Recharge vs Skio: Which Shopify Subscription App is best?

In this article, we'll explore the top subscription apps on the Shopify app store, i.e Recharge and Skio - and examine how Recurpay distinguishes itself as a best alternative. Both Recharge and Skio are widely recognized for enabling merchants to add subscription options to their stores, driving increased sales.

These apps are powerful in their own way but differ in their features and offerings. We’ll break down the features, pricing, and support of Recharge Subscriptions and Skio Subscriptions, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each. Furthermore, we'll explain why Recurpay Subscriptions is considered one of the best choices among subscription apps for your Shopify store. The comparison will cover the following aspects:

Main Differences between Recharge vs Skio
Feature Comparison
Pricing Comparison
Support Comparison
Conclusion

Main differences between Recharge vs Skio subscriptions?

Skio is an emerging app in the subscription ecosystem and powers subscriptions via native shopify checkout, it's known for their dedicated onboarding support and the integrations with other Shopify apps.

Recharge, on the other hand, focuses on a single and robust solution for subscriptions, packed with all the essential features. They focus only on subscriptions which allows them to solve subscription specific use cases and move faster in subscription market.

In comparison Recurpay is quite popular for providing the best subscription portal for customers where they can manage the entire subscriptions and the merchants have the flexibility to offer tiered discounting, product upsell right on the subscription portal. Recurpay has migrated 350+ merchants from other subscription apps.

Recharge


Recharge is a subscription app designed to help ecommerce businesses easily set up and manage recurring payments. It’s particularly popular among Shopify merchants. With Recharge, businesses can create flexible subscription models, handle customer relationships, and scale their subscription-based offerings. The app integrates smoothly with Shopify, making it a go-to solution for merchants looking to add subscription services in their online stores.

Skio

Skio is one of the fastest emerging app in subscription ecosystem. Their subscription app enables businesses to set up recurring orders, process automatic payments, and simplify the entire subscription experience for customers.

Skio is designed to offer a wide range of subscription features and analytics, making it a versatile tool for online businesses.

Feature Comparison

Subscription Options and Widget:

Recharge and Skio empower you to add subscription options directly on your Shopify store’s product pages, offering a selection of widget designs that can be tailored to match your brand. However, setting up these apps may require help from your technical team due to the technical expertise needed for proper configuration.

On the other hand, Recurpay provides a pre integrated subscription widget that’s ready to use as soon as you install the app, eliminating the need for technical skills. Plus, with Recurpay, you can easily translate the widget and customize its colors to perfectly fit your brand's look and feel.

Getting Started and Ease of Use:

Getting started with subscriptions and to get this up and running with Recharge or Skio might take a bit longer than you'd expect as it would require a technical team. These apps are primarily geared towards larger businesses, and they don't offer a guided tour to help you get going.

In contrast, Recurpay offers a seamless onboarding experience, including a helpful tutorial that walks you through the subscription setup. With Recurpay, you can have subscriptions running on your store in just a few minutes, making the entire process simple and hassle-free..

Analytics:

Analytics is the core of subscriptions to analyse repeat rates, subscription churn, cohort analysis, it can help the businesses scale faster.

Both Recharge and Skio offer comprehensive analytics for subscriptions, allowing you to make data driven decisions. Recharge is moving really quick in terms of offering robust analytics on customer cohorts, cohort retention, subscription KPI’s, industry benchmarking and have a larger customer base.

Native Cart and Account Upsell:

Recharge and Skio doesn't offer a direct way to upsell subscriptions on cart although you can definitely get that added with the help of your development team

Recurpay allows you to enable cart and account upsell with just a few clicks on your Shopify store.

Pricing Comparison

Recharge:

$499 per month + 1% + 19¢ on all subscription orders.

Skio:

$599 per month + 1% + 20¢ on all subscription orders.

Recurpay:

Pricing for Recurpay works in a pay as you go model with no annual contracts and starts from just $9 per month.

Support Comparison

To gather more insights on support, we checked out the app store reviews

Recharge

Recharge currently holds an aggregate rating of 4.5 on the Shopify App Store from 1830 reviews. Arecent price hike has caused significant dissatisfaction among users, resulting in a noticeable decline in their ratings.

