We build subscription ecommerce on Shopify — Recharge and Shopify Subscriptions, customer portals, build-a-box flows, and migrations that keep every active contract billing.
Mgroup builds Shopify Recharge and native Shopify Subscriptions for direct-to-consumer (DTC/D2C) brands. Launching a subscription is easy; keeping it alive is engineering — failed payments, skip and swap, portal UX, and a migration path that does not reset a single active contract.
We implement both stacks and tell you honestly which fits. Recharge for complex logic — build-a-box, prepaid, bundles, per-item frequency. Shopify Subscriptions when native checkout, Shopify Bundles and lower fees matter more than depth. Either way you get a customer portal that people can actually use, and subscription data that reaches your ERP and email platform intact.
Get a subscription audit
Most subscription revenue is lost to failed payments, not cancellations. We build dunning that retries intelligently, card-updater flows, skip and swap instead of cancel, and pause options that keep the contract alive. When you move platforms, a subscription migration transfers active contracts, billing dates and payment tokens — no re-authorisation, no lost cohort.
Talk to an engineerThe platforms, billing mechanics and data flows we use to ship subscription ecommerce on Shopify and Shopify Plus. Shopify Recharge is the engine we reach for most often.
The deepest subscription engine on Shopify — build-a-box, prepaid, per-item frequency, bundles. Where custom logic is the requirement, this is usually the answer.
Native subscription contracts inside Shopify checkout. Fewer moving parts and lower fees, at the cost of depth on complex catalogue rules.
Where subscribers skip, swap, pause, change frequency or update a card. The single biggest lever on voluntary churn, and usually the worst-built part of the stack.
Retry logic, card updater and recovery messaging for failed payments — involuntary churn is quietly the largest leak in most subscription programs.
Curated and customer-selected boxes with inventory rules, per-item swaps and pricing that holds up when the catalogue changes.
Moving active subscriptions between platforms with billing dates, payment tokens and cohort history intact — no customer re-authorisation.
Six production-grade subscription capabilities — from Recharge and native builds to portals, dunning and migration. Each one shipped, measured, and tied to recurring revenue retained.
Platform fit, portal UX, dunning coverage, churn breakdown and data flow review. Output is a prioritized fix list with the revenue attached to each leak.
Full Recharge build — plans, per-item frequency, prepaid, bundles and discount logic wired to your real catalogue rules rather than the demo store.
A portal subscribers can use without emailing support: skip, swap, pause, reschedule, change frequency, update payment — on mobile first.
Curated and self-select boxes with inventory awareness, per-item swaps and pricing rules that survive catalogue changes.
Retry schedules, card updater, pre-dunning notices and win-back paths — the difference between a leaking cohort and a compounding one.
Active contracts, billing dates and payment tokens moved between platforms without re-authorisation or a gap in billing.
No-commitment scoping call · response within 1 business day
How an engineered subscription program compares to installing Recharge and hoping the defaults fit your catalogue.
| Criterion | With Mgroup | App defaults |
|---|---|---|
| Platform choice | Recharge or native, chosen on your rules | Whichever was installed first |
| Customer portal | Custom, mobile-first, brand-consistent | Default portal on a subdomain |
| Failed payments | Dunning + card updater + pre-notice | Three retries, then churn |
| Cancel flow | Skip, swap, pause offered first | One cancel button |
| Catalogue logic | Build-a-box with inventory awareness | Fixed plans, manual upkeep |
| Data flow | Contracts reach ERP and Klaviyo intact | Subscription data stuck in the app |
| Migration | Contracts and tokens moved, no re-auth | Customers asked to subscribe again |
| Reporting | Cohort retention and churn by reason | Active subscriber count only |
| Direct engineer contact | Senior developer on Slack · same hour | App support queue |
| Theme integration | Subscribe widget native to your PDP | Injected widget that fights the theme |
| Ongoing capacity | Retained team to iterate on churn data | Nobody owns it after launch |
| Best for | DTC brands where recurring is the model | A single test plan on one product |
Get a free 30-min subscription review — we will show you where your cohort is leaking and what it is worth.
