Subscription customers are valuable. But without strong offers, great customer service, and easy subscription management, it’s hard to retain them.
Subscription management software platforms help you keep the recurring customers you worked so hard to convert. These tools automate subscription logistics and personalize the experience while giving subscribers the control and flexibility they expect.
What is subscription management software?
Subscription management software helps brands sell, manage, and grow recurring revenue. It handles logistics like billing cycles, payments, order reminders, and customer self-service.
Modern subscription management tools put your subscribers in control. They make it easy to pause, skip, swap, bundle, or upgrade subscriptions on their own terms. When customers can self-serve, they may be less likely to cancel their subscription.
As part of an ecommerce tech stack, subscription management tools should integrate with your CRM, online store, marketing automation platform, and more.
How does subscription management software help brands meet their goals?
Subscription management software solves many of the operational problems that slow teams down and frustrate customers. It helps you:
- Personalize retention offers. Subscription management software can track when customers pause their subscription, skip orders, or try to cancel. When your subscription management software is integrated with your customer data, you’re in a great position to respond with personalized offers based on what you know about those customers.
- Retain more subscribers. Subscribers can use self-service portals to manage orders, update payment details, or adjust subscriptions without contacting support. According to Recurly’s 2026 State of Subscriptions Report, 38% of consumers would rather pause their subscription than cancel. Giving them an easy way to do so can reduce churn and retain more subscribers over time.
- Increase average order value. Recurly’s State of Subscriptions Report also found that engaged subscribers who regularly interact with your brand spend 3x more than unengaged subscribers. They’re also more likely to remain subscribers, upgrade, or come back and re-subscribe. Subscription management software can help you create the touchpoints that keep people engaged.
- Reduce manual work. With subscription management software, you can run billing, renewals, payment retries, and cancellations automatically. Your subscription model can run itself without manual follow-up.
- Test and launch new pricing strategies without delays. Rather than waiting on dev support to test a new pricing model or launch a promotion, you can build and launch it yourself with subscription management software.
8 of the best subscription management software platforms for reducing churn and growing recurring revenue
The tools below take different approaches to subscription management, from flexible billing and bundles to churn prevention and self-service. Here are 8 of the best subscription management tools for turning customers into loyal subscribers:
Appstle Subscriptions
Appstle is a flexible subscription management platform for Shopify brands. With Appstle, subscribers can build their own boxes or choose bundles on top of standard replenishment. Appstle also offers loyalty rewards, like free products after a certain number of orders.
Before a shipment goes out, Appstle reminders give subscribers a chance to update, skip, or add items, which can prevent cancellations and increase revenue. Subscribers can manage everything through a customer portal, where they can pause, skip, cancel, and resume subscriptions themselves. Actions are tagged so brands can send personalized messages that respond to customer needs.
With Klaviyo’s Appstle integration, you can use subscriber behavior to automatically trigger flows or build audience segments. For example:
- Remind paused subscribers about their subscriptions and highlight any current promotions.
- Entice canceled subscribers with a special offer for something they might need replenished.
- Reward subscribers who switch to recurring payments with an exclusive discount code.
Loop
Loop is a subscription management app for Shopify brands that makes recurring orders more engaging with gamified journeys and rewards. Subscribers earn mystery rewards, surprise perks, or streak-based incentives that keep them coming back. You can also up- and cross-sell subscribers by adding products you think they’ll like to their customer portal.
With Klaviyo’s Loop integration, you can send automated email and text message flows after subscribers take certain actions. For example:
- Send a higher discount on a second subscription pause to keep someone subscribed.
- Add password-less up-sell links for complementary items in upcoming order notifications.
- Reduce order skips with personalized, gamified rewards.
Ordergroove
Ordergroove is a subscription and membership platform that can help you create incentives that feel personal and valuable. Subscribers can choose curated boxes or build their own, making it easy to discover and enjoy new products.
Rather than sitewide promotions that target all visitors, Ordergroove’s stackable incentives approach tailors subscription offers to customer type, lifecycle stage, or product. Turn casual shoppers into long-term subscribers by offering VIP experiences with membership, including exclusive access to products, content, and experiences.
Klaviyo’s Ordergroove integration helps you personalize your subscriber email and text messages. For example:
- Send personalized conversion messages based on subscriber status data.
- Remind subscribers to add products to upcoming orders with one-click links.
- React in real time to cancellations with win-back and retention flows.
Recharge
Recharge is a no-code subscription, loyalty, and support platform. Through the Recharge portal or via email, subscribers can pause, skip, or swap products.
Recharge empowers you to offer prepaid options for multiple deliveries at a discount, giving subscribers more flexibility while driving more revenue. Subscribers can also choose from single or recurring purchase options from one product page without creating multiple SKUs.
Klaviyo’s Recharge integration turns subscriber profile data into strategies brands can act on. For example:
- Make it easy for subscribers to add, swap, or reactivate subscriptions with quick actions in emails and texts.
