Roadmap Update: First Look at Our Shopify Subscriptions App

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our webinar on the product roadmap update for Recurly's Shopify app. We're so excited to share our plans and how they will support your ecommerce subscription management experience. I'm Kat Gonzalez Earhart, a senior product marketing manager here at Recurly.

And hi, folks. I'm Nirajnak. I'm a VP in our product management group, overseeing our ecommerce solutions, and I'm super excited to share a little bit about what we're doing.

Cool. And I just wanna mention that we've got a team monitoring our chat. So if at any point during the discussion, if you've got a question that pops up, feel free to send it along. If we can't answer it right away, we'll be producing an FAQ and sending that out over email afterward. So just any any question, feel free to, pop it in as it comes up.

So before we jump into the road map, let's take a moment to discuss why we decided to build this app in the first place.

Sure. Good place to start. So we have a lot of customers, a lot of prospects, that are using Shopify as their ecommerce solution. They're coming to us asking us, hey. We wanna start selling subscriptions on Shopify.

And quite frankly, when they're looking at the options available to them to sell subscriptions through Shopify, those solutions just aren't really up to snuff.

So we think there's a huge opportunity for us to combine best in class ecommerce with best in class subscription management and bring to market a solution that brings the benefits of both Recurly and Shopify, to our to our ecommerce customers. So we're really excited about the opportunity there.

Yeah. I love it. And, you know, we've got a long history of providing really user friendly solutions.

So, again, I agree. I think there's a really huge opportunity here.

And we know also that we that you all are asking for Shop Pay in a lot of cases as of you who are already practicing in the ecommerce space. It creates a frictionless checkout for your customers or for your subscribers. So, yeah, we're we're really excited to bring that to market for you all.

By integrating with Recurly, you know, of course, we're leveraging also our proven subscription management capabilities. Right, Miraj? I mean, speak to that a little bit.

Yeah. That's exactly right. And, you know, we have a lot of folks we talk to a lot of folks who are are net new to subscriptions as well. So they're just selling, you know, maybe onetime purchases purchases through Shopify. So we really wanna empower those types of merchants to maximize their revenue potential through subscriptions, as we know, are a fantastic way to build customer loyalty, drive recurring revenue. So our app is gonna do that. And then, ultimately, it's about giving our customers, you know, the tools they need to succeed in a very competitive ecommerce landscape.

And so we're excited to to bring these offerings to market and then help our customers build those long lasting relationships with their customers.

Yep. I love that.

Cool. So let's dig in a little to what we're building here. We'll start with an early access, and we'll kinda take you to that timeline shortly. This phase is really all about getting our merchants up and running really quickly with this app. So can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah. So during early access, what we'll do is we'll provide you a link or a way to install our Recurly app for Shopify.

So without any engineering resources, if you have admin rights in your Shopify store, you'll be able to install, our app into your Shopify store. And as soon as you finish the installation process, you will see in your Shopify store core subscription management features, from Recurly that you need to go create your plans and start selling subscriptions. So it's it's a very easy, seamless way to to get moving quickly, in in our early access program.

Cool. Yeah. Sounds like it'll be easy to plug in, sort of streamline the process.

And, yeah, it'll be easy for our merchants' customers to quickly purchase those subscriptions and then manage them, really, the subscription piece of the pie in our app. So, yeah, very, very cool. I know we're also working on coupons that we want to leverage to drive sales. So, maybe you could say a little bit more about that and some of the other features we're we're cooking up.

Yep. And it's and it's not just about setting up plans and and selling subscriptions.

Once you install our app and you start selling those subscriptions, you're gonna be able to take advantage of all our analytics as well. So think about the analytics on subscribers, on subscriptions, on plan performance, churn performance, you know, your billings data. All that is gonna come into Recurly, giving you a holistic view on on everything that's happening on your subscriptions that you're selling through Shopify.

And, yeah, that holistic view is really gonna be critical in empowering our merchants to make better decisions, more informed decisions, right, based on actual real data.

Yeah. What else? I I feel like I know there's more. What else?

There is more, Kat. Yeah.

So, again, you'll be able to manage plans, sell subscription, get the analytics, and on top of that, take advantage of all of our revenue recovery features. So you'll get full dunning management capabilities, our intelligent retries.

