In our previous posts, we described what is hidden behind subscriptions and recurring payments and how to implement this approach using various Magento extensions – Subscriptions and Recurring Payments Magento Extensions. Today, we want to say a few words about appropriate Magento 2 modules and the destiny of recurring profiles in Magento 2.
If you’ve missed our post about subscriptions and recurring payments in Magento 1, then we will provide a brief overview of the technology. Although Magento 1.x enables you to use subscriptions and recurring payments, there are lots of third-party modules available in the ecosystem. Unfortunately, the default recurring functionality is limited, but installing an appropriate extension on your store can easily solve this problem. So, what is the purpose of this approach to payments?
By implementing subscriptions and recurring payments, you allow your customers to automatically buy goods on your ecommerce website based on subscriptions. Note that subscriptions and recurring payments are mostly used for the following categories of goods: pet food, toiletries, water, and other products that constantly run out; newspapers, magazines, collectibles, and other products that come in new editions.
With the subscription option, your customers no longer have to go through the buying process each time they want to purchase something they’ve ordered before on your website. That’s why the implementation of this approach significantly helps to improve the user experience. As a Magento merchant, you get the most convenient and low-cost way to accept recurring payments. Furthermore, repetitive purchases mean that you get regular customers.
Although Magento 1.x utilizes Recurring Profiles to implement subscriptions, some quirks and limitations do not let you fully leverage the technology. Therefore, we’ve gathered the best subscriptions and recurring payments modules in the post mentioned above. As for Magento 2, it doesn’t include any subscription or recurring payment functionality by default. It might change in the future, but now the usage of third-party extensions is inevitable if you want to accept recurring payments.
In this post, we propose you to check the following subscriptions and recurring payments Magento 2 extensions.
Table of contents
After installing Amasty Subscriptions & Recurring Payments for Magento 2, you will drastically improve the shopping experience on your online store by making the ordering process of subscription products easier for your customers. With the Magento 2 recurring payments module by Amasty, store owners can create flexible subscription plans and allow customers to add both subscription and regular products to the same cart. You can also offer discounts for buying goods on subscription, provide free trial periods, and set initial subscription fees.
The extension offers a user-friendly backend interface and convenient management of products on subscription. After setting all the necessary subscription options, you can apply them to all or selected products in your catalog in bulk. It is also possible to configure subscription settings for each item separately and set individual trial prices, initial fees, and discounts by applying one of the created subscription plans.
As a store owner, you get a convenient way for accepting recurring payments due to the automatic invoicing functionality. You also decide whether to use strict billing terms or allow customers to pick the most suitable payment frequency. Note that Subscriptions & Recurring Payments by Amasty supports Stripe, PayPal, and Amazon payments and allows using Cash on Delivery payment method.
As for the user experience on the frontend, your clients get a dedicated My Subscriptions tab in their accounts. Here, they can view the list of all their active subscriptions with detailed info. If necessary, they can cancel a particular subscription plan with one button click.
Furthermore, the Amasty subscription extension lets you enable automatic email alerts on various events related to customer subscriptions, such as the subscription purchase, end of the trial period, and subscription cancellation.
Download / Buy Amasty Subscriptions & Recurring Payments Magento 2 Extension
This Magento 2 extension enables ecommerce merchants to create flexible subscriptions for various products and services. The extension allows adding several products to a single subscription and setting trial and initial fees on a single subscription basis. Furthermore, mass actions are available, so creating subscription products won’t take much time and effort. It is also worth mentioning that the aheadWorks Subscription & Recurring Payments extension supports PayPal Express checkout. Let’s figure out how the module works.
After installing the Subscription & Recurring Payments Magento 2 extension, you get a perfect opportunity to enhance the default shopping experience with subscription options. These options can be added to literally every product on your Magento 2 store. Note that all subscription plans are highly adjustable, so you or your administrators can offer the most favorable conditions. It concerns delivery options, subscription start date, initial fees, trial period, etc. Furthermore, customers can subscribe for daily, weekly, or monthly supplies.
All subscription plans are gathered in a grid:
This is how a subscription plan edit page looks:
As for the PayPal support mentioned before, the extension creates a recurring billing profile on the PayPal side every time a subscription is purchased.
