based on their tags on our shop. I have to spent 15$-40$ dollars per month more for "Customer Tagger" to be able to custom tag a certain customer that buys a specific subscription product. This tag should automatically be removed if the subscription is canceled. Paywhirl has that feature implemented. Why not Recharge?

- The UI of the App: is not very clean and not very straight forward, but I got used to it after several days. Too many clicks to reach what you are looking for (right upper corner, normal menu, tab menus in menus...) But thats just my opinion in 2020..

- Checkout Page: Very basic design - You can change some sentences with their Translation function and Css. But if you are using a workflow for a plan that starts with lets say 50€ and then all the recurring months it should be 5€. There is no way to show that amount correctly in the order summary. You have to use several workarounds (rename your product) to let the customer know, what they really have to pay the next month when they subscribe. Doesnt look very trustworthy to new potential customers on your shop...

- Thank you Page: More than basic - Yes you can add html. No options to upsell or add a download link/button for our digital products, where it would be placed to be user friendly. You can only add html to the very bottom of the page in the footer.
- Taxes: In germany because of Covid my shop will work with 16%. In 2021 it will go back to 19%. Everytime I update the taxes in my shop - I have to manually write them a message?!? Why is this not synced automatically?

- Membership Area: Their knowledge base kind of walks you through this. Im pretty decent with coding - but this is a nightmare for someone that doesn't know any code... I didnt get it to work, but used some own customizations.

For a small business that is just starting out this really is a lot of money. Considering I also have to buy another third party app to get all the functions I need that I expected to get from the top subscription app here on Shopify. Im a little bit dissapointed now, thats why I wrote my review.
Because of all the integrations, Goaffpro Affiliates Coupon Sync, nice customer support and my hope that I can rely on everything really working when we go live I will probably still go with Recharge. I hope this feedback helps to improve the app in the future.
Looking forward to a healthy and good business relationship.