We'll be using all that functionality to help you ensure renewal success on those past due invoices.

Love it. Yes. Recovery revenue recovery is part of our bread and butter.

Cool. And what about on kind of the subscriber side and, like, oh, can you say a little bit more about customer portal?

Sure. So as part of early access, the, features we're including would also include a customer portal.

So, again, after you install the app, you'll have access to our customer portal, which will allow your subscribers to come in and self serve. So they'll be able to upgrade, downgrade, cancel, change their account information, change their billing information. So all those things, that give your subscribers more control over their experience, they'll be able to do that through this portal, which will help, again, drive engagement and and give them more control.

Cool. Okay. So now let's talk through a bit, around GA, general availability, when we're what kind of we're planning for that piece of the launch.

Yeah. So I I would say a lot of the core functionality is already included in our early access release. The one difference between what we're gonna launch in GA versus what we'll have in early access is the ability to migrate existing subscriptions from a competitor's solution into Recurly.

So if you're already selling subscriptions through, let's say, Recharge or OrderGruv, if you you know, early access is probably not a good fit for you, you probably wanna wait till our GA release, at which point we should have tools that make it very easy, very seamless. We know that migrations can be a difficult thing, but it should make it very easy for you to migrate those subscriptions over to Recurly and then cut over to Recurly in a much easier way.

Cool. Yeah. And I know too, like, if anything didn't make it quite into EA, you know, GA like, definitely by GA, we'll have a really robust, you know, kind of v one for you.

So, yeah, very, very excited about that. So let's kind of switch gears and, you know, look at the app just for a second and kind of give our customers an an idea of what the experience will look like.

Yep. So as we've been talking about, what you'll do is you'll install our app. When you install the app, you'll see a little widget there that says, hey. You know, go manage your plans in Recurly. So you'll be able to create your plans that you wanna sell, include which products you wanna include though in those plans, and then you'll configure those plans. Those plans will sync over to Recurly, and then you'll be able to surface those plans for sale in your Shopify store.

We you could either, you know, work with your engineers to create a customized sort of experience or use our our widget to to add plans to to checkout. Once the plans are added to checkout, then at that point, Shopify is taking over. So as Kat mentioned before, you get all the benefits of Shopify's checkout, including Shop Pay.

The the purchase will happen through Shopify. Once that purchase is made, the subscription then lives and breathes in in Recurly, and then that all the subscription management, all the analytics, all the dunning, and intelligent retries take over from there. And that's essentially the the, nuts and bolts of how the app's gonna work.

Awesome. Okay. I think that's it's great to kinda start to visualize that a bit, so appreciate that.

Now as we kind of think through post GA, we're already starting to track features that we know our merchants are gonna want and and or that are just gonna be hugely beneficial. They may not even know they need them yet. So, one of those I know we're planning for is revenue recognition.

So could you talk a little bit about how what our plans are for that financial reporting kind of compliance piece?

Yeah. Sure. Exactly. So, you know, as you may or may not know, we have a very strong revenue recognition module that's already built into Recurly.

And so we will be looking at extending that module to work directly with Shopify. We know revenue recognition can be a very challenging, difficult thing to track, especially when you're selling physical goods because when you start tracking revenue, it depends on whether the ship the goods were shipped or they were delivered or or what have you.

So we're gonna, streamline that and make that really easy. So that's one investment area we'll be making post GA. The other is if you're familiar with Shopify flow. So Shopify has, an ability for you without using any engineering resources to be able to connect different apps that you may be using in the Shopify marketplace together using Shopify Flow. So we wanna make sure that we enable our various endpoints in the Shopify Flow, schema so that, you know, you as a, as a Shopify admin can go connect recurrently to maybe your customer data platform like Klaviyo or or other sorts of platforms that you may be using in the marketplace, which would help with workflow automation, data data flow, and things like that. So so super excited about that as well.

Yeah. It sounds like just efficiency gains across the board. So very cool. Anything else worth mentioning?

Yeah.

And then, you know, as as it relates to subscription management for for the merchants and plan management, we'll be looking at enabling volume based discounts, being able to combine orders. So if people are making multiple orders between billing periods, combining those into a single, sort of order, allowing additional, controls and flexibility in shipping as well. So so a lot of tools, again, to help our customers manage their subscriptions, manage their plans in a in a much more efficient way.

