Adding recurring payments (subscriptions) to your online store provides a myriad of benefits, from steady cashflow to predictable income, and more loyal customers to continual feedback from subscribers. But with so many WooCommerce subscription plugins to choose from, picking the best for your eCommerce website might be quite a challenge.
We took it upon ourselves to research, test, and evaluate 👨🔬 all WooCommerce subscription plugins on the market. Then, we narrowed the list down to analyze the absolute best subscription plugins based on pricing, features, customer support, and ease of use.
Features to look for in WooCommerce subscription plugins
In the past, we’ve discussed how to use membership plugins to foster online communities and put a price on creator content; yet, subscription plugins are a little different. Instead of putting a paywall on content such as articles, videos, and imagery (like you would do with a membership site), subscription plugins work by turning eCommerce products (physical or digital) into recurring orders.
As such, a customer would come to your store, pick an item, and see that you also offer subscriptions (usually discounted), where they can get the product delivered on a weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis.
Alternatively, you can also use WooCommerce subscriptions to process payments for online courses and membership sites, as long as your course/membership plugin supports WooCommerce as a payment option.
With that in mind, you may wonder which features are essential when looking for the best WooCommerce subscription plugins.
Here are the 🔑 key aspects you want:
- A recurring subscription option for products, and maybe services
- Controls for billing cycles
- Product variants to build different subscription plans
- User controls for pausing, canceling, or switching subscriptions
- Admin controls for activating, pausing, canceling, and switching subscriptions
- Failed payment controls for suspending or canceling subscriptions
- Automated email notifications for customers and admins
- Options for one-time sign up fees and free trials
- Coupons that apply to subscriptions
- Simple subscription tracking and reports
- A smooth integration with your current online store, for instantly adding subscriptions to existing products and processing payments the same way (and the ability to add multiple subscriptions—and non-subscription products—into one checkout)
Now that you have a strong 🏋️ understanding of the features you need, keep reading to explore the pricing and features of the best WooCommerce subscription plugins!
The best WooCommerce subscription plugins of 2022
Below, you’ll find our top choices for WooCommerce subscription plugins, along with top features, pricing, and what makes each one a good fit.
- YITH WooCommerce Subscriptions
- Subscriptions for WooCommerce by WebToffee
- Subscriptio
- WooCommerce Subscriptions
- SUMO Subscriptions
1. YITH WooCommerce Subscriptions
YITH WooCommerce Subscriptions is one of the more feature-packed subscription plugins, with options to sell products and services as recurring subscriptions and some extras you don’t receive in other plugins, like free trials, failed payment management, and a feature to export all subscription information to a CSV file.
Top features ⚙️
- Subscription tools for simple, virtual, and downloadable products
- Flexible recurring payment timeframes, with custom options and the standards like daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly
- Customization tools for various sections, like the “My Account” page and all buttons within the plugin
- PayPal support
- Free trials and sign up fees
- User and admin control over renewals, cancellations, and failed payment controls
- Subscription pausing
- Downgrading and upgrading between subscription product variants
- Beautiful subscription plan templates to showcase different packages
- Automated email notifications to users and admins
- Coupons made specifically for subscriptions
- Printable PDFs with all subscription mailing addresses
- A built-in delivery scheduling tool for subscriptions
- Synchronizing of all recurring payments to a specific date
Price 💰
The YITH WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin has a free version with basic features like subscription plans, daily or monthly recurring payments, and PayPal support.
The premium version sells for $199 per year and extends the above elements to include everything from manual subscriptions to CSV file exporting. The free plugin may work for some small operations, but we generally recommend the premium plugin if you’re running a growing ecommerce store.
What makes it a good fit? 👍
The YITH WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin offers more unique features than any other plugin on this list. It’s a good fit for flexibility, like if you’d like to set a trial period or sign up fee, or you want to force payment after the first attempt has failed.
2. Subscriptions for WooCommerce by WebToffee
The WebToffee Subscription for WooCommerce plugin offers a clean interface, simple integration with your online store, and an overall sleek option for creating and managing simple and variable product subscriptions.
The backend is easy to manage; in fact, all subscription settings get handled under the “Product Data” section of WooCommerce, meaning it shouldn’t vary much from your current product set up.
Top features ⚙️
- Support for simple and variable product subscriptions
- Sign up fees and free trials
- Options to offer discounts when customers opt for recurring payments
- Customizable expiry and renewal intervals
- Payments through PayPal and Stripe
- Email notifications to customers and admins
- Prorating and synchronization of all renewal dates
- The option to exclude subscriptions from coupons you create elsewhere on WooCommerce
- Complete subscription control—from cancellations to upgrades—for both customers and admins
- Multilingual support
Price 💰
There’s no free version of the WebToffee Subscription for WooCommerce plugin, but the pricing is reasonable:
- Single site: $89 per year
- Up to five sites: $129 per year
- Up to 25 sites: $199 per year
All pricing plans include one year of plugin updates and ticketed customer support. There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee to at least try out the plugin.
What makes it a good fit? 👍
The WebToffee Subscriptions for WooCommerce plugin makes sense for those who want to maintain the same interface they always used for managing WooCommerce products, as the subscriptions section simply gets added to the WooCommerce product page area. It’s also a nice plugin if you’d like the added Stripe payment gateway support.
3. Subscriptio
Subscriptio is a premium-only plugin sold through CodeCanyon. Having said that, the price is not only reasonable, but a one-time fee to turn your WooCommerce store into a subscription management center.
