circuly vs. Skio
Which Shopify subscription app is right for your subscription business?
Quick verdict
Both Skio and circuly are Shopify subscription apps. Both handle recurring billing, customer portals, and standard subscription management. But they were built for different products and different businesses.
Skio (now a Recharge company) is a subscription platform for DTC brands selling consumable products — supplements, coffee, beauty, wellness — that want advanced retention tooling like Build-a-Box and automated lifecycle journeys.
Pricing: $599/month, plus 1% of subscription GMV and $0.20 per order. No free tier.
circuly Subscription & Rental app for Shopify is built for businesses with physical and consumer durable products that operate a subscription, rental or lease model for those products. circuly is built around core features like asset tracking, return management, buy-out flows.
Pricing: Free to install & run up to 25 subscriptions. Paid plans start from $90/month up to $499/month. Free trial available for all tiers.
If your subscription is a consumable product that ships and never comes back, Skio is a mature, retention-focused platform. If a physical product needs to be tracked, serviced, and potentially returned — circuly is built for that job, natively on Shopify.
This guide is written for merchants who sell physical products on Shopify and want an honest picture of where each platform fits, and where each one falls short when it comes to operating a subscription-based business model for physical products. Note: as of 2026, Skio operates as a Recharge company following Recharge's acquisition of Skio — worth factoring in if platform independence and long-term roadmap direction matter to your decision.
Who each app is built for
Before comparing features, let's first understand the fundamental difference in what these two apps were designed to do.
circuly is primarily built for:
- Bikes, e-bikes & scooters
- Baby & kids' goods
- Consumer electronics & appliances
- Medical equipment & devices
- Furniture & home goods
- Sports & fitness equipment
- Any product that ships, gets used, and returns
- Brands running rentals, PaaS, subscribe-to-own
- Try-before-buy models
- Businesses with physical asset inventory to manage
circuly can also be used for:
- Consumable & replenishment subscription
- Subscription boxes and bundles
- Subscribe-to-own or try-before-buy
- Membership subscriptions
- Digital & service subscriptions
Skio is primarily built for:
- Supplements, vitamins & wellness brands
- Coffee & specialty beverage subscriptions
- Beauty & skincare replenishment
- Curated subscription boxes
- High-growth DTC brands graduating from a first-generation subscription app
- Any product that ships, gets consumed, and doesn't return
- Brands prioritizing retention tooling — cancel flows, win-backs, loyalty
Feature comparison: Skio vs. circuly
circuly on Shopify
circuly is now a native Shopify app
circuly has operated as a subscription management platform for physical product businesses for several years, building an enterprise customer base across Europe. Brands like Bike Club, Yuno, and StrollMe have used circuly to scale complex physical product subscription operations.
In 2025, circuly brought that operational depth directly into Shopify with a native app, available on the Shopify App Store, built around Shopify's native checkout, customer accounts, and theme architecture. Shopify merchants can now access circuly's physical product subscription infrastructure without leaving the Shopify ecosystem they've already built around.
For a Shopify merchant, this means:
- Install circuly directly from the Shopify App Store — no custom builds or external platform required
- Add subscription options to product pages via native Shopify theme blocks — no code needed
- Customers check out through the standard Shopify checkout, including Shop Pay
- Subscriber management sits within Shopify customer accounts — familiar to your team and your customers
- All of circuly's physical product operational capabilities — asset tracking, buy-outs, returns, invoicing — available through the same Shopify admin your team already uses
- Connect to the broader Shopify app ecosystem, including Klaviyo and ERP tools, without fragmented data
Pricing comparison: What to expect from each platform
The two platforms price very differently. Here's the honest summary:
#1. circuly
- Getting started: Free to install.
- As you scale: Paid plans start from $90/month up to $499/month; custom pricing available for larger operations
- Transaction fee: A commission applies on subscription revenue — decreases as you move up plans
- Free trial: 14-day free trial available on paid plans
#2. Skio
- Getting started: No free tier — plans start at $599/month
- As you scale: Single published plan at $599/month ($5,988/year with an annual discount); enterprise terms available on request
- Transaction fee: 1% of subscription GMV plus $0.20 per subscription order, on top of the monthly fee
