How do we map a legacy platform's subscription-app integration to Recharge, Skio, or Loop Subscriptions, given the 2026 Recharge-Skio acquisition uncertainty?
A legacy subscription integration maps onto Shopify's subscription contract first, not onto a vendor: rebuild the selling plan, the purchase option on the product page, and the billing policy, then choose the portal. Loop Subscriptions wins that portal choice as of September 2026, at $99 to $399 per month, because Recharge is still digesting its $105M Skio acquisition, closed 30 April 2026.
Stop mapping app to app
The instinct in a replatform is to draw a line from the old subscription plugin to a new Shopify app and call it a mapping. That line is wrong in a way that costs a quarter, because a legacy subscription integration is not one thing. It is three, and on Shopify they have three different owners.
| Layer | What it did on the legacy platform | Who owns it on Shopify | Migrates? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purchase option on the product page | Plugin-rendered radio buttons, cadence picker, subscribe-and-save copy | Your theme, against the selling plan group | No. Rebuilt every time. |
| Billing engine and the contract | Plugin's own recurring-order table | Shopify's subscription contract, created through subscriptionContractAtomicCreate (per shopify.dev, September 2026) | Recreated, not copied |
| Subscriber portal, dunning, cohort reporting | Plugin's account area | The subscription app you buy | Vendor import, partial |
Map each layer separately and the vendor question shrinks. Only the third layer is actually a purchase decision. The first is theme work you will do no matter which logo you pick, and the second is Shopify's, permanently.
The criteria table that decides the third layer
| Criterion | Shopify Subscriptions (native) | Recharge | Skio | Loop Subscriptions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software cost | Free (verified Sep 2026) | $99/mo Starter, $499/mo Plus (per getrecharge.com, Sep 2026) | $599/mo, or $5,988 billed annually (per App Store listing, Sep 2026) | Free tier to 50 active subs, $99/mo Starter, $399/mo Pro (per App Store listing, Sep 2026) |
| Transaction fee | None | 1.49% + 19¢ Starter, 1.34% + 19¢ Plus | 1% + 20¢ | 1.0% Starter, 0.75% Pro, no per-order charge |
| Ownership | Shopify | Recharge | Recharge, since 30 April 2026 | Loop Solutions Inc, independent |
| Roadmap risk | None to speak of | Absorbing an acquisition | Two roadmaps merging | Independent, smaller vendor |
| App Store standing | 3.7★ | Listed | 5.0★, 241 reviews | 5.0★, 753 reviews |
Prices and ratings verified on each vendor's live listing and pricing page, September 2026. The Skio row matters: $5,988 is the annual price at a 17% discount, not a top monthly tier.
The thing nobody puts in the mapping doc: payment methods
Contracts are the easy part. Cards are the part that costs you subscribers.
Shopify's payment-method migration service imports credit card primary account numbers only. Accelerated wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Venmo are not supported, bank account information is not supported, and PayPal billing agreements cannot be migrated through the service at all (per Shopify's Help Center, September 2026). The supported source gateways for the drip method are Stripe, Braintree, PayPal Express and Authorize.net, the store must be on Shopify Plus or Enterprise for a PAN migration, and cardholder data has to move through a PCI-approved import flow (same source).
Read that against your legacy subscriber base before you choose anything. If a meaningful slice of your recurring revenue bills to PayPal or a wallet, those customers re-authorize by hand, and the re-authorization rate is your real migration risk. Community-reported migrations run 60 to 90 days with 2 to 5% subscriber loss, and the loss concentrates exactly here (July 2026 research behind our decision page).
The verdict, and the profile it fits
For a $20M to $100M DTC brand on a single storefront with a retention-led program, Loop Subscriptions is the pick right now. It is the independent option at $99 to $399 per month while Recharge digests Skio, and our live Build vs. Buy verdict on that head-to-head is DEPENDS with Loop named for retention depth (Deploi verdict, August 2026).
Three other profiles get different answers:
- Incumbent breadth matters more than independence. Recharge, on the integration surface and the bench of agencies that already know it.
- Fixed-cadence replenishment on standard products. Native, free, and spend the difference on the product page. Our Skio-versus-native verdict is WAIT for exactly this profile (Deploi verdict, September 2026).
- A Skio account considering a move to Recharge. Wait. That is a same-vendor question until the combined roadmap is in writing (Deploi verdict, September 2026).
When NOT to make this decision yet
Not during the replatform itself, if you can avoid it. A subscription platform choice made in the same sprint as a storefront cutover gets made on calendar pressure. Land the store, run the legacy program in parallel where the gateway allows, and move the contracts as a scoped second project.
The Deploi point of view
Our own position, from building on Shopify. Separate from the facts above.
- Our take: We scored skio-vs-native-subscriptions WAIT before the acquisition news and we still do. With consolidation live, map the legacy integration onto the native subscription contract first and treat Recharge or Loop as the portal layer. The PDP purchase-option surface is yours to rebuild either way.
- What we’ve seen: The purchase option is the piece every mapping doc assumes is included and no vendor ships. Teams discover it in week three, after the contract model is already decided, which is the worst possible order to learn it in.
- Times we’ve shipped this: 5 builds delivered.
- What it takes: roughly 46 hours of scoped work for native subscription purchase options on the product page (directional Deploi estimate from a small sample of engagements, not a measured average).
- Where we disagree: The category frames this as picking a winner among three vendors. The durable part of the decision is the layer underneath all three, and the vendor you pick in 2026 is the one you are most likely to be migrated off of by someone else's corporate development team.
Reviewed by Martin Dejnicki, Director of SEO & AI Search. Facts verified 2026-09-13.
Where we worked this out
Follow-up questions
How does a legacy platform's affiliate-marketing plugin map onto Shopify's affiliate app options, and is native affiliate tracking even comparable?
Shopify Collabs, the native affiliate option, is creator-first rather than a full affiliate platform: free to install, 2.9% commission processing fee on automatic payouts. Refersion at $39 to $199 per month and UpPromote at $29.99 to $199.99 per month carry the tracking depth a legacy plugin had (all verified September 2026).
How does a legacy platform's built-in loyalty/rewards module map to Smile.io or LoyaltyLion on Shopify, and what program rules commonly don't survive the switch?
Loyalty migrations to Smile.io or LoyaltyLion carry two columns and little else: both import a CSV of customer email and points balance, and LoyaltyLion takes tier positions in a second file (verified September 2026). Earning rules, redemption catalogs, point expiry schedules and referral attribution get rebuilt by hand. LoyaltyLion states it cannot import historic orders.
What email marketing plugin functionality (from any platform) maps to Klaviyo, Attentive, or Postscript on Shopify, and what's typically lost in translation?
Email platform migrations carry contacts, suppression lists and templates; flow logic, segment definitions and send history do not come across, and every automation gets rebuilt in the new tool (per Klaviyo's migration guide, September 2026). Klaviyo starts at $20 per month for 251 to 500 contacts; Attentive and Postscript are free to install with usage billed separately.
What review-and-UGC plugin functionality maps to Yotpo, Okendo, or Judge.me on Shopify, and how do star ratings/photos actually transfer?
Review migrations move text, star ratings and dates through a CSV import wizard; videos are not imported by default, and verified-buyer status is re-earned by matching the reviewer's email to a Shopify order (per Judge.me's docs, September 2026). Shopify retired its own Product Reviews app in May 2024, so a third-party app is the only path.