SUMO Subscriptions Review PROS & CONS (2023) – Best WooCommerce Recurring Payments Plugin?

WooCommerce recurring payments allows you to add subscriptions capability to your physical and virtual products. You can create and manage products with recurring payments for weekly, monthly or yearly subscriptions, offer free trials or even add signup fees.

The recurring revenue offers businesses more stability due to the predictability of future earnings and the lifetime value of your customer. Automated billing and payment with repeat purchases provide higher efficiency and loyalty versus one-time purchases.

To start charging recurring revenue you have to implement a paid subscription service on your website. The best way of implementing an automated billing system to a WordPress site is using one of the available WooCommerce subscription plugins.

SUMO Subscriptions is great plugin for adding recurring options to WooCommerce sotre. This great WooCommerce add-on is designed to make it easy for you to add a paid subscription service to your e-commerce site.

In this SUMO Subscriptions review, I will features it offers and what separates it from the competitors.

 

SUMO Subscriptions Review

SUMO Subscriptions is a WordPress subscription plugin which works with all WooCommerce supported themes. It’s a highly customizable, feature-rich WooCommerce extension that allows you to create and sell digital, physical, and virtual products and services as recurring subscriptions.

Users can create subscriptions around WooCommerce Simple, Variable, and Grouped products. The plugin includes built-in payment gateways for PayPal and Stripe for automatic subscription renewals. For manual subscription renewals, it works with all WooCommerce supported payment gateways.

 

Those are just some of the features of SUMO Subscriptions plugin.

 

How SUMO Subscriptions Plugin Works?

The plugin supports all major payment gateways and comes with already integrated PayPal and Stripe. If you use either PayPal or Stripe payment gateways, you’ll be able to set automatic renewal for a subscription.

That means that you’ll be able to make subscription renewals and get payments on your website automatically. You can also integrate SUMO Subscriptions with any of the WooCommerce supported payment gateways. In this case, you’ll be able to choose manual renewal for a subscription.

SUMO Subscriptions makes it easy for you to set price, duration and the number of renewals for each of subscriptions. The plugin gives clients an opportunity to purchase both subscription and non-subscription products together in a single checkout.

Another significant advantage of SUMO Subscriptions is that this WordPress subscription plugin gives a lot of flexibility to buyers. Buyers can choose either automatic subscription renewal or manual subscription renewal.

 

 

If you choose to use SUMO Subscriptions on your website, you’ll also be able to add shipping and tax costs to your subscription’s renewal price. You can also apply discount codes to your subscription renewals.

Your admin panel will have an option that will allow you to create a subscription for each user manually. You can also send reminder emails to your subscribers which can keep your customers informed about the necessity to renew subscriptions.

After adding SUMO Subscriptions to your WordPress site, you’ll see it in your WordPress admin sidebar along with submenus for List of Subscriptions, Settings, and Master Log.

The Settings menu is divided into several different tabs: General, Order Subscription, Synchronization, My Account, Advanced, Bulk Action, Messages, and Help.

 

SUMO Subscription Settings

Under General Settings tab you can find options for button settings, renewal order settings, renewal order email notification settings, overdue and suspended settings, limit/restriction settings, and payment gateway settings.

 

#1. General Tab

Add to Cart Button Text – Lets you change the button text for subscription products created using SUMO Subscriptions.

Renewal Order Settings – Number of days before a subscription renewal must be renewed. Also controls whether shipping, tax costs, and coupon code discounts from the original subscription order are included in renewal orders.

Renewal Order Email Notification Settings – Set the number of days before the subscription renewal date, that a payment reminder email is sent.

 

 

 

Overdue and Suspend Settings – Sets the number of days beyond the subscription due date that a subscription is considered late or suspended. The account remains in the overdue or suspended status until the user makes the required payment.

Limit/Restriction Settings – These options control the number of subscriptions and subscription trials a user can purchase/access. Choices include No Limit, One Active Subscription per Product, and One Active Subscription throughout the site.

Payment Gateway Settings – Here you can enable manual payment gateways which will be displayed along with automatic payment gateways in checkout page when subscription product is added in cart.

You can disable automatic payment gateways which will then be hidden in the checkout page. You can control whether the user should have an option for preapproving the future subscription and enable PayPal Standard subscription API renewals.

 

#2. Order Subscription Tab

This setting lets users set order for multiple products as a single subscription at checkout. You can make this the default option and also change the checkbox label for this option.

 

#3. Synchronization Tab

If enabled, Synchronization option will be visible in product edit page when SUMO Subscriptions is enabled for the product.

 

#4. My Account Tab

These are account options that subscribers can control. For example, they can pause or cancel their subscriptions, resubscribe to an expired or canceled the subscription, switch between similar variations of a subscription product, turn off automatic payments, and change their shipping address.

Here you can also enable content dripping. If enabled, when a new file is added to the downloadable subscription product, the already subscribed subscribers can’t see the newly added files.

It will be displayed only when the renewal of the subscription is completed for the product.

 

 

If you enable additional digital downloads for subscription products feature, site admin will have an option to link digital products to subscription products. The downloadable files from those products can be accessed by the subscriber when they purchase the subscriptions.

