Comparing Loop with?
There's a moment most subscription brands on Shopify recognize in hindsight. The platform that got you to 1,000 subscribers starts working against you at 10,000. Not dramatically — not a crash or an outage — but in the small stuff. A subscriber who wanted to pause ends up cancelling because the portal made it easier to leave than to stay. A failed payment that should've recovered silently instead triggered three emails and a lost customer. A pricing structure that felt reasonable at launch now takes a bigger cut than your ad spend.
Recurly and Recharge sit on opposite ends of the subscription world, but Shopify brands end up comparing them because both show up when you search for an answer to that moment. Recharge has been the default Shopify subscription app for over a decade — ~2,108 reviews on the Shopify App Store, the biggest install base in the ecosystem. Recurly, a SaaS billing platform founded in 2009, entered the Shopify market in May 2025 by acquiring Prive and rebranding it as Recurly Commerce — 29 reviews, a 4.2-star rating (recovered from a sharper post-acquisition dip earlier in 2026), and a pitch that its enterprise billing infrastructure will give Shopify merchants something the native apps can't.
The pitch is worth examining. So is the reality. And so is what brands that actually migrated from both platforms ended up looking for — because that's where the comparison gets useful.
Across 1,065+ migrations Loop has completed, the reasons brands leave Recharge and the reasons they leave Recurly are different — but what they look for next overlaps almost entirely.
Livingood Daily, a health and nutrition brand, had 130,000 active subscribers on Recharge. Their churn sat at 10%, and the platform gave them no way to respond differently to a subscriber cancelling after one order versus a subscriber cancelling after fifty. Every cancellation looked the same. Within four quarters of switching to Loop, they built segmented cancellation flows and brought churn down to 2.26% — while saving roughly 50% on platform costs. The migration of all 130K subscribers took 22 days.
OSEA Malibu, a beauty brand on Recharge, had limited upsell capability and no way to personalize the retention experience by product or subscriber segment. After migrating to Loop, upsell contribution climbed from 4.5% to 6.8%, while churn dropped from 10% to 5%.
Other brands ran subscriptions through custom Recurly integrations. Recurly's platform was built for SaaS billing — complex invoicing, revenue recognition, usage-based pricing — and the Shopify experience required bespoke code to connect the two systems. After migrating to Loop, they replaced the custom stack with a native Shopify subscription experience.
Different platforms, different breaking points — but the same pattern: the tool that handles billing isn't necessarily the tool that grows subscription revenue. That distinction is what the rest of this comparison is about.
When brands evaluate a new subscription platform, they don't start with a feature checklist. They start with the problems their current platform couldn't solve — and they test whether the alternative actually can. Across 1,065+ migrations, five areas come up in nearly every evaluation: cancellation flows, failed payment recovery, the subscriber portal, pricing at scale, and migration.
Here's how all three platforms handle each one.
This is the single highest-leverage capability in a subscription platform — and the one with the widest gap between the three.
How Recharge handles it: Recharge routes the cancelling subscriber to a standalone landing page where they select a reason and see a retention offer, credit balance reminder, and free gift notification — all displayed together. Per Recharge's help documentation, once a cancellation prevention flow is activated, it cannot be edited; merchants must duplicate it and start fresh, which resets subscriber progress. AI cancellation insights require a minimum of 50 unique cancellation reason notes per month before they activate.
How Recurly handles it: Recurly Commerce's Shopify App Store listing describes its offering as including "churn control" with retention tools, pausing, and incentives. However, staged cancellation flows with conditional logic, reason-matched alternatives, and subscriber segmentation by LTV or tenure aren't documented as features of the Shopify experience. Recurly's core SaaS platform supports plan changes and subscription pauses, but those capabilities were designed for SaaS use cases — not DTC ecommerce retention.
What actually works: Separating the cancellation journey into stages. First, remind subscribers what they'll lose — perks, savings, streaks, upcoming rewards. Second, understand the specific reason and match it with the right alternative: "too much product" → skip, "want something different" → swap, "need a break" → pause. Third — only after education and alternatives — present personalized offers based on loyalty, LTV, and order count.
