About one year ago, we launched Subify, a Shopify subscription management app (https://apps.shopify.com/subify-subscriptions). It was a delicate decision from the start, but we took the risk and got into the competition with big companies that already had a reputation in the field.

My team started with reviewing the competitors and analyzing the users’ needs and pain points. Since last year, we've come up with new releases every fortnight with features that are custom-tailored to the business' needs and user requests (gathered through Canny). My goal was to make Subify an app that is easy to use, personalized and caring, and inclusively functional. Shopify store owners turn to subscriptions in search for recurring revenue, predictive MRR, and an increased LTV. Each of them has their own exact interpretation of how a subscription system should work, including specific billing plans. My intention was to make Subify the go-to solution for all these scenarios, and ever since, my team and I have been working towards that end.

In the past few months, my team has worked really hard on making our dunning/billing management as easy as it can get.

(1) We started with adding the prepay option to the app’s settings. Subscription customers are not normally looking for a prepay button, but this can change a lot if you offer a discount, only for the prepay plan. So I had my team work on the combination of the tools that could make this scenario work, plus the UX design that could make it easy to understand.

(2) Next, was the discount itself. My experience with studying the subscription brands has taught me that succeeding in the subscription industry is mainly bound to keeping the customers interested in making repeated purchases with your brands. Discounts make that possible. So in addition to a discount percentage that could be applied to a set of products, assigned to a certain rule, my team has added the manual discount feature which will allow customers to insert the exact amount of money they’d like to decrease from the original price.

(3) Our next project was to create a dashboard that would be able to cover multiple aspects of a brand's relationship with its customers. Cancellation is an always present risk of launching a subscription business, and it was my job to give my merchants some control over that. So through the app panel, we added the option to choose about the cancellation limits. Now, whether subscribers could cancel their subscription after one successful payment, after 100, or at any time, remains up to the store owner.

(4) The other feature’s idea came from our own users. For many reasons (inventory, restock, or even marketing), brands may be open to receiving subscription orders– up to a limit. After a few weeks, the developers at Subify were able to add the expiration date feature to the panel to be changed according to the user’s preferences. I wanted to cut out all the trouble and make the customers design come true, so as simple as it sounds, this turned out to be exactly how it works: Merchants create a subscription rule, add the subscription products, set an expiration date (e.g. after 10 successful payments), and then, it’s all automatically handled.

What I love about the subscription industry? It never fails to surprise. As the days go by, Shopify brands are discovering more ways to benefit from subscriptions. I’d like myself to join this flow as well. As you can see, working on new features and tools will be our never-ending job. This was just a small sample and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about it. We're eager to receive comments and advice about our process or anything you'd suggest for the future; don't be afraid to voice your opinion!