Yeah. I love it. And just, like, also giving them a ton of flexibility. So that's Yeah. Super great.

And then on the subscriber side, we're also doing more.

Oh. Oh, hey.

As again, as we keep talking about one of the key things about subscriptions is helping you drive engagement with your subscribers.

So one of the things that we'll be looking at post GA is giving your members more flexibility in how they're manager subscriptions. So maybe swapping out products that are showing up in their boxes. You know, I want product b instead of product a and allowing them to do that through that portal.

So, again, they can create a tailored sort of, like, personal experience for for their subscriptions, which, again, will drive, engagement and and and ultimately LTV.

Love it. Okay. Yeah. And I know everyone wants to know when the heck are we launching this thing. Right? So let's let's kinda talk through our road map a bit here.

Great. Yeah. So we are actively building the app as we speak. It's been super exciting to see some of this stuff come to life.

We expect to launch our first wave of early access merchants by the end of this year. And then sometime in early twenty twenty five, we'll be, taking what we have to to GA. So, again, the difference is, like, you'll have to have almost of the course features and functionality, but then in GA, you'll be able to migrate existing subscriptions over from competitor solutions.

And then we'll we'll keep refining as we go. Oh, we're gonna learn in early access. We're gonna learn post GA.

And so, you know, I just wanna drive home the point that we are not done once this goes GA. This is gonna be a a twenty twenty five initiative and an investment error. So we'll continue to invest based on market feedback, customer feedback, and make sure that, you know, the solution that we have in market is best in class and really lives up to the promise.

Yep. I love that. And I think, also, just keep in mind that if there's anything that we didn't mention that that were is on our road map for either, you know, EA, GA, or post GA, and and you know that your business needs it, please, please have your voice heard, drop a comment here, and I'm actually about to give you all an opportunity to, you know, really get in deep with us and participate in in EA or or be an early adopter. So let's actually transition over.

So if you are interested at all so I know we mentioned the EA Ideal Fit is really a merchant who's not necessarily using one of our competitors. Now that said, if you're in a bad relationship, we wanna help you out. So raise your hand as soon as we do have that migration piece ready. You know, that'll happen before GA, and we'd love to test it out. So if you're open to participating at that level, raise your hand. You know, we'll have a an interview kind of conversation with you to make sure you're a good fit and or and when we can bring you in ideally.

So go ahead, sign up.

QR code is here. I'll also be following up with an email again with some FAQs as well as, this link to sign up. So if you if you miss it here, hopefully, you're maybe you're driving. I don't know. But, hopefully, you're keeping your eyes on the road. But, yes, please participate.

Also, the same form will give you an opportunity to raise your hand just to be the first to know. Maybe you don't wanna necessarily participate in early access, but you are really ready for this, once it's ready to go to to kind of general availability. So sign up either way. We'd love to make sure you all are the first to, you know, be in the know here.

And we do still have a few more minutes. If you've got any other questions, again, feature requests, anything, even technical, just go ahead and drop it in. Like I said, we may not be able to answer it, right this second, but we'll get with our engineers if need be, and we'll make sure we get you an answer.

And just to start wrapping up here, I wanna reiterate how excited we are about these developments. I mean, truly getting to watch, you know, kind of the development phases and really see this product come to life has been super exciting for me personally.

I know this is going to be really beneficial to so many of our merchants, so many merchants who have been interested in Recurly and haven't been able to come over.

So, yeah, very, very pumped here.

Yeah. I just wanna echo that as well. You know, I I I'm super excited about the opportunity and the potential. Again, like, Shopify has a lot of great benefits. Recurly has a lot of great benefits, and combining those into a single solution just you know, it it really gets me excited. So so I was you know, thanks for having me, and thanks for letting me share our plans. And, you know, I hope everyone has a has a great day, and back to you, Kat, to close.

Yeah. Thanks. It looks like our track's starting to slow down a bit. Again, feel free to get your last few questions in.

You can also reach out to either of us. If you've got any questions, I'll make sure our contact is in information is included in that email. So definitely watch the the follow-up video, or or rather read that email if you wanna rewatch the video to refresh yourselves. But please, please, we'd love for you to sign up and participate.

And, yeah, thanks so much for your time. Have a great day, everyone.