As a Shopify merchant, creating a seamless experience for your customer should be one of your top priorities. With Shopify and Recharge, you are provided with tools to develop an experience above the rest.
If you take advantage of subscriptions in your store, it’s crucial that you reward these customers for their loyalty, not only through discounts, early access, but also through an easy checkout process. They shouldn’t be penalised for their loyalty.
That’s why we wanted to take a look at each checkout option with Recharge on Shopify and how one would benefit from choosing one over the other. Now don’t get confused by the names. While it seems that they are similar, they are vastly different in how they work on the back end.
Recharge Checkout on Shopify
With the standard Recharge-hosted checkout, the customer data is securely passed between Recharge and the eCommerce platform. This will create data points along the way.
As you can see in the chart below, the data will flow through from the cart to the checkout with points along the way to create the customer profile both in Recharge and the platform itself.
The problem with this option is the split that is created based on whether there is a one-time-only purchase within the cart. If not, it’s recognised as a subscription-based purchase and the checkout goes through Recharge where data and tracking take place. If it is a one-time-only purchase, the customer goes through a standard Shopify checkout.
Shopify Checkout with Recharge
By now you would know the importance of having a unified look across your store, creating an easy (and not confusing) customer experience from your home page through to your checkout. Having two different checkouts based on your customer's cart can be confusing.
For example, you have a subscription customer that purchases an item that is a one-time purchase and they have one experience. A week later they return and make a recurring purchase and experience a different checkout. This may place confusion and doubt in the forefront of their minds and of your store.
This is why, as of February 2021, Recharge created a way to allow Shopify merchants the ability to use Recharge for customer and subscription management. They created a unified checkout experience for their customers, regardless of what was in their cart, through the Shopify checkout option.
Shopify has since released subscription APIs allowing apps like Recharge to link through Shopify to create and process subscriptions directly through their Shopify Checkout. Merchants can now use Recharge for both customer and subscription management while the order processing takes place through Shopify and their native checkout.
By streamlining this service, you not only create a seamless experience for your customers, but you also create an easy to manage back end of management.
Compatibility Comparison
Of course, it’s also important to note what will be compatible with one and not the other. While they are both compatible with Online Store, Themes, Customer Accounts, Inventory, Weight-based Shipping Rates, and carrier-calculated Shipping Rates, Shopify Checkout with Recharge falls short on the following:
- Abandoned Checkouts: this is due to Recharge processing subscription products outside of Shopify.
- Shopify Payments: While Shopify payments is an exclusive deal between them and Stripe, you would need to register with Stripe, Braintree, or Authorize.net for payment processing in Recharge. It also means that the multi-currency feature on Shopify is also not compatible with Recharge Checkout.
- Fraud Analysis: this is once again due to the fact that with Recharge Checkout, Recharge processes subscription products outside of Shopify.
- Shopify Shipping Locations: while Recharge will fetch a product with a set location as normal, the issue lies in a situation where a resync happens and Recharge creates the hidden product. This is because Shopify will set that hidden product to the first default location. Within Shopify’s API, there is no option for Recharge to specify the location to be the same as the original. A subscription product with only rates in a non-default location will need you to manually add it to all hidden, auto-renew products.
- International Domains: Per language, Recharge Checkout requires a separate .myshopify.com store. Recharge will still work with international domains, however, only the translations configured in your translation setting will be displayed at the checkout - they will not be automatically translated.
- Subscription-Only Sales Reports Filter: Shopify does not have access to the order data that is processed through the Recharge Checkout.
- Shopify Flow: Any changes to subscriptions will have to be made through Recharge
Some extras that are compatible with Shopify Checkout with Recharge are:
- Paypal Express
- Authorize.net
- Inventory
- Line Item Properties
- Accelerated Checkouts
- Cart/Order Notes
Blend and Recharge
It’s clear to see that these two options are vastly different, as mentioned, and the benefits of the Shopify Checkout with Recharge outweigh the integration with the Recharge Checkout.
Making the mistake of not utilising the latest releases and technology can badly impact your store and your revenue. If you’re looking to revitalise your checkout experience for your customers and create a manageable back end, book a call with us at Blend.
Published: May 31, 2022
Last updated: November 13, 2023