How Loop handles it: Subscriber clicks "Cancel subscription." A drawer opens: "Before you go… here's what you'll be giving up." Their 15% subscriber discount. Free shipping. Their upcoming reward on order #5. No discount offered yet. Roughly 20% of subscribers save at this stage alone.
Next — reason-matched alternatives. "I have too much product" triggers a skip offer. "I want something different" triggers a swap. "Too expensive" triggers a downgrade or frequency change. Each reason maps to a specific action — not a blanket discount code.
Then — a personalized offer, but only for subscribers who didn't save earlier. The offer varies by order count, LTV, product, and cancellation reason. A 10-order subscriber with $2,000 LTV sees a different retention treatment than a first-time buyer.
Loop's cancellation flows support 20+ segmentation triggers, can be edited live without resetting subscriber progress, and include stage-by-stage analytics showing exactly where saves happen and which offers convert.
Doggy Do Good, a pet food brand, built these flows after leaving Recharge. Churn dropped from ~10% to ~1% in a single quarter, with a 44% decrease in cancellation attempts. Four Sigmatic saw a 90% increase in save rate. Plants Basically improved save rate by 180% and grew subscription revenue 63% quarter-over-quarter.
Failed payments account for up to 40% of subscription churn — customers who wanted to stay but whose payment method didn't go through.
How Recharge handles it: Per Recharge's Shopify App Store listing, the Starter plan ($99/month) includes "Failed Payment Recovery." The Plus plan ($499/month) lists scalable transaction rates. Per Recharge's pricing page, some advanced dunning configurations require working with a Recharge Implementations Engineer.
How Recurly handles it: Recurly's website markets machine-learning-driven payment recovery, claiming $1.3 billion recovered annually across its merchant base. That capability was built for Recurly's traditional SaaS billing customers. On the Shopify side, a January 2026 Recurly Commerce reviewer reported that platform features weren't functioning properly following the Prive acquisition. Recurly's Shopify documentation doesn't detail the extent to which SaaS-side recovery intelligence is available to Recurly Commerce merchants.
What actually makes a difference:
How Loop handles it: Loop's smart dunning starts before the subscriber knows there's a problem. If a backup card is on file, Loop retries it automatically. Then silent retries begin — up to 15, with configurable delays — without triggering a notification for a card that might clear on its own.
When notification is needed, the subscriber gets a branded email via Klaviyo — timed to their timezone. One button: [Update Payment Method →]. That's a Quick Action magic link — one tap, no login, no OTP. Card updated in seconds. For soft declines, you can incentivize differently than hard declines: "Add a backup card and get 5% off your next order." Proactive alerts go out for cards approaching expiration. And when dunning cycles are exhausted, Loop pauses the subscription rather than cancelling — keeping the door open for reactivation.
Mammaly, a pet wellness brand that migrated from Recharge, saw 30% of subscribers update their payment methods and 18% of churned subscribers reactivate within three months using Loop's dunning tools. Lumin achieved a 17% subscription revenue increase driven in part by smart retry logic and frictionless card updates.
Every skip, swap, pause, and reorder happens in the customer portal. If subscribers can't find what they need, they either open a support ticket or cancel. Both cost you.
How Recharge handles it: Per Recharge's documentation, the portal uses passwordless login via SMS — available for U.S. and Canadian phone numbers. International subscribers may face friction since SMS delivery outside the U.S. can be unreliable. Shopify App Store reviewers have described the admin interface as having a learning curve, with some noting workarounds needed for basic tasks. The portal offers "no-code customization" for brand consistency.
How Recurly handles it: Recurly Commerce's listing describes a "low-code portal for skips, swaps, gifts." With 29 reviews and a 4.2-star rating on the Shopify App Store, there's still limited real-world feedback on the portal experience at scale. Recurly's core platform was designed for SaaS self-service — plan upgrades, invoice management, billing updates — rather than DTC subscription actions like build-a-box or one-click add-ons. A January 2026 reviewer described difficulty getting help from anyone familiar with the product post-acquisition; subsequent reviews suggest support has improved as the integration has stabilized.
How Loop handles it: Magic link from email. One tap — straight into the portal. No OTP, no Shopify redirect, no password. The subscriber lands on their subscription card with everything visible: next order date, frequency, product details. Four action buttons front and center: [Skip] [Reschedule] [Swap] [Order Now].
