Bold Commerce Review & Alternative
Are you wanting to add a subscription service to your online store but don’t know where to start? Overwhelmed with the workload that comes with setting it up? Don’t worry, that’s why subscription management apps were made!
Subscription apps, like Bold Commerce, seamlessly integrate with your Shopify store and allow you to build user-friendly interfaces that encourage subscription sign-ups.
Whilst Bold Commerce is an industry leader, if you’re looking for a system that can increase your profit margins by 35% or increase your active subscriptions by 50%, then Upscribe might be what you need.
Upscribe vs Bold
Bold Commerce allows you to build simple subscriber onboarding systems that match your brand imaging and make subscriptions easy You can offer potential subscribers recurring products, build-a-box options or create mystery boxes to keep them on their toes.
Upscribe not only does all that, but allows you to analyze customer behavior, create product bundles and scale your subscription business. You can deliver a high-level customer experience out-of-the-box without integrating with other apps.
Bold Commerce
Bold believes brands should be able to create and customize their own commerce experiences, across the board. Bold Commerce was named one of North America’s fastest-growing tech companies, providing ecommerce technology to over 90,000 brands across 170 countries around the world.
Features of Bold
Bold Commerce: Checkout
Bold Commerce checkout has two major features: multi-currency billing and bold cashier.
There are more than 150 countries to choose from with multi-currency billing. This allows customers to see individual product pricing relevant to their own country. There are no additional credit-card conversion fees,
The out-of-the-box cashier service gives customers several pay options, including card, PayPal, Stripe and Net30. It also offers additional products for an upsell opportunity, a great way to increase order value at the last minute!
Unfortunately, this tool isn’t the easiest to use. Companies who use Bold Checkout report searching for how to change the language on their system.
This might not be your option if you’re looking for a simple plug-in to run your store checkout, unless you have someone on your team who’s incredibly good with tech.
Bold Commerce: Conversion
As a business, you should want to make the most out of every conversion opportunity. With Bold Conversion, you can do just that.
This tool helps you upsell to customers, even after they’ve bought something. They don’t even have to enter their payment details a second time to buy something new. Including the Bold Brain feature helps you find out where you need to offer custom product suggestions in your store.
But like with Bold Checkout, there are a couple of problems. Sometimes, the same products are recommended in ‘related’ and ‘popular’ categories, especially if you don’t have a big product catalog. This can make customers a little suspicious and can reduce sales.
Bold Commerce: Subscriptions
As we already know, subscriptions are the future of online shopping. Did you know the subscription economy is projected to reach $1.5 trillion in 2025? That’s a staggering number that you could be adding to.
Bold Subscriptions lets your customers make recurring buys so they can stay in stock of their favorite products. Build subscription boxes, product bundles and suggested products to increase your average order value with each customer. Customers can also customize their own subscription boxes for their own unique experience.
Bold Pricing.
Bold Commerce only has one pricing model. But custom uses have a price based on your business needs and could be much more depending on your business size.
Bold Pros:
- Quickly migrate from your current software to Bold in minutes.
- Connect to Shopify for seamless integration.
- Keep in contact with customers through email and SMS marketing.
Bold Cons:
- Sometimes, there are problems with the store integration
- The customer support team can be slow to respond
- You need to be more tech-brained to work out some of the kinks
- Third-party apps are sometimes needed to manage larger things like subscription analytics
Upscribe
Upscribe offers an alternative subscription management tool for Shopify business owners. Their goal is to empower shop owners with a simple platform to attract, grow and retain subscribers.
They value transparency, dignity, growth and great customer service, so they designed subscription management software to give your customers the experience they deserve. They promise to set users and their customers up for success and have helped many businesses scale their subscription services.
Features of Upscribe
The Subscriber Experience
With Upscribe, their goal of giving subscribers what they deserve comes through with their Subscriber Experience. Create a subscriber portal straight from out-of-the-box, without the need to battle with complex code. Customers can even manage their subscriptions through email or SMS.
Subscribers can take their experience into their own hands and can skip months, add extras and swap out items easily without waiting for a response from customer support. Upscribe users Caldera + Lab were able to decrease their help center tickets by 50% by creating a seamless subscriber experience with Upscribe.
As well as this, password-free logins make everything so much easier. Let’s face it, who can remember every single password they have?
Growth Tools
Use these tools to grow your active subscribers by 50%, just like Four Sigmatic did. With Smart Cancellations, customers can cancel their subscriptions at any time. You can also create flows that offer customers better deals before they go, reducing churn and helping them stay subscribed.
Powerful at-a-glance dashboards give users insights into their customers like never before. Analyze customer behavior easily and quickly so you can put growth measures in place. Subscription analytics is a built-in feature of Upscribe, so you don’t need to use a third-party app to understand your customers.
Create product bundles, subscription boxes and suggested items site-wide so customers stay in the know about what offers they can take advantage of. You can also offer “subscribe and save” discounts at checkout so customers have even more incentives.
Reorder
Not all customers want to be locked into a subscription. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to buy from you regularly. Using Upscribe, you can offer the option to reorder something they’ve bought before. It gives your customers the flexibility they’re looking for and a chance to see how often they use your products to help them decide if a subscription is a better option.
With emails and SMS marketing, you can gently prompt customers that reorder is an option. Unlock trapped revenue by tapping them on the shoulder and reminding them how much they loved what they bought.
You can also leverage customer data to give them a nudge in the right direction. Set up a customized flow for when a customer has placed a non-recurring order. Say, let’s wait 30 days. Then, Upscribe will send a notification to the customer reminding them it’s time to reorder!
Pros of Upscribe:
- You can increase your profit margins by 35%, just like Ready, Set, Food did. Through the use of seamless integration, Upscribe doesn’t slow your website down, preventing customer headaches and abandonment.
- Get access to subscription analytics presented in easy-to-read, at-a-glance dashboards without the need to use third-party apps. Learn all about your customers and make the best marketing choices.
- Scale your subscription business and increase the Average Order Value (AOV). Know exactly when and how to target customers through subscriber analytics, and offer them upsells, cross-sells and deals without being pushy.
- Switch your current software to Upscribe quickly and easily
Cons of Upscribe
- Compared to Bold Commerce, Upscribe looks pricier.
- Users report less customisation options.
- The platform is not for those with more complex, enterprise needs
Product Comparison
Bold or Upscribe? Which is the one for you?
Subscriptions have changed the way people shop online. Customers never have to worry about remembering to repeatedly buy their staple products again. They can simply click “subscribe and save” at checkout, and their product shows up at their door on time when they need it.
With the help of powerful ecommerce tools, like Bold Commerce or Upscribe, business owners can relax knowing the hard work is being done for them.
Whilst Bold Commerce is an industry lead, those in ecommerce who aren’t technologically advanced or prefer a more intuitive subscription platform might be better off with the more automated and simple Upscribe.