subscription app for DIGITAL products?

[KristyD]

I am looking for an app that works with shopify's digital download system to easily create a monthly subscription service of digital products. Something easy to set up/use like:

Customer "purchases" monthly subscription (recurring charge) for X amount of months

After certain date each month, customers of that subscription that have been verified to have been successfully charged are automatically sent the order created by me for that month. Order would need to have links to download items. Would be a bonus if the order confirm email could be customizable but not a deal breaker.

Reminder emails of their billing period coming up to renew or ability to automatically renew.

I've seen a ton for physical products but nothing specifically for digital the utilizes what's already available (and working) with Shopify.

If anyone has any help for me I'd love to hear it! Thanks!

[Arlandis]

Did you ever get this figured out Kristy?

I'm asking because I'm thinking of working on a similar app to handle use-cases like yours.

[KristyD]

I did not, Arlandis. Please let me know if you do. I'd happily give feedback or what not if you do decide to, just ask 🙂

[Mr_Smithers]

Hey Kristy, could you email me arlandislawrenceATgmail.com? I started looking into this and am interested in learning more from you about usage.

[SimonSteele]

Is this app available? Looking to do the same thing.

[wjb]

It seems Shopify is limited to only non-recurring transactions for hard good.

The world is moving to digital goods and subscription services.  I can't figure out why Shopify is opposed to recurring subscription payments.  And, for digital goods, you would expect immediate access to the information.  But, again, it seems the Shopify API can't integrate with a CMS to create a new subscriber, renew the subscriber when they pay each year, cancel the subscriber if their credit card fails, etc.

We run about half of our business through Stripe, which works for recurring subscriptions and digital goods.  The Stripe dashboard and product management is much more difficult v. Shopify.  But we're working on moving away from Shopify and running all of our sales through Stripe.

[SimonSteele]

Interesting,  I'll investigate stripe a bit closer perhaps. 

Right not I use Re-Charge and the Shopify digital downloads app and then change the file at the end of the month so when the subscriptions charge again its a new file to download. 

[bredesignco]

It's not a shopify app, but I've been working with Podia, which you can embed buttons into your shopify site. They have memberships, digital downloads, courses, and more. All digital! Might be worth looking into!

[kristybutterfly]

I'd very much like to see shopify create a learning system or even product system that replicates podia for those who sell online courses and webinars. 

[adamwc]

@SimonSteele Are you still using the process of Re-Charge and Shopify Digital Downloads?

I can't believe that someone hasn't developed an app that handles both the payment processing and the digital delivery...SendOwl seems the closest with their Drip Subscriptions, but you can't do it through Shopify Checkouts - you have to have it be a separate "buy button" you put somewhere other than on Shopify...which isn't helpful.

I thought about the process you described...I can just see customers forgetting to download the product one month, and then I swap out the file, and they go to get the new one, and they can't access the one from the previous month...have you run into that?