The portal is fully drag-and-drop customizable. You decide what subscribers see first — reward progress, upsell recommendations, delivery details. Create different portal themes for different segments: VIP subscribers see upsell tiers and loyalty milestones; new subscribers see onboarding guidance. Bundle contents are visible at a glance. Auto-translation is built in for international subscribers. And Loop Flows lets you trigger automations — emails, tags, offer changes — based on subscriber behavior or lifecycle events directly from the portal.
Highwire Coffee, which spent 2+ years on Bold before switching, saw support tickets drop to near zero — subscribers could manage everything themselves. OSEA Malibu grew upsell contribution from 4.5% to 6.8% while cutting churn from 10% to 5% using Loop's portal. Lilac St. saw 72.7% subscription revenue growth within 11 months of implementing Loop's bundle setup after migrating from Recharge.
The monthly fee on a pricing page tells you very little. What matters is the total cost at your current subscriber volume — and what happens to that number as you grow.
How Recharge prices it: $99/month + 1.49% + $0.19/transaction (Starter) or $499/month + 1.34% + $0.19/transaction (Plus), per Recharge's pricing page and Shopify App Store listing. A volume-based custom tier is available for enterprise merchants. A March 2026 Shopify App Store reviewer — a merchant on the platform for nearly 7 years — wrote that Recharge has "massively raised prices" and that their fees now amount to "over 10% of our recurring revenue."
How Recurly prices it: Recurly Commerce's Core plan charges $399/month + 1.5% of GMV + $0.10 per subscription order, per Recurly Commerce's Shopify App Store listing. A Custom plan is listed as "free to install" with no platform or transaction fees — but requires contacting Recurly for pricing. G2 reviewers have reported actual costs ending up 40%+ higher than initially quoted due to transaction overage fees present in contract fine print but not highlighted in proposals. Recurly's core SaaS platform requires a $1M TPV minimum with custom pricing.
How Loop prices it: Free Forever plan available. Starter at $99/month + 1.0%, Pro at $399/month + 0.75%, with a custom Enterprise tier for high-volume brands — and no per-order fees, no overage penalties, and month-to-month availability across all paid plans. The Pro plan includes everything: dedicated CSM with Slack channel, cancellation flows, smart dunning, bundles, upsell, portal themes, subscriber rewards, Loop Flows, analytics, full API access. No feature gating, no paid add-ons.
Here's the math at 10,000 subscription orders per month at $50 AOV ($500,000 monthly subscription GMV):
Loop costs ~54% less than Recharge and ~53% less than Recurly Commerce at this scale.
The per-order fee is easy to overlook — until it isn't. At 100,000 annual orders, $0.19/order is $19,000/year on top of percentage-based fees. At 50,000 orders, $0.10/order is $5,000. Loop charges neither. Livingood Daily reported saving roughly 50% on platform costs after migrating from Recharge — while gaining access to the cancellation flows and dunning management that cut churn by ~80%.
This is the fear that keeps brands on a platform longer than they should be. Migrating payment methods, billing cycles, and active orders is operationally complex. Get it wrong and you lose subscribers mid-cycle.
From Recharge, the migration involves transferring subscriber data, payment tokens, order history, and discount structures. The platform manages the full subscription lifecycle — which means all of that data lives within their system. Brands on Recharge for multiple years may also have custom integrations and workflows built around its API and SDK.
From Recurly, the migration involves a different kind of complexity. Recurly was originally built for SaaS recurring billing. Brands running Recurly on Shopify — whether through custom API integrations or through Recurly Commerce (the former Prive) — often have architecture connecting a SaaS billing engine to a Shopify storefront. Migration means replacing that layer with a native Shopify subscription experience.
How Loop handles it: Loop's migration process covers full subscription data transfer — payment tokens (Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.net), order history, discounts, billing cycles — with zero subscriber action required. Each migration gets a dedicated Slack channel, a named CSM, and no setup or migration fees. Full details in Loop's migration process and FAQs.
Livingood Daily migrated 130,000 subscribers in 22 days. Chief Nutrition moved 500+ subscribers from Bold in under a week. NutriPaw, migrating from Recharge's legacy platform, saw 3X subscription revenue growth post-switch. Across 1,065+ completed migrations, 90% finish in under 2 weeks.