With the plugin, you can create subscriptions for all existing products and utilize the subscription management section on the WordPress dashboard.
The interface is understandable, since you can create subscriptions on the standard product pages in WooCommerce, while handling more advanced settings in a separate Subscriptions module.
Top features ⚙️
- Turn any product on WooCommerce into a subscription
- Automated actions and emails for all subscriptions, including notifications to customers and admins
- Stripe and PayPal payment gateways
- Support for both simple and variable items
- Customizable subscription lengths and billing cycles
- Free trials and sign up fees
- Customizable lengths for free trials
- Subscription pausing, cancelling, and resuming from the admin dashboard
- Various hooks and filters for developers
- Support for intangible products like services and digital goods
- A complete log of every subscription transaction
- Multi-subscription checkouts
- A related subscriptions box that shows up as customers shop for subscriptions
Price 💰
There’s no free version of Subscriptio.
The premium license has a one-time fee of $69. That gets you lifetime updates and six months of customer support. You can extend the customer support for an additional fee.
What makes it a good fit? 👍
The main reason we like Subscriptio is because of its hooks and filters, making it incredibly flexible for developers. In addition, the support for digital goods makes it desirable for many businesses. There’s also the added bonus of having both Stripe and PayPal payment gateways.
4. WooCommerce Subscriptions
WooCommerce Subscriptions is a subscriptions plugin that comes straight from the WooCommerce team. It was originally created by a third-party developer until WooCommerce acquired it in 2019.
It’s a fairly simple and intuitive solution for turning any current WooCommerce product into a recurring subscription. You can create multiple subscriptions and plans, while also offering discounts when customers sign up for recurring payments.
The flexible product options (and the perfect cohesion with the WooCommerce interface we’re all comfortable with) make it ideal as a quick way to turn on subscriptions for an existing store.
It also supports a wide array of payment processors.
Top features ⚙️
- Specialty support for product-of-the-month clubs, software billing packages, and weekly service subscriptions.
- Options to sell physical and virtual product subscriptions
- Payment synchronization, where all subscription payments are charged on a certain day of the week or month
- Various billing schedules for all subscriptions
- Integrations with over 25 payment gateways
- Auto-refilling for failed payments
- Notifications that go to users and admins
- Simple yet detailed reports for checking things like active subscribers and recurring revenue
- Sign up fees and free trials
- Upgrades and downgrades
- Subscription management for both admins and customers
- Subscription product limits, flexible renewal timeframes, and product download options
- The ability for users to add multiple subscriptions into one shopping cart
Price 💰
There’s no free version of WooCommerce Subscriptions.
The premium plugin costs $199 per year. That gets you yearly product updates and customer support. There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee.
What makes it a good fit? 👍
The main advantage of WooCommerce Subscriptions is its ability to integrate with over 25 payment gateways. You can see the full list here, along with the features supported by each gateway.
It’s also wonderful for digital product subscriptions (either paired with physical product subscriptions or on their own).
5. SUMO Subscriptions
The SUMO Subscriptions plugin serves as an affordable premium option to turn your WooCommerce products into variable, simple, or grouped product subscriptions, with discounts for when customers sign up for recurring payments.
Top features ⚙️
- Subscriptions for simple, variable, and grouped products
- Renewal frequency and number of installment customizations for the customer
- Synchronization of subscription payment times, where all customers get charged on the same date
- You can add multiple subscriptions, along with non-subscription products to the same checkout
- Prorating for synchronized subscriptions
- Integrations with Stripe, PayPal, and any WooCommerce-supported payment gateways
- Paid trials, free trials, and sign up fees
- Upgrading, downgrading, and full subscription control for admins and users
- Automated reminder emails
- Downloadable content dripping (for memberships)
- Donation support (extra integration required)
- Failed payment controls
- Sign up fee and recurring subscription coupons
Price 💰
The plugin costs $49 (one-time fee).
That gets you the plugin, lifetime updates, and six months of customer support. You can pay an additional fee for extended support.
There is no free version of the SUMO Subscriptions plugin.
What makes it a good fit? 👍
This is one of the few WooCommerce subscription plugins that allows subscriptions for grouped products. In addition, it works rather well for dripping downloadable content, making it somewhat of a dual-purpose subscription plugin, with content membership features included.
Get started with WooCommerce subscriptions today 🚀
All of these WooCommerce subscription plugins allow you to easily integrate with your current store, add flexible subscription settings, and customize everything from timeframes to free trials.
Here are our 🏁 final recommendations if you’re still struggling to pick one plugin:
- YITH WooCommerce Subscriptions: My favorite all-around WooCommerce subscriptions plugin, with the most features included.
- Subscriptions for WooCommerce by WebToffee: Best for a minimalist interface that hardly changes anything about WooCommerce, making it extremely comfortable to work with, particularly for making simple and variable subscriptions or prorated subscriptions.
- Subscriptio: Ideal for developers, since it offers hooks and filters; also perfect for creating and selling digital subscriptions, like for a video of the month club or recurring music tracks.
- WooCommerce Subscriptions: Best if you need the ability to integrate with over 25 payment gateways; there’s also the unique ability to sell subscriptions for both physical and digital products, and to bundle those products together within the same subscription.
- SUMO Subscriptions: This is your plugin if you want to offer subscriptions for grouped products, or if you’d like to drip content over a longer period of time to your subscribers.
Still have any questions about which is the best WooCommerce subscriptions plugin for your store? Let us know in the comments!