- Build VIP subscriber segments and send them exclusive deals or offers.
- Create custom flows for key moments, like up-selling a limited-time product when the third order in a subscription is about to ship.
Pet brand PrettyLitter used Klaviyo’s Recharge integration to make it easy for customers to update their subscriptions via text message. Now, customers can adjust shipping cadence simply by texting keywords like “SHIP” to receive an order early or “UPDATE” to change delivery frequency.
“They only have to text two keywords to manage the delivery and cadence of their subscription,” says Matthew Seifert, VP of CRM at PrettyLitter. “That’s important for us, because it’s a really strong retention play that lets customers self-serve.”
Skio
Skio is a no-code customer portal, email, and text subscription management tool. From its portal, Skio generates direct links that allow subscribers to skip orders, delay deliveries, or add items from emails, texts, and portal banners.
Rather than a single cancel button, Skio’s multi-step cancellation journeys give subscribers alternatives based on their intent, such as:
- Pausing instead of canceling outright
- Swapping to a different product
- Adjusting delivery frequency
With Klaviyo’s Skio integration, subscription activity feeds directly into your CRM, giving you ongoing insight into how subscribers manage their plans. Events like upcoming orders, pauses, and cancellations sync to Klaviyo in real time. This visibility makes it easier to spot early signs of churn and respond with relevant email and text messages.
For example, you could remind subscribers about upcoming shipments and invite them to make changes before it goes out. If a customer cancels, that action can trigger a win-back flow that includes personalized incentives.
Chargebee
Chargebee is a subscription management platform that focuses on automating recurring billing and monetization. Charge based on usage, add trials and add-ons, and manage upgrades and downgrades with more flexibility.
With Chargebee subscription trials, you can:
- Choose how much subscribers pay upfront.
- Require a credit card right away.
- Offer a free trial.
- Extend trials, offer discounts, or set up gifting flows that turn recipients into subscribers.
Klaviyo’s Chargebee integration brings subscription and billing events into your CRM. Events like trials, new subscriptions, cancellations, failed payments, refunds, and successful payments sync to Klaviyo. That means you can:
- Send reminders before a trial ends and explain next steps.
- Follow up on failed payments with clear instructions.
- Confirm successful payments or refunds.
- Send personalized messages to customers with unpaid invoices.
- Access insights from subscription and payment data.
PayWhirl
PayWhirl is a Shopify app that makes it easy to add subscriptions to existing products without a complex set-up. Offer simple subscriptions, installment plans, or scheduled payments, and surface these options directly on product pages, in carts, and through Shopify’s native check-out.
With PayWhirl, subscribers can manage everything through an embedded portal on your site, where they can review upcoming charges, update payment details, or cancel on their own terms.
Klaviyo’s PayWhirl integration syncs all subscription and payment events with your CRM. That means you can:
- Send reminders before upcoming charges so customers aren’t caught off guard.
- Trigger personalized emails and texts from Klaviyo when subscriptions are created, paused, resumed, canceled, renewed, or experience failed payments.
- Build subscriber segments by status, renewal date, and product to send up-sells, loyalty campaigns, or surveys.
Recurly
Recurly is a subscription management platform for high-volume ecommerce. The platform gives you flexibility in how you price and package subscriptions, from fixed, tiered, volume-based, usage-based, prepaid, ramp, or one-time pricing. They even offer the option to mix multiple billing models within a single plan.
That flexibility means you can shape subscriptions around how your customers want to pay for and experience subscriptions. You could offer a simple monthly plan, layer in usage-based pricing for regular customers, or introduce prepaid options for subscribers who want a better deal upfront.
Recurly also offers options for testing and adjusting subscription programs. For example:
- Launch new plans quickly and update pricing as needed.
- Add free trials, set-up fees, or add-ons without recreating plans.
- Offer daily, weekly, monthly, annual, or custom billing periods.
- Sell products as one-time purchases or recurring items from the same catalog.
Klaviyo’s Recurly integration syncs billing and subscription events in real time, so you can:
- Send payment reminders or card update prompts when a charge fails.
- Follow up after a successful payment with relevant add-ons or upgrades.
- React quickly when someone cancels by offering alternatives or incentives.
- Let subscribers swap items, add items, and reactivate subscriptions.
- Add special offer discounts in win-back flows to re-engage customers.
Turn subscription management into a retention engine with Klaviyo
Subscription management platforms may handle the logistics, but real retention happens when you know how to communicate with your subscribers.
When you connect your subscription platform to Klaviyo B2C CRM, customer data and personalized messaging become your retention strategy. When someone pauses, you can re-engage them. When a payment fails, you can fix it before the subscriber churns. When someone upgrades, you can send them something special or exclusive to show them they made the right decision.
With Klaviyo, you can do more than manage subscriptions. You can build subscriber relationships that stand the test of time.
Related content