Platform credibility on Shopify, as of May 2026:
Recharge: ~2,108 reviews, 4.8 stars. The largest Shopify install base. ~88% five-star reviews, but ~5.5% one-star reviews citing support responsiveness, pricing escalation, and reliability concerns. Recharge has been on the Shopify App Store since 2014 — the volume advantage is real, but so is the long tail of unresolved legacy issues.
Loop: ~621 reviews, 4.9 stars. The highest-rated subscription app on Shopify. 1,065+ completed migrations from Recharge, Bold, Recurly, Skio, Smartrr, Stay AI, and custom setups. Fewer than 10 one-star reviews across the entire history.
Recurly Commerce: 29 reviews, 4.2 stars (recovered from 3.5 stars earlier in 2026 as post-acquisition issues were addressed). A January 2026 reviewer wrote that Recurly "acquired Prive and completely ruined it," adding that "nobody at Recurly wanted to help or had any idea what was going on." Recurly's team responded publicly acknowledging the experience wasn't what they wanted customers to have, and the rating has climbed since. Still, with 29 total reviews in roughly a year on the App Store, Recurly Commerce remains an early-stage Shopify product compared to Recharge and Loop.
Q1. How do Recurly, Recharge, and Loop compare on pricing?
Recurly Commerce Core: $399/month + 1.5% GMV + $0.10/order. Recharge Starter: $99/month + 1.49% + $0.19/transaction; Plus: $499/month + 1.34% + $0.19/transaction. Loop Starter: $99/month + 1.0%; Pro: $399/month + 0.75% with no per-order fee. Loop also offers a Free Forever plan and a custom Enterprise tier. See the full breakdown on the Loop vs Recharge comparison page.
Q2. Can I migrate from Recharge or Recurly to Loop without losing subscribers?
Yes. Loop's migration process transfers payment tokens, order history, discounts, and billing cycles with zero subscriber action required. Livingood Daily migrated 130,000+ subscribers in under 3 weeks. Chief Nutrition migrated 500+ in under a week. Across 1,065+ migrations, 90% finish in under 2 weeks with zero subscriber disruption.
Q3. What save rates should I expect from cancellation flows?
Industry baseline with a survey-and-discount approach is 4–15%. Loop merchants with staged cancellation flows average 20–25%, with top performers reaching 35–40%. Doggy Do Good went from ~10% churn to ~1% in one quarter. Four Sigmatic saw a 90% increase in save rate after migrating from Recharge.
Q4. Is Recurly Commerce ready for Shopify DTC brands?
Recurly acquired Prive in May 2025 to enter Shopify. As of May 2026, Recurly Commerce has 29 reviews with a 4.2-star rating on the Shopify App Store — recovered from a low of 3.5 stars earlier in the year as post-acquisition integration issues were addressed. Recurly's core SaaS platform is mature, but the Shopify-native experience is still early-stage, and reviewers have flagged feature gaps relative to Shopify-first competitors.
Q5. What integrations does Loop support?
35+ integrations including Klaviyo, Attentive, Gorgias, Shopify Flow, Postscript, and major payment processors. Full API and webhook access. See the full integrations directory.
Book a demo with Loop→ to see what your retention gaps look like — and what's recoverable.
Disclaimer
Source Attribution: Competitor feature descriptions are based on publicly available information, including each platform's official website, help center documentation, and Shopify App Store listings, as of May 01, 2026. Features and pricing may have changed since publication.
Pricing Accuracy: Pricing information reflects publicly listed rates at the time of writing. Actual costs may vary based on negotiated contracts, promotional pricing, or plan changes. Merchants should verify current pricing directly with each platform.
Performance Claims: Case study results cited (e.g., churn reductions, revenue increases) reflect individual merchant outcomes and are not guarantees of typical results. Performance varies based on brand, product category, subscriber base, and implementation.
Editorial Independence: This content is published by Loop Subscriptions. While competitor information is sourced from public documentation, readers should conduct their own evaluation before making platform decisions.
Corrections: Despite efforts to ensure accuracy, platform features evolve frequently. If you are a representative of a platform listed and believe any information is factually inaccurate, please contact us at contact@loopwork.co and we will review and correct promptly.