It is also necessary to say a few words about the customer experience. Your buyers get a special section in their account profile that is fully dedicated to subscriptions and recurring payments. The aheadWorks extension adds all options necessary to provide a seamless shopping experience. Once the subscription is active, the extension charges customers automatically. The same is about orders: they are placed according to the existing subscription plans.
From the frontend perspective, store visitors get a new button next to “Add to Cart”:
The module adds a dedicated subscription cart:
The checkout page for subscriptions looks as follows:
Moreover, the extension is mobile-friendly!
Download / Buy aheadWorks Subscription & Recurring Payments Magento 2 Extension
MageDelight offers an advanced tool for implementing the subscription and recurring payments functionality on a Magento 2 store. Store managers can create subscription intervals with custom labels, configure a cron job to automatically generate orders for subscription profiles, and set the maximum quantity of products available for subscription. Admins also decide whether customers will be allowed to update billing cycles for their subscriptions and change the billing and shipping address in their profiles.
Besides, the MageDelight Subscribe Now Pro extension allows customers to view and manage created subscription profiles under a dedicated tab in their account area. Registered users can check details of their subscriptions, as well as skip, pause, and cancel selected subscriptions whenever they need. Besides, the Magento 2 module allows customers to modify the number of items in a subscription.
Other improvements of the user experience on the frontend include selecting the start date of a subscription, putting one-time purchase and subscription products in one shopping cart, and changing the subscription interval and start date on a cart page.
The MageDelight Magento 2 subscription module provides store admins with a user-friendly interface for managing subscription products. After installing the extension, you will be able to configure subscription options for selected products from your catalog. Thus, you can specify individual discounts, initial fees, and billing period. Besides, it is possible to enable a trial billing period and set a trial billing amount and the number of occurrences for the trial cycle.
Also, note that the MageDelight subscriptions and recurring payments extension supports most payment gateways, including offline payment methods, such as Cash on Delivery and Check/Money Order. Besides, customers have an option to use their e-wallet balance for subscription orders. This way, the module ensures flexibility of payments and maximum convenience of the customer checkout experience.
One of the most prominent features of the MageDelight subscription module is the availability of an analytical dashboard with informative graphs and charts. The dashboard gathers stats on the number of active, paused, and complete subscriptions, subscribers count, and the total number of subscription orders. Besides, you can track the most recent subscriptions and understand which subscription products are the most popular among shoppers. For each available report (Subscription, Orders, and Amount), you can select a chart type and time interval for generating the data.
Moreover, after installing the MageDelight Magento 2 subscriptions module, you get access to advanced reports that provide data on product-wise and customer-wise subscriptions. Another report helps you track the order quantity and number of subscriptions per product for a specific period and plan stock replenishment correspondingly.
Download / Buy MageDelight Subscribe Now Pro Magento 2 Extension
Adaptive Subscriptions by Paradox Labs is another solution designed to implement subscriptions in Magento 2. The company already has a great experience in Recurring Profiles of Magento 1.x, and its new system overcomes limitations available in the first version of our favorite ecommerce platform. Besides, it meets lots of new business requirements that recurring profiles were never capable of. However, is $699 a reasonable price? Below, we provide an overview of the main pros and cons of the extension, so you will easily get the answer.
Paradox Labs claims that Adaptive Subscriptions for Magento 2 is not SaaS, so there are no ongoing fees, and you can modify the extension as you wish. The price still seems unreasonable, but it’s just the beginning of our review.
Adaptive Subscriptions can handle a recurring revenue model even if it is not supported out-of-the-box (and it isn’t). But all the subscriptions and recurring payments Magento 2 extensions are in the same conditions, so let’s figure out the module’s core features.
The extension enables customers to choose whether to purchase an item as a subscription or not. As a Magento 2 owner, you can disable this functionality. The feature seems unique since it is not represented in all Magento modules, but it is still not enough to pay $699.
Paradox Labs Adaptive Subscriptions provides customers with the ability to choose the subscription frequency. If necessary, you can turn off this feature – a quite common practice in appropriate Magento 1.x modules.
Your customers are free to buy any number of subscriptions and non-subscription items simultaneously. This feature is available in the most advanced Magento 1 recurring payment modules, but the most expensive one costs about $300.
