1. YITH WooCommerce Subscription

Source: YITH 

YITH is a well-established plugin creator, operated by a small team that creates and manages over 180 plugins exclusively for WooCommerce.

You can expect the following benefits from switching to YITH: 

✔️ Complementary plugins: Since YITH offers so many WooCommerce plugins, you can easily integrate them. 

For example, pairing a YITH WooCommerce Subscription with YITH WooCommerce Membership allows you to offer exclusive content—like videos, podcasts, ebooks, and more—to subscribed members. 

Similarly, combining their Stripe plugin with the Subscription plugin streamlines recurring payments for subscribers who pay with their credit cards. 

✔️ Printable PDF address: If your subscription business involves shipping physical products, you’ll find it convenient to print your customers’ addresses. 

With a single click, you can download a PDF document containing all the shipping addresses. This allows you to print individual labels and affix them to your packages effortlessly. 

For example, if you operate a monthly coffee delivery and need to prepare an order for John Doe, simply download the PDF address list, print his shipping label, and attach it to his package. 

Here’s a visual of how this process works:

Source: YITH 

✔️ Advanced dashboard: Keeping tabs on your subscription performance is crucial, and the latest YITH dashboard is perfect for the job. 

Here, you can easily monitor subscriptions as they gain (or lose) popularity, how your total revenue is performing, and the ratio of trial-to-paid conversions each month.

If you want a more detailed breakdown, you can delve deeper into each subscription, looking at their start and finish dates and whether their payments were successful.  

The YITH WooCommerce Subscription plugin offers you two options: 

• Free version: This gives you access to key functionality, but not everything that’s available in the paid-for version. 
• Paid-for version: This will cost you $199 per month, and it includes a 30-day money-back guarantee and 12 months of support. 

Their worst reviews claim that since the team is based in Spanish-speaking countries, there’s a language barrier to overcome and it may take some time to figure out how to use it. 

On the other hand, positive reviews mention that they offer exceptional support and that their plugin is very flexible and versatile. 

Here’s a breakdown of their reviews, which amount to an average rating of 4.38/5: 

Source: YITH 

If you’d like to see what it feels like firsthand, try out a live demo here. 

3. Paid Member Subscriptions

Source: Paid Member Subscriptions 

This is the core product of Cozmoslabs that dedicates itself to making premium WordPress plugins.

They offer one other main plugin, called Profile Builder, which allows you to create custom user registration and profile pages.

With Paid Member Subscriptions, you will gain: 

✔️ Community building: Some subscription models rely on giving members access to one another—and this is exactly what Paid Member Subscriptions allows you to do. 

For example, if you want to create an online hub for accountants to connect and share information, then this will allow you to connect with them to interact, collaborate, and exchange resources with one another.

Source: Paid Member Subscriptions 

✔️ Group memberships: If your business relies on corporate memberships or group subscriptions, then you will benefit from the functionality it offers you. 

Let’s say you gather statistics that journalists would find useful. Instead of offering individual memberships, you could allow media groups to take out a corporate subscription that offers all their publications access to this information. 

This option allows you to easily connect with masses of subscribers and it may instantly cover your overhead costs. 

✔️ Charge pro rata: In addition to offering customers the flexibility to choose when they want to upgrade or downgrade their subscription, they can also opt for pro-rata billing. 

For instance, if a customer upgrades from the entry subscription to the pro version, they can choose to gain immediate access to the additional features by paying for it pro rata. 

Alternatively, they can opt for it to take effect at the beginning of the new billing cycle. 

This feature, similar to SUMO Subscriptions’s subscriber control, provides customers with greater control and streamlines the experience for both your customers and yourself.

If you choose Paid Member Subscriptions, you can choose between three payment plans: 

• Basic: €99 per year
• Pro: €169 per year
• Agency: €299 per year

If you decide to get both Paid Member Subscriptions and Profile Builder—which are compatible—as a bundle, then you can save 25%. 

If you’re curious to learn more, get to know how it works by trying this demo. 

The Problem with Subscription Plug-Ins

So far, we’ve only talked about plugins that offer alternatives to using WooCommerce Subscriptions. 

However, these plugins in general might just serve as a temporary fix for a deeper issue. 

The notion that you must first select a platform to sell your products or services, and that you then require additional plugins to add the features you need, is fundamentally flawed, as outlined below:

• Struggling to manage subscription billing and invoicing? Get a new plugin. 
• Need support for a new payment gateway? Get a plugin. 
• Want better reporting and analytics? Get a plugin. 

Before you know it, you might have eight plugins that you need to maintain and manage separately. 

Besides leading to compatibility issues and complicating your business operations, this can also lead to further issues: 

1. Difficulty scaling your business

Needing too many plugins to sell subscriptions can make it hard for your business to grow and scale smoothly. 

As you get more customers, the extra complexity of managing many plugins can slow things down substantially. 

This usually becomes a problem once you have over 100 users, and it gets worse as you hit 1,000+ users. 

Using too many plugins can strain your system and make it tough for your business to keep growing. It would lead to you having to navigate several hiccups.

2. Issues with decentralized data

Using lots of different plugins means your subscription data gets spread out everywhere, making it hard to keep track of everything in one place. 

This scattered data makes it tricky to get a clear picture of your subscriptions. It also leads to mistakes and makes it harder to gain insight into how well your business performs.

3. Trouble keeping your website live

WordPress is notoriously vulnerable to hacking, cyber-attacks and viruses. 

If you’re relying solely on plugins, you’re the one responsible for making sure that your website stays up and running smoothly. 

This means you’re on your own when things go wrong. 

This can be tough, especially if you’re not a tech expert or if you don’t have the resources to deal with problems quickly. 

Keeping your website working well becomes a big challenge without extra support.