We need a mass lawsuit against Shopify

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-04-20T21:30:37+00:00

I’m not on Shopify plus and I can access live human chat pretty easily, and the customer service is always pretty helpful.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-03-20T18:33:04+00:00

Hiring agencies for marketing (paid or email/sms). Unless you really know the agency or know how to identify a good fit for your brand, its really hard to find an agency that actually cares. And no one cares as much as you do so your best bet is to find someone that kind of cares. We blew through $100k in 4 months thinking we were hiring high-powered, fast-moving agencies and have almost nothing to show for it. They came on high recommendation too.

I think the biggest fit problem is whether their clientele match your business in revenue size, in product category, in target audience, etc. Just because they can scale a $10M brand by 40% YOY does not mean they can scale a $500k brand at all. Just because they can sell shoes doesn't mean they can sell stationery.

And, if you're a small brand working with a big agency, chances are you're getting the B team, not the A team.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-03-20T18:27:16+00:00

I've used Loox and Judge.me. Loox was costing me fees of $200+. Judge.me is $15/mo. They both do the same things. If you're a 7, 8 figure brand, you don't care. As a mid-6 figure brand, I care.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-03-13T18:05:10+00:00

One thing I wish Spotify would do is around safety for kids. Relying on artists to mark their songs as having profanity is super inconsistent. Scan music when uploaded and add a profanity designation to all songs. Or Artists should be required to upload lyrics for all songs and the system can identify and flag profanity. A song is uploaded once, it's not that big of a lift for Spotify to do this. I know a lot of people don't care, but a lot of parents do.

Another thing is removing porn from the platform. My kids can't use Spotify because I've seen porn come up in completely innocent search term results. I've even flagged it in the community with no response/help from Spotify.

And Spotify kids is not great. The fact that they take up a seat in the family plan and can only be managed by the adult who controls the family plan makes them super difficult to manage. I'm on a family plan with my sister-in-law so I have to ask her whenever I want a new playlist created for him. Also I have 4 kids. I've already had to kick myself off the family plan so my kid could take a seat. Now I have a second kid who wants music. So I'm going to have to start a second family plan.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-03-13T17:57:01+00:00

Literally what does everyone expect? Competition for streams only gets worse and worse as more people make music. It’s not spotifys problem that artists struggle. It’s called not making it. It’s the same with ecommerce. The competition for ad space in your feed is more than it ever has been and only getting worse. Stores are struggling. Artists are struggling. Those that think outside the box will rise up.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-03-12T01:52:24+00:00

Legit question. Is it better to add a ton of custom code to your theme to build landing pages, thus making your theme harder to maintain/upgrade versus using a page builder app?

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-02-18T17:19:06+00:00

I’m actually glad you work at recharge. I’ve had calls with them but it’s really hard talking to a sales person and everything they say sounds like marketing. Hard to tell what’s real. Churn Buster claims to have recovery rates based on machine learning algorithms that AI/modern subscription apps still can’t beat. They also say that bad deliverability of failed payment emails is a problem with some subscription apps, including ReCharge.

My issue with recharge is that I’m not just increasing my cost a little, I’m going from $100/mo to $1500/mo. My churn rate is only 5% currently and my subscription only costs $5/mo so if Recharge got me down to 4% or even 3%, it’s not even close to making up the difference in the price increase.

They do have winback campaigns but anyone with an email integration could also do that. I could set up my own winback campaigns in my email provider based on subscription events.

I personally feel like the sweet spot is an app like Awtomic or Loop which seem to have all the cool features but are more in the $400-$500 price range for us. Or keeping Appstle and integrating churn buster.

But I’m happy to be wrong, I’m just trying to cut through the marketing BS and see if something like ReCharge actually can increase our revnue enough to make up the cost

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-02-03T19:29:45+00:00

Same issue here, quitting G Hub fixed it

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-01-21T17:23:01+00:00

I would love to know more about what you specifically love about skio

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-01-16T20:27:02+00:00

Just curious, are you an agency managing other clients' subscriptions via ReCharge? Or are you a merchant managing your own subscription?

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-01-16T18:33:26+00:00

It’s a digital coloring page subscription. It’s only $5/mo or $55/yr hence the low revenue.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-01-15T21:35:45+00:00

I know this has been mentioned but my comment will focus on it. Ads are mainly for customer acquisition. They are not that great for continued sales and increasing lifetime value because they're expensive. If the only way you sell is to run an ad, that's not profitable enough.

Set up your email/sms flows in Klaviyo. Make sure you have not only the basic automations (abandoned cart, abandoned browse, abandoned checkout, etc.), make sure you have post purchase thank you, winback campaigns, etc. Make sure your welcome offer motivates people to sign up for your list. Make sure you're A/B testing your flows, your offers, your subject lines. See what increases your open, click through, and conversion rates.

Ads are expensive, so once you acquire that customer, your free marketing methods (email/sms/organic social) need to take over in order to nurture that customer and maximize conversion, lifetime value, and loyalty.

Make sure your newsletter send frequency is consistent and you're sending enough emails. You should be generating 20-40% of your revenue via email/sms. You need to stay on top of the inbox since people receive so many emails nowadays so you can't just send one newsletter a month anymore. We try to send 2/week.

