Recurring payment apps charge your customers automatically on a schedule, whether that is a monthly subscription, a prepaid plan, or an installment split across several payments. They run the billing cycle, retry failed charges, and give customers a way to manage their own payments. The right one depends on how you want to bill: ongoing subscriptions, recurring invoices, or pay over time.<\/p>\n
Recurring payments sit behind the largest alternative business model on Shopify. More stores run on subscriptions than on dropshipping, wholesale, or print on demand, and every one of them depends on an app to bill reliably. Our data on what subscription Shopify stores actually run<\/a> shows how consistent those app stacks are. The live breakdown below shows where the subscription model sits among Shopify stores.<\/p>\n Share of all Shopify stores in our dataset running each business model.<\/p>Shopify Business Models by the Numbers<\/h2>