Three transparent engagement models for subscription work on Shopify. Fixed scope, fixed price.
One-time review of platform fit, portal and churn.
2–3 weeks
Book an auditFull subscription build or platform migration.
5–9 weeks
Start implementationOngoing subscription engineering capacity.
Rolling, cancel with 30 days
Talk to an engineerNeed a fixed-scope proposal? Tell us about your plans and we will scope it in writing.
Replenishment windows, box logic and churn drivers differ by vertical — the build changes with them.
Wellness subscription plans on real dosage cycles, compliance-safe messaging, and prepaid options that lift committed revenue.
Beverage subscription and meal boxes with freshness-aware scheduling, per-item swaps and gifting.
Replenishment on consumption windows, routine bundles and shade-aware swaps that avoid the wrong-product cancel.
Weight and age-based sizing, multi-pet households, and delivery cadence tied to how fast the bag actually empties.
Roast-date scheduling, grind preferences, rotating selections and the discovery boxes that drive first subscriptions.
DTC subscription models built for cohort economics — prepaid, tiering and win-back rather than discount-led acquisition.
Subscriptions are a billing system, not an app install — six steps from platform choice to cohort reporting.
Catalogue rules, churn breakdown, portal review and an honest Recharge vs native Shopify Subscriptions recommendation.
Plan structure, frequencies, prepaid options and build-a-box rules modelled against real inventory and margin.
Subscribe widget native to your PDP and a customer portal that handles skip, swap, pause and payment updates on mobile.
Retry schedules, card updater, pre-dunning notices and recovery paths for the payments that fail without anyone cancelling.
Active contracts, billing dates and tokens migrated, then QA-ed against seed subscribers before a single real charge runs.
Retention by cohort, churn by reason, and recovered revenue from dunning — the numbers that tell you if it is compounding.
Honest platform choice, portals built for mobile, dunning that recovers involuntary churn, and migrations that never ask a customer to subscribe twice.
Get a subscription auditLifecycle flows for subscribers — pre-dunning, skip prompts and win-back tied to contract state.
On-site conversion work that turns first-time buyers into subscribers rather than one-off orders.
Subscribe widgets built natively into the PDP instead of injected over it.
Platform moves where active subscription contracts have to survive the cutover.
Stack review that finds where subscription data stops flowing to ERP and email.
Retained capacity to launch new plans and iterate on churn data every month.
Recharge if your logic is complex: build-a-box, per-item frequency, prepaid, bundles. Native Shopify Subscriptions if you want fewer moving parts, native checkout and lower fees, and your plans are relatively simple. We assess your catalogue rules first and recommend one — we do not have a default.
An audit takes 2–3 weeks. A full build or migration runs 5–9 weeks depending on plan complexity, whether build-a-box is involved, and how many active contracts have to move.
In most cases yes. Contracts, billing dates and payment tokens transfer between supported platforms without customer re-authorisation. Where a gateway does not allow token portability we say so before you commit, because that changes the plan entirely.
More often failed payments than unhappy customers. Involuntary churn from expired cards and declines is usually the largest single leak, and it is fixable with dunning, a card updater and pre-notice messaging. Voluntary churn is mostly a portal problem — people cancel because skipping was harder than cancelling.
No. Both Recharge and native subscriptions run on standard plans. Shopify Plus adds checkout extensibility that helps with custom subscription upsells, but it is not a prerequisite.
Subscription data reaching your ERP and email platform is part of the build. Contract state, next charge date and cohort data flow to your ERP and to Klaviyo, so lifecycle messaging can react to what the subscription is actually doing.
Yes — curated and self-select boxes, per-item swaps, inventory-aware availability and pricing that holds when the catalogue changes. It is the most requested and most under-estimated part of a subscription build.