 

#5. Advanced Tab

Advanced settings provide options like apply subscription fee for already purchased users, activate the free trial, set subscription product as a regular product for specific user role(s), etc.

If you enable Show Payment Gateways if the Subscription Order Amount is 0, payment gateways will be displayed in checkout page even if the order amount is 0 when the cart contains subscription product.

In case of automatic payments, the subscriber doesn’t need to visit the site during payment renewals if this option is enabled. You can allow users to purchase non-subscription products with subscription products.

 

 

Here you also have settings for a number of times (per day) SUMO Subscriptions will attempt charging for a subscription renewal when an automatic payment subscription becomes overdue or suspended.

You can set how SUMO Subscriptions should behave when a user manually removes access to preapproval/billing methods, or automatic payment fails.

Options are to cancel the subscription or allow subscribers to choose a payment method through email.

You can change background color settings for the status of a subscription (trial, pause, active overdue, pending, suspended, canceled, pending cancellation, failed, and expired) and customize background color settings for subscription notes (processing, success, pending, and failure).

 

#6. Bulk Action Tab

The settings here let you make bulk changes to your site subscription information for all products, selected products, all categories, or selected categories. By checking the Update box next to a field, you can customize its information.

For example, by selecting Enable for the SUMO Subscriptions field, you can activate or deactivate SUMO Subscriptions for specific products and categories.

You can also control subscription durations, trial durations, whether to enable trials (and if they are paid or free trials), whether you charge a signup fee and how long recurring subscription cycles are.

 

#7. Messages Tab

In this tab, SUMO Subscriptions displays the various shortcodes and messages you can use for your subscriptions.

You can use shortcodes to display subscription information for a price, duration, recurring cycle, signup fee, trial fee, installments, prorated fee and date, synchronized next payment date, subscription number, next payment date, and scheduled cancel date.

You can also customize many message settings, including general subscription messages, synchronization messages, durations, cancel dialog messages, error messages, and more.

 

#8. Help Tab

The Help tab tells you where you can find documentation for SUMO Subscriptions plugin, and provides a link to their support center. There you can view their support FAQ or open a support ticket. It also lists the other SUMO plugins that are compatible with SUMO Subscriptions.

 

List of Subscriptions & Master Log

Now that you know some info regarding Settings submenu, I will briefly go over the other two submenus for SUMO Subscriptions. The next SUMO Subscriptions menu item after Settings is List of Subscriptions.

This page lists your product/service subscriptions, along with their status, subscription number, product name and number of people subscribed, order ID, buyer email, subscription start and end dates, trial end date, last payment date, next payment date, and renewal count.

The final submenu in the SUMO Subscriptions menu is the Master Log. The Master Log displays usernames, actions, results, subscription product names and numbers, order IDs, events, and dates.

 

Creating a Simple Subscription

When creating a simple subscription using SUMO Subscriptions plugin you need to add a new product in WooCommerce as you do with any WooCommerce product.

Give it a title and description, as well as a short description and product image if you want. If your subscription product is a virtual product that is intangible and not shipped or a downloadable product that includes files, you’ll need to check the appropriate box next to Virtual or Downloadable.

Below the description box, choose a Simple product from the Product data drop-down menu. There you will see an option for SUMO Subscriptions.

Next to SUMO Subscriptions, select Enable. Choose the Subscription Duration which can range from 1-90 days, 1-52 weeks, 1-24 months, or 1-5 years.

 

 

If you’d like to add a Trial Period to your subscription product, select Forced or Optional Trial. Or leave it disabled. To determine the trial type, select Free Trial or Paid Trial in the drop-down next to Select Trial Type.

If you choose Paid Trial, you’ll need to enter a dollar amount next to Trial Fee ($). For Trial Duration, your options are 1-90 days, 1-52 weeks, 1-24 months, or 1-5 years.

If you want to charge a fee for signing up for the subscription product, select Optional or Forced Sign up next to Sign up Fee enter a dollar value for Sign up Value ($).

Choose the Recurring Cycle for the subscription. The default is Indefinite. You can choose between 1-52 installments.

 

Creating a Variable Subscription

Variable subscriptions are done the same way as simple subscription products, but instead of choosing a Simple product from the Product data drop-down menu, you choose a Variable product.

After choosing Variable Product, Click the Attributes tab to create your attributes for the subscription. After creating the attributes, create the Variations tab to add your subscription variations.

After creating your variations, enter the regular price/sale price for the subscription variation. Enable SUMO Subscription for each variation and set settings per your wishes (see above steps).

 

Creating a Grouped Subscription

Grouped subscription products consist of simple subscription products that are grouped (only simple subscription products can be grouped). To create a grouped subscription product, you first need to create more than one simple product.

When creating grouped subscriptions choose Grouped product from the Product data drop-down menu in WooCommerce. Click the Linked Products tab. In the Grouped products field, select the products that will be part of the group and click Publish.

