Looking for the best platform to sell subscriptions? You’re in the right place.
The great thing about selling subscriptions is that you can bill your customers again and again, providing you with a predictable monthly revenue stream.
But selling subscriptions and memberships isn’t like selling other types of physical and digital products—it requires a special type of ecommerce platform.
At a minimum, you’ll need to use a platform with a flexible payment system that lets you charge customers on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. And ideally, it should also have additional features that help you create digital subscription products, like online courses and paid communities.
In this post, we’ll be comparing the best subscription platforms on the market. We’ll look at their key features, pros and cons, and pricing to help you find the right solution for your business.
The best subscription platforms – summary
TL;DR:
- Sellfy – Best for simplicity. Use Sellfy to create a simple online store to sell subscriptions, or sell directly from your website.
- Payhip – All-in-one platform for selling memberships, courses, digital downloads, and physical products.
- ThriveCart – Powerful shopping cart software. Use it to sell subscriptions, digital products, and more.
- Shopify – Best for creating full ecommerce stores. Capable of subscription payments. Subscriptions aren’t offered natively, however. Shopify integrates with a large number of third-party subscription platforms.
#1 – Sellfy
Sellfy is our top pick for the overall best subscription ecommerce platform. It’s a simple and user-friendly store creation tool that has everything you need to sell subscriptions, physical products, print-on-demand merchandise, and more.
Using Sellfy, you can create a professional-looking, optimized digital storefront in just a few minutes. You can easily customize the design of your store, and add essential elements like shopping cart functionality.
Sellfy offers a range of features that can help you to manage and optimize your online subscription business, such as
- Manual content dripping
- Subscriber notifications
- Subscriber self-management that allows subscribers to access their own pages and files and manage subscriptions
- Weekly, and monthly, or yearly billing schedules
The tool also integrates with popular payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe, ensuring that all payments are safe and secure, for both you and your customers.
Sellfy also comes with a bunch of marketing features built-in, such as discount code options, email marketing, upselling features, and more. Overall, it’s a streamlined and affordable option for beginner ecommerce sellers as well as more established businesses.
Key features
- Easy-to-use store builder
- Yearly, monthly, or weekly billing schedules
- Subscription management features like content drip and subscriber self-management
- Marketing and upsell features
- Sell any type of product, not just subscriptions
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| User-friendly interface | Low revenue cap on entry-level paid plan |
| Marketing features built-in | |
| 0% transaction fees |
Pricing
Paid plans start from $22/month and include subscription products as standard.
Read our Sellfy review.
#2 – Payhip
Payhip is another powerful all-in-one platform. You can use it to sell memberships, courses, digital downloads, and physical products. It’s also capable of creating simple online stores.
One of the best things about Payhip is how easy it is to use. You can set everything up ready to start accepting recurring payments in minutes. Payhip handles all the hard parts for you with automated customer management, email updates, and content delivery.
You can set up multiple plans with different price points, recurring intervals, free trials, etc. And upload exclusive content that only members who subscribe to a particular plan can view.
Payhip creates a members area for all your customers, where they can manage their accounts and access exclusive content.
Another feature we really like about Payhip is the automatic VAT handling. You can set it up to charge the correct amount of sales tax to each of your customers, which aids with compliance.
Key features
- Member management
- Upload members-only content
- Custom billing intervals
- Free trials
- Email notifications
- Embeds
- Security
- Multiple plans
- High-converting checkout
- VAT and taxes
- Marketing tools
- Store builder
- Digital downloads
- Physical products
- Coaching
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Generous free plan | Transaction fees on Free and Plus plans |
| Supports most product types | |
| Flexible pricing | |
| Nice UI |
Pricing
Payhip offers a free plan with 5% transaction fees. The Plus plan costs $29/month with 2% transaction fees, and the Pro plan costs $99/month with no transaction fees. All plans include all features and unlimited products & revenue.
Read our Payhip review.
#3 – SendOwl
SendOwl is an all-in-one solution specifically designed for selling digital products, subscriptions, and more. The tool is designed specifically for selling products like e-books and online courses, and it has tons of features that can help you to build and manage a subscription-style ecommerce store.
When it comes to subscriptions, you can set predefined fees to allow customers to gain access to new content weekly, monthly or yearly. You can also set up reward systems for subscribers to give them access to new content, community spaces, and more. SendOwl also has drip content features, which is great if you’re selling online courses.
SendOwl also has tons of features to help you to market your products, keep your sales secure and analyze your performance, making it the perfect all-in-one solution.
Key features
- Bill customers weekly, monthly, or yearly.
- Subscriber and member rewards features
- Drip content features
- Marketing and analytics feature
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Designed for selling digital products and subscriptions | Not great for selling physical products |
| Free plan avai |