As a merchant, you can provide customers with a discount for buying subscriptions, choose how to charge customers for their first installment, define a length of a subscription (it can be indefinite), and choose whether customers can pause or cancel their subscriptions. All these features seem to be very common, but the price is still very unusual.
The Paradox Labs Adaptive Subscriptions Magento 2 extension supports such product types as simple, configurable, virtual, and downloadable. This minimum is represented in all other modules, but there is a tool that lets customers subscribe to any content of the shopping cart. Unfortunately, Adaptive Subscriptions doesn’t do that.
You can allow your customers to use coupons and discounts for the first installment, but it seems that both features are far from being the best in the industry. Some Magento 1 modules offer more advanced functionality in the same area.
However, there are some useful and unique features available in Paradox Labs Adaptive Subscriptions. For instance, you can group same-day subscriptions to ship several different ones that run at the same time and belong to one customer. The feature helps to save the time and money necessary for covering shipping costs.
As for shipments, all shipping methods are supported. Furthermore, rates are recalculated every time a subscription runs. Consequently, the Paradox Labs Adaptive Subscriptions Magento 2 extension saves you from expenditures caused by flat-rate shipping. This feature is quite rare, but is it enough to justify the price?
The module keeps you informed if a subscription fails by sending an email. Besides, it notifies customers about invalid payment information. A robust notification system is a must-have feature of every subscription Magento 2 module, so it doesn’t make the module by Paradox Labs much better than its counterparts.
The company also highlights that the admin grid of Adaptive Subscriptions lets you track subscription statuses, changes, billing information, and recent failures – the functionality is quite common for other Magento 2 modules.
What sounds really interesting is the complete control over the way subscriptions are billed. Although this process runs automatically by an hourly scheduled task, you can do everything manually, triggering billing from the command line or selecting individual subscriptions from the admin grid. This approach helps you completely customize the way subscriptions are billed according to your ecommerce needs. Furthermore, the Adaptive Subscriptions Magento 2 extension provides you with the ability to change the next billing date and each subscription frequency right in the Magento 2 admin.
As for customers, they can view the status of their subscriptions and update such data as billing and shipping information. But it’s not a competitive advantage – it’s a mandatory requirement for every subscription and recurring payments Magento 2 extension.
Now, consider all the features mentioned above and compare them with the module’s price – $699. The extension doesn’t look very user-friendly, but let’s see what its closest competitor offers.
Download / Buy Paradox Labs Adaptive Subscriptions Magento 2 Extension
Subscription and Recurring Payments for Magento 2 by Magenest ($299)
The popularity of subscription products is rapidly growing. To keep up with the time, Magenest offers its own module in this area. The Subscription and Recurring Payments Magento 2 extension is designed for the seamless integration and management of subscription products on the basis of Magento 2. So, what are its core features?
The Magenest Subscription and Recurring Payments extension works with simple, virtual, and downloadable products. The list is limited compared to the mentioned above tool, but the extension price is dramatically lower. As for available features, they are:
- Full control over recurring options. As a Magento 2 admin, you can easily specify the number of maximum payment failures, enable auto-billing on the next cycle, manage multiple billing options (such as Period Unit, Billing Frequency, and Maximum Billing Cycles), activate and manage the trial period, as well as turn on Initial Fee and set its amount.
- Products with the activated recurring feature lead to recurring profile creation after checkout.
- All recurring profiles can be managed under Magenest Subscription -> Recurring Profiles.
- Customers can choose such parameters as Billing Cycle, Unit Recurring Payment, and Start Date and manage subscription-related orders at My Recurring Profiles.
- The extension works with PayPal on checkout, so you don’t have to spend additional money to purchase a new gateway.
As you can see, Magenest subscriptions and recurring payments Magento 2 extension is slightly limited compared to Adaptive Subscriptions for Magento 2 by Paradox Labs. At the same time, it is almost four times cheaper.
Download / Buy Magenest Subscription and Recurring Payments Magento 2 Extension
Final Words
In this post, we introduced you to several subscription and recurring payments extensions currently available in the Magento 2 ecosystem.
Here at Firebear Studio, we constantly monitor the ecosystem, looking for the latest extensions, and review their functionality and features. This post is getting updated as soon as new Magento 2 subscriptions and recurring payments extensions become available.