 

Compatibility With Other Plugins

Sumo Subscriptions is compatible with many other WordPress plugins. Sumo Subscriptions is compatible with plugins like SUMO Memberships, SUMO WooCommerce Pre-Orders, SUMO Donations, SUMO Affiliates, SUMO Reward Points, WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart and Hoicker.

Each of these plugins can expand the site’s functionality and are from the same developer. If you take advantage of SUMO Memberships, you’ll be able to integrate WooCommerce Membership System into your website.

With this type of membership system, you’ll find it easy to manage your subscriptions as well as membership plans. You can also make donation products on your website. All you need for this is SUMO Donations plugin.

With this plugin, you will be able to charge your customers the donation amount each time the subscription is renewed. If you would like to use an affiliate program to promote your subscriptions offer, you need to use SUMO Affiliates.

In your website admin panel, you will be able to award (or not award) affiliate commission when the subscription is renewed. SUMO Reward Points is designed to reward your users with points every time they renew subscriptions.

They will earn some points for every subscription renewal. They can then use points for purchasing new subscriptions or renewing existing subscriptions. SUMO Subscriptions is also compatible with WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart.

In order to achieve a lasting impression over emails, you can use YayMail addons to fully customize the email templates created by SUMO Subscriptions, YITH Subscription, or WooCommerce Subscriptions extensions.

Hoicker is another great set of tools that is compatible with SUMO Subscriptions. Hoicker consists of multiple individual WooCommerce marketing plugins.

Those are WooCommerce Wallet plugin, WooCommerce Refund plugin, WooCommerce Multi-Purpose Buttons, WooCommerce Sales Triggers plugin, and WooCommerce Social Share with more coming soon.

WooCommerce Wallet plugin allows you to add Wallet functionality on your WooCommerce store using which customers can make payments for their orders using Wallet balance.

WooCommerce Refund plugin allows your customers to request refunds and helps you to manage refund requests easily. WooCommerce Multi-Purpose Buttons can be used to display extra buttons like upsell, downsell, continue shopping, etc.

WooCommerce Sales Triggers plugin can be used to display sales triggers like amount saved, time left for deal, stock scarcity, etc. WooCommerce Social Share plugin allows you to display social share buttons on your WooCommerce shop.

 

WooCommerce Recurring Payments Alternative Plugins

If you think that SUMO Subscriptions doesn’t have features you need from WooCommerce recurring payments plugin, check some of below plugin alternatives:

 

Subscriptio – WooCommerce Subscriptions

Subscriptio is a WooCommerce extension that allows you to sell subscriptions.

Subscriptio adds recurring payments capability to WooCommerce so you can sell products like magazine subscriptions, online memberships, e-learning packages and any other tangible or intangible products.

Both simple and variable products can be configured as subscriptions and allow you to set payment cycle, free trial length, subscription length and a setup fee.

 

WooCommerce Subscriptions

With WooCommerce Subscriptions, you can create and manage products with recurring payments. This plugin allows you to introduce a variety of subscriptions for physical or virtual products and services.

YITH WooCommerce Subscription

It has free and paid version. YITH WooCommerce Subscription allows making your products accessible to your users as subscriptions. It allows you to create unlimited subscription plans for simple virtual downloadable products of your WooCommerce store.

Set the type of renewal for each subscribable WooCommerce product, either monthly or daily.

 

Subscription Force

Introducing Subscription Force – the ultimate solution for WooCommerce stores looking to increase sales and build a reliable, recurring revenue stream. This powerful plugin extends the functionality of the WooCommerce Subscription plugin, allowing you to offer any stand-alone product as a subscription option.

With Subscription Force, you can easily let your customers manage and customize your subscription offerings, including the frequency of deliveries, adding new products to subscriptions, billing schedules, changing the frequency of subscriptions, and more. Its intuitive interface makes it simple for customers to sign up and manage their subscriptions.

Not only does Subscription Force boost sales and help you generate a steady stream of recurring revenue, but it also saves you time and effort by automating the process of managing and fulfilling subscriptions. So if you’re looking to take your WooCommerce store to the next level, give Subscription Force a try today!

 

SUMO Subscriptions Review Conclusion

WooCommerce is the best e-commerce platform for WordPress. It is easy to learn to use and comes with impressive features built-in to its core package. But one of the features that WooCommerce lacks out-of-the-box is product and service subscriptions.

SUMO Subscriptions aims to fill that void. It allows for Simple, Variable, and Grouped subscriptions for physical, digital, and virtual products and services.

It includes built-in payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe for automatic subscription renewals. For manual subscription renewals, it works with any WooCommerce supported payment gateway.

It offers extensive features and customization options that can meet the needs of many WooCommerce store owners.

If you’re interested in developing your business around the benefits of recurring revenue with subscriptions, SUMO Subscriptions just might be what you need.

SUMO Subscriptions is available from CodeCanyon for $39. Price includes all future updates and six months of support from Fantastic Plugins, the developer of the plugin.

Another great way to increase sales is using WooCommerce deposit plugin which will allow buyers to pay in partial payments. This is great choice if you sell high-ticket items.

If you used SUMO Subscriptions or you can recommend any other WooCommerce recurring payments plugin, let me know in comments below.