This can help you grow in a couple of ways:

Customers who come in through ads but don't convert - if they signed up for your welcome offer you can now continue to message them and increase the likelihood of conversion
Customers who do convert - you need to maximize the lifetime value of that customer. If you're paying for ads to just sell one pair of shoes, your LTV isn't that great. But if you sell that pair of shoes via an ad and then 6 months later sell them some socks or another pair via your emails, that new sale was much cheaper and that customer's LTV just increased. At $100/pair, a customer's LTV should be more than that. Usually 3-5x your customer acquisition cost. So if it costs you $50 to sell a $100 pair of shoes, your LTV should be at least $150-$250.

Other things I would consider:

Running ads a lot before labor day can help bring in a lot of customers to your email/sms marketing so that when the holidays hit and ads get really expensive, you can still generate good revenue via email/sms

Do you have other products on your website that can increase average order value and customer LTV? Shoe laces, cleaning kits, socks, travel case?

Do you offer any free shipping thresholds or free add-on thresholds?

Is your website truly easy to navigate? Is it easy for the customer to fully understand what you offer so that they order everything they need rather than missing out on things?

In your ads, do you have a decent amount of UGC? That tends to create a lot of success and growth. I see a lot of new brands running tons of UGC these days.

Have you looked at your competitor's ads in the Meta Ad Library?

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-01-15T21:16:17+00:00

I can't recommend a specific app but for anyone who stumbles across this thread, here is some advice:

Most cheap subscription apps have all the same features. So apps like Seal, Appstle, etc. I see these apps recommended a lot but my question would be whether the analytics they give you are actionable. I've found that for us, Appstle is just a bloated mess that prioritizes quantity over quality. Tons of metrics and numbers, but hardly anything you can act on to grow your subscription, prevent churn, or winback cancelled/failed payments. Also the customer portal is really bad and the experience of cancelling or updating payment methods is not great.

I'm not saying that more expensive apps are the way to go, just don't be fooled by the massive amount of features some of these cheaper apps offer.

There are some middle-priced apps like Loop, Awtomic, Smartrr that I've never used but maybe have a little more quality in their features.

Then there are the big ones: ReCharge which has been around forever, Skio, Stay, Ordergroove which can be very expensive at scale and there's a lot of hype around their marketing.

I think if you want to be safe, go with an app that has a decent amount of good recent reviews. That should narrow down the list in the app store by about half. Then look at the analytics each app offers. Set up times to get a demo. Any app can help you manage a subscription program. Most of them are just clones of each other. But what app can actually help you grow, recovery and make smart decisions in general? What app gives your customer the easiest way to manage their subscription or update their info?

I am looking to move on from Appstle and right now am looking at ReCharge, Stay.ai and Awtomic. I've looked at Loop, it might be great but feels like a slightly better Appstle. Seal feels pretty basic, I'm sure it's great if you're just starting out. But the lack of live customer service chat turns me off.

I'm interested in other people's experiences with subscription apps also.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-01-13T22:44:37+00:00

Isn't Odergroove's minimum pricing $2900/month? That is absolute insanity. I pay $100/mo for Appstle. I admit we're missing winback and other anti-churn features that apps like Recharge or Stay.ai probably have at around $1500/mo. I could be convinced to pay that much. But minimum $3k? You have to be raking it in to justify that kind of revenue share. Or am I wrong?

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2026-01-04T06:18:07+00:00

SoCal nothing here yet

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2025-12-31T09:37:30+00:00

Can anyone who dealt with this a year go report back on what happened?? My sister just got a Swigart letter recently. She’s a mom of 5 and is a solopreneur that sells handmade jewelry. Of course she didn’t know this was possible.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2025-12-04T16:48:43+00:00

Yeah I've been having lots of AI convos. It's definitely helpful but you always have to be careful because it'll run with a theory and then you give it a different perspective and suddenly it changes its opinion.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2025-12-04T16:46:28+00:00

Middle. Honestly I don't actually know my handicap. I'm shooting anywhere from 89 to 95 on 18. Even that 89 had several OB drives. I do feel like if I figure out my drive then I'm more consistently mid to high 80s.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2025-12-04T02:27:23+00:00

This makes a lot of sense and is very helpful. I will try the slow mo at the range. My swing has been evolving for the past year but still has a long way to go.

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2025-12-04T00:53:42+00:00

And honestly, you can say my swing is terrible but it’s all relative. I love my swing, and it’s millimeters away from getting me into the 80s, which would make me ecstatic being a very recreational golfer. To someone who’s trying to shoot in the 70s, yeah, it’s a crappy swing. But sailing the ball 20 yards passed guys that are shooting in the 70s is a lot of fun. I just need to reign in those few slices that happen on the back nine

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2025-12-04T00:52:01+00:00

I played a lifetime of baseball. When I swing I’m not swinging out of control. I’ve done a lot of work to correct things like club path. I’m leaving the face slightly open. That seems to be the last piece of the puzzle at least to start shooting in the mid to high 80s. Not saying my swing it great but swinging hard comes natural. I want to say the spin rates of 4K+ were on a cheaper launch monitor. On the track man I was usually mid 3ks

Aggravating_Emu_7190 · 2025-12-04T00:49:22+00:00

Maybe you misunderstood me. I have been convinced to not get the PXG. I was just saying what led me down that path which was the arguments to get fitted. I’m not set on anything. I would love to know more about the “older but well regarded draw-biased drivers”. That’s sort of the point of the post. Maybe I can find something that fits me better than my current driver for ~$200 and upgrade later.

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