Recharge vs Recurly: Shopify subscriptions or revenue recovery?
Recharge helps Shopify brands run recurring physical-product orders, bundles, customer portals, loyalty, cancellation flows, and retention programs. Recurly helps subscription businesses manage billing, payment orchestration, dunning, revenue recovery, subscriber lifecycle, analytics, and revenue recognition.
Compare the revenue workflow behind every subscription
Look beyond plan creation to usage, invoicing, collections, recovery, integrations, revenue reporting, and the work required to keep billing accurate.
- · Shopify-first DTC brands selling recurring physical goods, boxes, memberships, bundles, and replenishment subscriptions
- · E-commerce teams that need subscriber portals, cancellation flows, loyalty, analytics, and retention tools inside Shopify
- · Merchants connecting subscription operations to Shopify checkout, orders, fulfillment, inventory, and customer accounts
- · Subscription businesses that prioritize failed-payment recovery, dunning, churn reduction, and subscriber lifecycle management
- · Digital subscriptions, media, software, and consumer services teams that need gateway flexibility and retention tooling
- · Finance teams that want Recurly billing plus Revenue Recognition Standalone for ASC 606 / IFRS 15 workflows
Recurring commerce and recurring billing create different operating queues
Both products follow subscribers, but Recharge stays close to Shopify orders and fulfillment while Recurly stays close to payment orchestration and recovery.
Recharge begins with the product offer
Products, subscription frequencies, prepaid plans, discounts, bundles, portal settings, loyalty, customer accounts, recurring orders, and cancellation paths shape the commerce experience.
Recurly begins with billing state
Plans, subscribers, gateways, invoices, payment attempts, retry rules, dunning, renewals, recovery, churn, and account hierarchy shape the revenue workflow.
Finance receives different subscription records
Recharge reporting sits with Shopify orders, payments, fulfillment, tax, and the merchant stack. Recurly reporting covers billing, recovery, renewals, churn, analytics, and revenue recognition according to the products in use.
Recurring revenue
What the billing schedule does not settle
The mid-cycle upgrade
"We already charge cards on a schedule." Fair for one plan at one price, where the invoice and the revenue line move together. The divergence starts at the first mid-cycle upgrade. Under ASC 606 that upgrade is a contract modification, and the accounting turns on two questions: are the added services distinct, and does the extra consideration reflect their standalone selling price? Yes to both and the upgrade stands as its own contract from that date. No to either and the answer turns on what is left to deliver. Where the remaining services are distinct, what is still owed on the original gets pooled with the new and spread across the rest of the term. Where they are not, the change is trued up against revenue already booked. Proration on an invoice answers none of it.
What a decline code decides
Visa sorts declines into four categories, and the category decides what a dunning sequence is allowed to do next. Category 1 means the issuer will never approve: a closed account, a stop payment order. The other three permit up to 15 reattempts within 30 days of the first decline, one group after a wait, one after corrected data, and one where the issuer returned a generic response that names no reason at all. The stop payment order carries a second obligation, because the cardholder has withdrawn permission and charging again breaks the network rule. A queue that records only "payment failed" runs one schedule across all of them. Splitting it by category is what tells you which rows need a wait, which need corrected data, and which need a message asking for a new card.
The differences that actually show up in evaluation
Short phrases summarize the full cells below. Scroll the full table for detail, source links, and proof-request nuance.
Feature-by-feature comparison
Six practical questions to take into demos and procurement. Use the same workflow and inputs with both vendors, then compare what your team would actually have to operate.
| Capability | | |
|---|---|---|
What it is Primary product category and core job it solves. | Subscription commerce platform for Shopify brands: recurring orders, bundles, customer portal, loyalty, cancellation flows, analytics, and retention. | Subscription management platform for billing, payment orchestration, revenue recovery, analytics, subscriber lifecycle, and revenue recognition. |
Best for Team size, program type, and workflow shape where each product fits. | Shopify-first DTC brands running subscription boxes, consumables, replenishment, memberships, bundles, and customer-portal driven retention. | Digital subscriptions, consumer services, streaming/media, software, and commerce teams where dunning, payment recovery, and retention are central. |
Money flow & contracting Who invoices, who collects, and how funds travel from source to recipient. | Shopify customer → subscription plan → recurring order/payment → fulfillment and customer portal changes. Buyer-side commerce only; no payee payout or MoR B2B invoicing workflow. | Subscriber lifecycle → invoice/payment attempt → dunning/retry/recovery → renewal or churn workflow. Subscriber-side only; no MoR invoicing or payee payouts. |
Integrations APIs, webhooks, imports, exports, and the systems each product needs around it. | Shopify ecosystem integrations, customer portal, storefront/theme work, analytics, loyalty, and fulfillment-adjacent app flows. Fit drops outside subscription commerce. | Payment gateways, tax, CRM, analytics, data, accounting, and e-commerce integrations. Validate how each system participates in billing close and churn operations. |
Reporting & reconciliation Export packages, ledger records, and audit trails your finance team closes the books with. | Subscription commerce reporting, subscriber analytics, and Shopify order records. RevRec, tax, accounting close, and payout proof live in the surrounding stack. | Revenue recovery, subscriber analytics, renewal and churn reporting, and RevRec outputs. Reconciliation is subscriber-revenue shaped, not payout-source shaped. |
Pricing model Fee structure overview. Vendor terms change often, so confirm pricing during your evaluation. | Published Starter and Plus plans combine monthly platform fees with per-transaction fees, with Custom for larger programs. Validate transaction volume, portal and bundle features, Shopify plan, and app stack costs. | Public packaging centers on Subscriptions, Commerce, Engage, and RevRec. Validate TPV/GMV, contract length, recovery products, RevRec, gateways, and implementation services. |
- Recharge
- Subscription commerce platform for Shopify brands: recurring orders, bundles, customer portal, loyalty, cancellation flows, analytics, and retention.
