Recurly vs. WooCommerce Subscriptions

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Recurly
Score 8.1 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Recurly is a subscription billing platform and manages customer communications via email, business performance monitoring, and account changes. A merchant bank account is required to work with Recurly. A payment gateway is part of the product but it integrates with other gateways, such as PayPal, to give shoppers a more comprehensive suite of payment options.
$0
per month
WooCommerce Subscriptions
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
WooCommerce Subscriptions is a premium extension for WooCommerce which supports recurring payments and subscription-based services and products.N/A
Pricing
RecurlyWooCommerce Subscriptions
Editions & Modules
Core
$0/month plus first $40k/mo. in revenue included for first 12 months
per month
Professional
Get a custom quote
per month
Elite
Get a custom quote
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
RecurlyWooCommerce Subscriptions
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Best Alternatives
RecurlyWooCommerce Subscriptions
Small Businesses
WooCommerce Subscriptions
WooCommerce Subscriptions
Score 7.5 out of 10
2Checkout from Verifone
2Checkout from Verifone
Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct
Score 8.7 out of 10
Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Salesforce CPQ
Salesforce CPQ
Score 7.7 out of 10
Salesforce CPQ
Salesforce CPQ
Score 7.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
RecurlyWooCommerce Subscriptions
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(15 ratings)
8.0
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.5
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
RecurlyWooCommerce Subscriptions
Likelihood to Recommend
Recurly
I think it works best for scenarios where it involves recurring billing. A subscription-based business model can benefit on the platform and maximize its features. It has great customization when it comes to billing cadence, pricing, prepayment, discount options, among others. It also works perfectly with one-off charges so either way, it's a win. It has great integration with Stripe too.
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Automattic
WooCommerce Subscriptions is a solid option for WordPress based eCommerce sites, particularly if you are already using WooCommerce as your eCommerce platform. It works for simple subscriptions, allows for customization in terms of email notifications, pricing, coupons, etc. It obviously would not be a good fit for non-WordPress websites, and it may be too much if all you need are very simple subscription plans.
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Pros
Recurly
  • It is very easy to track MRR, which gives you insights into your overall revenues and health of the subscriptions. Though MRR is pretty easy to calculate Recurly puts it beautifully on the dashboard which is very easy to read.
  • LTV, Recurly calculates lifetime value which is a good insight for adjusting Marketing spends. Even this is available on the dashboard.
  • The other features like Subscriber churn Rate, Average revenue per customer etc are really great and would help the marketing team a lot.
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Automattic
  • Ease of ability for customers to purchase a product and choose their re-occurring timelines.
  • Well laid out admin UI to manage orders
  • Fair amount of customizable options within the plugin to suit varying needs
  • Updating the plugin is quick and painless
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Cons
Recurly
  • The coupons feature is a bit cumbersome. It can become tricky to set up, apply, and un-apply coupons for a particular client. If you have special billing cases where you discount for a few months or give a client service in any irregular fashion, using coupons can become tricky.
  • We have a referral program with our clients where they receive a perpetual monthly discount for each client they refer to use. The client receives this discount as long as their referral remains active with us. We would like to be able to apply a discount to a client account, and have the ability to remove that discount in the event a referral ends service with us. In some cases a client has referred several clients, and we would like to apply a discount for each referral, and still have the ability to remove one or more discounts as referrals begin and end service with us. Currently there is no way to do this in Recurly. There isn't even a very good work-around, which is disappointing.
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Automattic
  • Better syncing to ActiveCampaign for renewal reminders
  • Make it easier for clients to update their credit cards and have it automatically apply to all subscriptions
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Likelihood to Renew
Recurly
I believe we would continue to use Recurly because they have shown that they are continually improving their software, and they listen to their customers
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Automattic
We are very likely to renew our Woo Commerce subscriptions add on. We are dedicated to WordPress and plan to grow our business significantly. Woo Commerce subscriptions enables us to manage and extend our subscription revenue easily. We did not have this a few years ago and we have seen the uplift in revenue from using it!
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Usability
Recurly
No answers on this topic
Automattic
I like almost everything about WooCommerce Subscriptions EXCEPT one of the main reasons we started using it has never worked out. When we started this subscription box company, I discovered that it was difficult to track how many of each unique product we needed to order to fulfill subscriptions. In my naivete, I thought it was a simple task . 4 years later, I have recently developed my own custom solution (after learning 5 different programming languages) and I now use the WooCommerce and WooCommerce Subscriptions API to get the data I need from the store en masse. Basically, I offer multiple selections that customers can make as part of their subscriptions. WooCommerce does not offer totals or reports for anything up that is not tracked using a 'variation ID' which you have to manually generate. My products have 80 or so variations per product sometimes and the WooCommerce system was actually a little buggy when I tried setting them all up at once so I gave up. Now I know that without that info, the selections in orders are treated as metadata and handled almost as if they are not relevant to the order
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Support Rating
Recurly
They have always been quick to respond and help. I love their chat feature at the bottom right-hand corner of the platform.
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Automattic
The ticketing system of WooCommerce and WooCommerce Subscriptions is not state of the art. I wish it were an intercom type of support, But I honestly very rarely need support so it's partially a non-issue. Documentation is also very good so it preemptively addresses things that you might typically need support on. One thing I hate about WooCommerce plugins' support MO is that you're always asked to reset to the standard WP theme and deactivate all plugins, which is near impossible to do in a production environment. So their preliminary steps for offering support are highly onerous.
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Implementation Rating
Recurly
No answers on this topic
Automattic
It was a smooth and easy implementation for us. Downloaded the add-on and made a few integrations to salesforce and shipstation and we were up and running within a day
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Alternatives Considered
Recurly
My whole experience with Recurly has been excellent, as we have not encountered any problems with the service at all! We used to utilize an antiquated subscription management system at my previous job, which was functional but extremely difficult to use at every turn. With Recurly's cutting-edge UI, straightforward UX, and first-rate customer support, We've been able to concentrate on our growing company.
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Automattic
WooCommerce Subscriptions is more robust than Cratejoy in every way but Cratejoy is a prepackaged solution that you don't have to build. If you have the time and patience, WooCommerce Subscriptions is the much better way to go because you would be cutting out the extremely high fees that Cratejoy charges per transaction in their marketplace and you would be setting yourself up for growth in the future as you continue to develop your own store.
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Return on Investment
Recurly
  • Providing an interface for our subscribers to manage their own accounts has simplified our business tremendously. This alone has freed up hours of our staff's time each day.
  • Many customers receive new credit cards due to expiration or fraud. The time we spent in updating this information prior to using Recurly's Revenue Recovery feature versus now is significant.
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Automattic
  • Increased recurring monthly/yearly revenue
  • Decreased time spent managing billing and subscriptions manually
  • Eliminated manual onboarding time, creating accounts by hand, etc.
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ScreenShots

Recurly Screenshots

Screenshot of Features to set up and test different products, plans, and pricing options, plus promotional tools like free trials, coupons, and gift subscriptions and cards to attract more customers.Screenshot of payments with smart routing to improve transaction success rates and conversions by offering a variety of payment methods, such as credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and ACH.Screenshot of the flexible ways to configure subscription billings workflows, and automate recurring invoicing based on the subscription parameters.Screenshot of automated dunning communications to increase collection effectiveness. Configurable across period and timing, if the payment is past due or declined, selected and personalized dunning campaign launch.