Simple Subscription/Recurring Payments App for a Magazine

[RyanClimbs]

I have a magazine which prints issues every three months, four times per year. I'm looking for an app that processes recurring payments for annual subscriptions and then, every three months when we print, allows me to export a list of current subscribers and shipping addresses which I can send to my printer/fulfiller.

Most subscription apps are built for product subscriptions so they'll send a new "order" back to Shopify for you to fulfill at whatever time period, but that's not necessary for me. Rather than fulfilling orders myself on dates that are relative to when the order was placed, I have everything fulfilled on the same day every quarter (Nov 1, Feb 1, May 1, Aug 1)—and I'm not even the one who needs to do that fulfilling. So sending those orders on random days back to Shopify only clutters things. 

My ideal recurring payments app keeps track of subscribers and automatically processes another payment every year for them, gives them a way to stop those recurring payments, and then lets me export a list of current subscribers every quarter. That's pretty much it. Almost like a membership, but tied to a specific product. 

Whats the simplest recurring payments app out there for what I need?

[AsteriskJake]

Plus one to this - I've got the exact same question, with the added complicated that our quarterly is not likely to be ready on the 1st of every 3 months. 

Sorry, Ryan, that I can't help you here! Would love to hear what you settled on! 

[CeAnne]

Also looking for a magazine subscription app for a quarterly publication that doesn't come out on the same date. A regular subscription app won't work because the product itself changes (a new quarterly magazine). Keeping customers coming every quarter for a new product and having to remember past ones is making a lot of work.

[StudioMelange]

Just wondering if you found a solution for this. I came looking for an app that does exactly what you described. 

[CeAnne]

No 😞 not yet... still looking! There are only apps if the subscription is
the same item and not changing quarterly, monthly ect. I would love to find
one! Not sure how we are going to handle this yet, at the moment it is
single copies.

[Noisemaker1]

As an editor of a quarterly print mag, I've been searching for a solution for so long too and have yet to find one. My latest brainstorm: Use shopify subscriptions to capture the initial subscription order, and then use Shopify Flow to populate the order page with the 4 upcoming issues included in the subscription (each as separate products). To track paid-by-check subscriptions, you'd just create a new customer and order, including the 4 upcoming issues. To pull the mailing list, you'd search by issue number and partially fulfill every order that includes that issue.🤔 Of course, that would leave the order page a mess, given that every active subscriber would have an unfulfilled order, and you'd always have to be sure to update the Flow to reflect which 4 issues are included in the latest subscription. Even so, do you think that would work at all? I cannot believe how much time I've spent trying to figure out a solution that'll work. It's so frustrating, and I feel like every magazine is simply making due with whatever imperfect subscription system they've rigged together with bubblegum and paperclips. 

[gp-oliver]

This is exactly what we need too!!  Has there been any recent updates?

[Nemanja_Janjic]

Hi there,

I'm Nemanja, Shopify partner from ShopBooster app development. 

Quick question: What do you think is a reasonable monthly cost for this magazine subscription app?

Thanks.

[CeAnne]

I think it depends on how many subscribers one has and how often the
subscription is for. Ours is quarterly for now, but if it went to
bi-monthly or monthly I would see an app as more valuable. At the moment we
are growing our subscribers and have under 100 vs a business associate we
have that will have over 5000.

CeAnne

[Nemanja_Janjic]

We are considering building such an app, so every detail is valuable.

[CeAnne]

Love that!


- The app would need to be a subscription but the product changes (for
us quarterly but could be bi-monthly or monthly).
- We need to be able to keep inventory on each of those magazines in
Shopify.
- We would need a yearly subscription option that would bill annually,
yet we ship more than one time in a year
- I need it to pull the list of subscribers for each quarter and create
automatic tickets in Shopify so that I can ship to each person without
having to create a new ticket each time
- I would need to be able to manage their subscription payments and
cancelations
- It would be a bonus to be able to add their subscription to additional
orders if they had an additional order at the same time that we were
shipping the magazine as we also carry many other items and sometimes they
ship together
- Another bonus to offers yearly subscription along with single
additions and a way to offer the subscription as a discounted bundle with a
higher price on singles

[rita17]

Would be amazing! Similar needs like CeAnne.

In addition:

- Offer print subscriptions & epaper subscriptions as a bundle

- epaper subscribers should get access to an epaper archive 

- easy way to export the active subscribers

- offer temporary free gifts for subscribers

- offer a gift subscription that automatically ends after one year

A magazine subscription app would be amazing for all smaller publishers. Do you already know if / when it will be developed?
Thank you very much!