- Recurly
- Subscription management platform for billing, payment orchestration, revenue recovery, analytics, subscriber lifecycle, and revenue recognition.
- Recharge
- Shopify-first DTC brands running subscription boxes, consumables, replenishment, memberships, bundles, and customer-portal driven retention.
- Recurly
- Digital subscriptions, consumer services, streaming/media, software, and commerce teams where dunning, payment recovery, and retention are central.
- Recharge
- Shopify customer → subscription plan → recurring order/payment → fulfillment and customer portal changes. Buyer-side commerce only; no payee payout or MoR B2B invoicing workflow.
- Recurly
- Subscriber lifecycle → invoice/payment attempt → dunning/retry/recovery → renewal or churn workflow. Subscriber-side only; no MoR invoicing or payee payouts.
- Recharge
- Shopify ecosystem integrations, customer portal, storefront/theme work, analytics, loyalty, and fulfillment-adjacent app flows. Fit drops outside subscription commerce.
- Recurly
- Payment gateways, tax, CRM, analytics, data, accounting, and e-commerce integrations. Validate how each system participates in billing close and churn operations.
- Recharge
- Subscription commerce reporting, subscriber analytics, and Shopify order records. RevRec, tax, accounting close, and payout proof live in the surrounding stack.
- Recurly
- Revenue recovery, subscriber analytics, renewal and churn reporting, and RevRec outputs. Reconciliation is subscriber-revenue shaped, not payout-source shaped.
- Recharge
- Published Starter and Plus plans combine monthly platform fees with per-transaction fees, with Custom for larger programs. Validate transaction volume, portal and bundle features, Shopify plan, and app stack costs.
- Recurly
- Public packaging centers on Subscriptions, Commerce, Engage, and RevRec. Validate TPV/GMV, contract length, recovery products, RevRec, gateways, and implementation services.
Use this as a structured starting point, then verify current product scope with Recharge and Recurly against your own workflow.
Exception handling
The address on a failed record
Who the exception is addressed to
A feature grid records that a product handles failed records. It does not record who the failure gets addressed to, and there are two designs behind that one line. In the first, the product contacts the counterparty itself, and the queue your team works is only what is still unresolved after a reminder has gone out. In the second, every failure routes back to your team, and each one becomes a message out, a wait, and a re-entry keyed by hand. Which design you are buying is not usually stated on a product page. Ask what the product sends to a payee whose bank details were rejected, and ask what it does when that payee does not reply.
Take this into your procurement call
Five questions that surface the meaningful fit differences between vendors.
- 1Name the business job, starting record, and team that will own the workflow.
- 2Ask Recharge to demonstrate one normal run and one exception using your inputs.
- 3Ask Recurly to run the same scenario so the comparison stays fair.
- 4Compare onboarding, handoffs, exception ownership, support, and the final finance export.
- 5Confirm current pricing, coverage, integrations, and contract scope directly with each vendor.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which product is built around Shopify commerce?+
Which product is built around payment recovery?+
How do their revenue-recognition responsibilities differ?+
What should a Shopify subscription brand compare?+
If you are switching over
- 01Map the records, identifiers, balances, statuses, and exports your current process depends on before choosing a migration path.
- 02Give Recharge and Recurly the same representative workflow, including an incomplete record and a failed or changed transaction.
- 03Assign an owner to every handoff and exception so gaps do not disappear between product demos.
- 04Run a parallel close before retiring the existing process, then compare the operational and finance outputs side by side.
Sources and references
7 references: click to expand
Recharge and Recurly are trademarks of their respective owners. This independent comparison is not endorsed by either vendor.
Connect the Recharge vs Recurly decision to the rest of your money flow
If your shortlist also needs client collection, controlled payout release, and finance-ready reconciliation, see where Gruv fits around the vendors you are evaluating.