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Build Custom Subscription Experiences with the ReCharge API
Table of Contents
01. The Challenge with SaaS.................................................
02. ReCharge API at a Glance................................................
Limitations......................................................................................
Dedicated Support....................................................................
03. Customize the Entire User Experience..............
Examples Part 1: Complex Products................................
Examples Part 2: Advanced Subscriptions...................
Examples Part 3: Customer Self Service........................
Examples Part 4: Analytics & Integrations.....................
04. How to Get Started..................................................................
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2
The Challenge with SaaS
The traditional SaaS product model has some
limitations.
There’s no shortage of amazing SaaS products that’ll
help Shopify merchants optimize some aspect of their
business, but at the same time, we’ve all experienced
those occasions when a promising out-of-the-box
SaaS solution could only go so far.
As a result, the individuals who are asked to select a
new SaaS solution often end up choosing a product
that comes with the fewest number of compromises. If
a SaaS solution even comes close to meeting 80% of a
business’s needs straight out of the box, it’s considered
a huge win.
But what about the remaining 20% of requirements?
Expecting out-of-the-box software to address
100% of the needs for 100% of businesses just isn’t
a realistic expectation; it’s a mythical creature.
It’s the other unicorn of the SaaS world.
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Faced with the inevitable compromise, employees
or founders will typically grab pen and paper, draw 2
columns, and endeavor to create the now familiar nice-
to-have versus must-have lists. Then they try to check
all the boxes in the must-have column and hope that
the nice-to-have column doesn’t end up completely
empty.
More recently, business users have become much
more software savvy and their needs have become
even more complex, so that best-case, 80%-of-
requirements-met scenario has become has become
the new other unicorn of SaaS.
In ReCharge’s case, the complexities of recurring
billing are often hidden until a Shopify merchant tries
to create a perfectly-matched solution for how they
envision their business’s subscriptions should be set
up, managed, and fulfilled. But just like other SaaS
solutions, it’s not all feasible straight out of the box.
Enter the ReCharge API.
With the ReCharge API, merchants don’t have to
compromise, and with your help, they can go from
having 80% of their requirements met to the elusive
100%. Ride that unicorn.
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ReCharge API at a Glance
Endpoints & Webhooks
ReCharge provides a RESTful API, event-driven
webhooks, and a multitude of customization options
that allow for complex integrations with other systems
and apps.
Our API endpoints include:
Using the Subscriptions endpoint, you could change
a subscription product’s price, delivery frequency
and charge frequency. In more advanced scenarios,
you could swap out one product for another, or
even change a product’s variant on a monthly basis
throughout the calendar year.
Subscriptions
Customers
Addresses
Charges
Orders
Discounts (Currently in Alpha testing)
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To continue with the scenario of changing a product
variant each month: Webhooks could be used as a
trigger on the backend to automatically update a
customer’s subscription product.
You would simply configure an order created webhook,
and whenever it fires, your app would then make an
API call using the Subscriptions endpoint to change the
product variant for that particular subscription.
Webhooks could even be used to create SMS
receipts for a merchant’s customers following any
type of transaction. There are so many possibilities for
automating a merchant’s business.
ReCharge webhooks are a mechanism for reacting
to specific events that are triggered in the
system, such as checkout completions, customer
activations, or subscription cancellations.
Additionally, you can cancel, pause, and reactivate
subscriptions using the Subscriptions endpoint.
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We officially support shell scripts, Python, PHP and
Ruby, and we’re working on expanding support for
other languages.
Limitations
All API requests must be handled via HTTPS.
The rate limiter operates using a leaky bucket
algorithm, which allows for infrequent bursts of calls,
and it allows your app to continue to make an unlimited
amount of calls over time.
The bucket size is 40 calls (which cannot be exceeded
at any time), with a “leak rate” of 2 calls per second
that continually empties the bucket to make room for
additional calls. Your app’s API calls will be processed
almost instantly if there’s room in your bucket.
The ReCharge API limits the volume of requests
to ensure uncompromised performance for our
merchant stores.