[Nemanja_Janjic]

We're in the process of developing this app, and we anticipate having it ready for testing within the next 2-3 weeks. If you're interested in participating in the testing phase, please let me know. Thanks

[rita17]

Hi! I’m happy to particiapte in the testing phase. Would be great to hear more details about what it means to do so. Best, Rita

[RyanClimbs]

I'd also love to hear more about participating in testing this app!

[Onni_Kustannus]

Hi Janjic,

Yes, we are very interested in this app! We're about to launch our new website on Shopify very soon. Currently, we're managing a lot of manual work and spreadsheets with our old website and setup.

Looking forward to your response! -Kat

[nc1996]

Hi, does anyone know if they ever ended up developing this app? Having a similar issue. 

[Jason2022]

Has this app been released yet? It sounds like exactly what we need for managing our magazine.

[JeffScott]

Can we be added to your list of customers when this app is available? Jeff 

[CeAnne]

So the store you set up makes no sense to me - it doesn't function like an app and I can't test it. We have tried 2 different apps now: Seal Subscription and I forget the name of the other. We are currently using Seal Subscription and our issue is that if we go with a month to month they have to pay ever time and half of them just sign up to get 1 at the discount and then defer or cancel their subscription. It also will not allow us to swap varients so say April for June. If we go with the pay for the whole year at one time option it leaves the shopify ticket open for the whole year. Then it wants to put the whole year's quantity on the packing slip instead of just the one that we are shipping. Nothing about any of these apps works for a magazine. If they can't work as a magazine, I don't see how they even work for one-off products that might change or have variables. Has anyone had a different experience? I've spent a year going back and forth with these two different apps and way more money on it than I've made with the product. Its crazy that Amazon can figure this out but no private person with Shopify can seem to make an app that functions well.

[ArtMag]

We use Appstle for this. It is the most flexible and affordable subscription app we could find to suit our needs. Our setup is a little more complicated than the average, but the basic principle is:

We have four subscription plans:

• Spring (renews 1 Mar)
• Summer (renews 1 Jun)
• Autumn (renews 1 Sep)
• Winter (renews 1 Dec)

We change the product each quarter (mainly because we have digital subscriptions too which are linked to a different set of digital files each time) but if you just have a print magazine, you could keep the same product, called "One Year Subscription" for example, and swap the subscription plan each quarter. It doesn't affect previous orders; they would still renew on the correct date according to the subscription plan that was is use when the order was placed.

Example: Our Spring issue comes out in late March / early April. Let's say someone bought a subscription on 12 Mar, or 25 Apr, or 17 May (just picking random dates to demonstrate), their subscription will renew 1 Mar the following year, before the next Spring issue comes out.

Customers get an email when they order, with instructions on how to opt out of automatic renewals if they want to and a button/link to their account. They get a similar email 1 week before the renewal (you can choose how many days notice you want to give), to remind them it is coming up in case they want to cancel.

We use the original Shopify orders as our shipping address list rather than exporting from the app to see "Active" vs "Cancelled" subscriptions, because since they bought a yearly subscription, cancelling just means that their subscription won't automatically renew the following year. 

It is a bit messy when a customer moves – we have disabled them being able to change their address in their accounts, because that would only affect any future / renewal orders, not the shipping address on their original subscription order, so we'd be sending magazines to their old address. Instead, we ask them to submit a change of address via our contact form so we can manually update it.

It is not perfect, and we're still trying to figure out how to improve it, but I'm happy to talk through how we've got it working for us if it helps anyone.

[CommonplaceMag]

This is very interesting! And a helpful potential workaround. We release new magazine issues every 4 months, and I am looking for a way to offer recurring billing for each issue’s release, vs an annual  subscription where customers are charged once for the whole year. From your experience, would there be a way to adapt Appstle for this? 

I would want customers to be billed every January 1, June 1, and September 1 after their initial signup. From what I’ve seen, Appstle only has the option for customers to be billed every 4 months from they date they signed up; which means that every subsequent charge would be totally random and not aligned with the date we are actually releasing a new issue…hence the need for an app that would allow us to set specific recurring billing dates as listed above.

I know there are apps out there with this function, but they are outside the budget at this point and your workaround with Appstle makes me wonder if we could adapt it for our purposes as well.

Any input you have would be welcome!

[ArtMag]

You can definitely select specific billing dates with Appstle. And you can set up automatic product swaps, so after someone buys issue #1, Appstle can swap their next order to issue #2, etc. 

[CommonplaceMag]

Thanks! I feel like a clod because I cannot figure out how to do this. In the subscription plan setup, all I see is a place to select which day of the month recurring billing takes place. I don’t see any way to select a specific month, though. What am I missing??

[ArtMag]

If you chat with their support team they should be able to help you set it up.

[CeAnne]

So I'm curious why the spring, summer, fall, and winter are all different subscriptions. Why not one annual one with a swap every quarter?