Skio

Skio has an aggregate rating of 5 on the Shopify App Store from 217 reviews. Majority of the brands have appreciated there dedicated onboarding team and post sales support.

Recurpay

Recurpay has an impressive aggregate rating of 4.9 on the Shopify App Store from 390 reviews, with 90% of reviews specifically praising their exceptional customer support and product.

Recharge vs Skio

Conclusion

Recharge has a large customer base and if you are looking for an app where data plays the core role with some actionable insights Recharge stands out that term. However, its steep pricing and less-than-ideal post-sales support could be potential drawbacks where Skio is highly known for the onboarding support.

Recurpay, by contrast, is an excellent alternative, offering all the key subscription features, including native cart and account upsell, without requiring annual contracts and at a more affordable price than Recharge and Skio. Its combination of cost-effectiveness and powerful features makes Recurpay a top choice for merchants seeking a dependable subscription app on Shopify. Additionally, Recurpay provides a free white-glove migration service from both Recharge and Skio subscriptions.

🔥 120+ Brands have migrated from other subscription apps to Recurpay in last 90 days
Explore Recurpay Subscription App
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Comparison
Recharge
Skio
Recurpay
Plan fee per month
$499
$599
Per Transaction Charge
19¢
20¢
Built for Shopify
Magic link Login
Native Cart Upsell
Native Account Upsell
Intuitive Customer Portal
5800+
Shopify Brands Using Recurpay
350+
5-Star Reviews
98+
Countries

Why Recurpay stands out in comparison to Recharge and Skio?

Crafted for modern eCommerce brands and known for the intuitive customer portal for subscriptions with top rated support team

Comparison
Recharge
Skio
Recurpay
Fixed monthly fee
$499
$599
Per Transaction Charge
19¢
20¢
Built for Shopify
Built for Shopify status is the highest level of recognition and achievement that an app can reach on Shopify. A program to champion apps that are built to Shopify’s highest standards for quality, design, and performance.
Magic link Login
Customers no longer need to remember passwords to manage their subscriptions. With passwordless login, they can access their accounts through a secure web link in one click.
Tiered Discounting, Add free gifts on X order
Boost customer lifetime value by offering tiered discounts on subscriptions, such as 5% off the first order and 10% off on all subsequent orders. Alternatively, reward them with a free gift after completing a certain number of orders.
Not possible without custom development
Native Cart Upsell
Let customers easily switch from a one-time purchase to a subscription for any item right from the cart page or AJAX cart of your store.
Not possible without custom development
Not possible without custom development
Native Account Upsell
Upsell customers easily to add more products directly from their subscription portal, choosing to add items as a one-time purchase or as a subscription for all their future orders.
Intuitive Customer Portal
A minimalistic yet powerful subscription portal that enables your customers to control their subscriptions - whether adding, adjusting, skipping, or rescheduling - without support assistance.
Dunning Management
Automatically retry failed subscription payments and customize the number of retry attempts.
Subscription Analytics
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Recharge vs Skio
❤️ Our Loved Ones ❤️
Here are some heartwarming testimonials straight from our delighted customers :P
Recharge vs Skio
We have over 300 accounts that needed to be transferred over from our previous subscription app.

We like that they solely focus on subscriptions and are able to give the attention needed.

We are looking forward to working with RecurPay, and continuing to help each other grow!
Mighty Missouri
Mighty Missouri Coffee Co.
United States
Recharge vs Skio
Recurpay, you guys are amazing !!!

The app is perfect and the integration was so seamless and when I had a personal question you guys where fast and so helpful and provided a service that was absolutely the best!!!!

Really  pleased with this function in the website and with this app. I can 1000% recommend it!!
Loive Pitiusas
LOIVE Pitiusas
Spain
Recharge vs Skio
Absolutely fantastic. We contacted the team about migrating from another subscription service who’d significantly increased their fees.

The process was really simple and the team were really helpful. They reply practically immediately most of the time and they’re so helpful.

Couldn’t be happier, very impressed.
The Dressage Coach
The Dressage Coach
United Kingdom
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