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Unlike some implementations of the leaky bucket
algorithm that aim to smooth out (i.e., slow down)
operations, with ReCharge you can make quick bursts
of API calls that exceed the leak rate.
If your app averages 1 call per second, it’ll never
trip a bucket overflow error (Note: ReCharge uses
conventional HTTP response codes to indicate the
success or failure of an API request).
ReCharge supports OAuth to negotiate a token
exchange as well as manual token creation.
Dedicated Support
Our API access includes robust documentation and
developer support from the ReCharge team. You’ll also
get real-time access to our experts on a dedicated
Slack channel, so you can ask questions about using
our API as you’re developing an app (we’re happy to
help, but we’re not able to debug your code).
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Customize the Entire User Experience
Many of our top merchants, in partnership with our
preferred agencies, have used the ReCharge API to
build:
Here are some recent examples of how merchants
have used the ReCharge API to tackle the “remaining
20%” of their requirements (and beyond).
Product bundles
Custom portals for customers
to manage their subscriptions
Complex product configurations
across multiple variants
“Build a box” subscription
products3rd party app integrations
Custom reporting and
analyticsCustom post purchase email
Single page checkout flowsDigital product subscriptions
(i.e., membership models)
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Complex Products
Examples Part 1:
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Product Bundle: Using the ReCharge API, The TOM Co created a
custom product selector that enables customers
to build their own subscription box. Customers
get to make a variety of product choices to build a
subscription that’s specifically tailored to their needs.
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Digital Product: Siren Marine uses an innovative membership business
model that combines digital subscriptions with physical
boat hardware. They used ReCharge’s API to give
customers the option to bundle the physical product
with the subscription fee.
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Build a Box: Ask two people about their coffee preference and
you’ll get three different answers. Verve Coffee
Roasters solved this problem by creating a build a box
service for coffee lovers. Customers can choose their
favorite roast, grind, frequency and more.
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Advanced Subscriptions
Examples Part 2:
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Quarterly Subscription:
Foodstirs offers kitchen product subscriptions that
ship quarterly. Using our API, they modified their
subscriptions rulesets such that customers are
automatically enrolled in the next ship date for the
following quarter—and in a way that allows them to
ship products on the same day for all customers.
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Free Trial: Hubble Contacts offers their customers a free trial
of their contact lenses, charging only for shipping
and handling. After 2 weeks, the subscriptions are
automatically converted into the regular, full-priced
monthly box.
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Customer Self Service
Examples Part 3:
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Subscription Management:
To ensure visual and brand continuity between their
website and the ReCharge customer portal, Tiege
Hanley used our API to completely customize the
experience for customers managing their own
subscriptions. The large icons and clear calls to
action make it easy for customers to modify their
subscriptions and billing details.
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Subscription Management:
BattlBox enlisted the ReCharge API to visually modify
the default ReCharge customer portal, focusing people
on the top 3 most-used activities via a modal lightbox.
The full functionality is still there, tucked away neatly
behind the BattlBox custom UI.
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Change Delivery Address:
Enabling customers to change addresses for
upcoming deliveries can be tricky, but Grunt Style
developed an innovative solution using the ReCharge
API. When a customer changes their next shipment
address, they can also check a box to change their
address for all future shipments.
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Analytics & Integrations
Examples Part 4:
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Advanced Reporting
When Excel documents don’t cut it anymore, you can
use our API to export data to your favorite dashboard
software for more advanced analytics. Build something
in house, or use popular business intelligence products
such as Tableau, Sisense, Microsoft Power BI and
more.
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We recently launched a Zapier integration so you
can easily integrate ReCharge with 1,000+ apps in the
Zapier library. If an app catches your eye but doesn’t
have the workflow options (i.e., triggers or actions) you
need, you can now build your own direct integration by
leveraging our API and webhooks.
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How to Get Started
It’s easy. Please reach out to us at
rechargepayments.com/developers
to request access to the API.
Once we’ve given you access, you can go to:
ReCharge Admin > Settings > Integrations > API tokens
Then click “Create an API Token” in the top right to
generate a new token for your store:
You can learn more about our API here.
And don’t forget to ask your partner manager
to give you access to the API Slack channel!
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