Key Takeaways:
- Subscription acquisition rates have dropped 51% since 2019, according to data collected by Recurly. But consumers aren’t abandoning subscriptions — they’re becoming more selective about which ones earn a permanent place in their budgets.
- Pause adoption grew 150% year over year, and three out of four subscribers who pause return within months, making the feature a practical churn-reduction tool.
- Fashion rental platforms such as Nuuly are gaining ground by leaning into affordability, flexibility and sustainability, which are factors that resonate with consumers who are increasingly cautious about discretionary spending.
Subscription acquisition rates have dropped 51% since 2019, falling from 6.23% to just over 3%. That number sounds like a warning signal. But Rachel Sheriff, Chief Customer Officer at Recurly, said the more accurate read is a market that’s maturing, not retreating.
“I don’t think that people are necessarily walking away from subscriptions,” Sheriff said in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “They’re just being more intentional around which ones they’re going to pay for month over month and making sure that they’re getting value out of those subscriptions.”
Sheriff joined the Retail Remix podcast to discuss findings from Recurly’s 2026 State of Subscriptions Ecommerce Report and what the data reveals about where the subscription industry is heading.
Retention Replaces Acquisition as the Primary Challenge
For much of the past decade, subscription businesses measured success at the top of the funnel. That’s shifting. According to Sheriff, the harder problem now is keeping the customers brands already have.
“About five years ago, the focus for subscription businesses and merchants was on acquiring as many subscribers as possible,” she said. “What we’re seeing today, as the market has shifted a little bit, is that the bigger challenge isn’t acquisition. It’s really keeping the subscribers that you already have.”
The report found that approximately 52% of consumers canceled at least one subscription in the past 12 months. The most common reason: they weren’t using it enough. Sheriff frames this not as fatigue but as consumers building what she calls a “portfolio of subscriptions,” one they’re actively curating based on where they see real, recurring value.
“I think fatigue might be oversimplifying it a bit,” she said. “Consumers are realizing that you can’t subscribe to everything and you can’t use everything.”
The subscriptions that survive, she said, are the ones that become genuinely indispensable. She pointed to Amazon Prime as an example of a service that has largely stopped feeling like a discretionary expense for its users.
“There are a lot of types of subscriptions that are really still growing and they’re seeing a lot of growth from their existing customers,” Sheriff said. “Those programs are continuing to grow where others, again, that maybe aren’t keeping up pace with delivering that really great customer experience are the ones that are probably going to lose a lot of their subscribers.”
The Pause Button Is Working
One of the more striking findings in the report is the rise of the pause feature. Pause adoption grew 150% year over year, and three out of four subscribers who pause a subscription return within months.
Sheriff says the pause option reflects a broader industry shift away from treating any non-cancellation as a win and toward maintaining an ongoing relationship with the subscriber, even when they step back temporarily.
“When you allow someone to pause, you can still interact with that subscriber,” she said. “You can remind them of the value that you provided to them. And a lot of times, three out of four times, those customers come back.”
Businesses have historically resisted anything that made it easier for customers to stop paying. Sheriff says that thinking is giving way to a more practical view: a paused subscriber is still reachable.
“Allowing a pause option kind of keeps stake in the game for that consumer,” she said. “Think about things from their credit card information or their billing information is still embedded. You still have the ability to interact with that customer, again, to continue to provide value.”
Recurly has built pause functionality into its platform, alongside a product called Engage, which is designed to support the full customer lifecycle—from onboarding to re-engagement after a cancellation.
Why Nuuly Is Working
Fashion rental has seen a mixed few years, with some platforms restructuring while others have grown. Nuuly, the fashion rental service under the Urban Outfitters umbrella and a Recurly client, falls into the latter category. Sheriff, who subscribes to the service herself, credited its success to a combination of affordability, flexibility and broad product range.
“They’re actually really meeting consumers where they are today,” she said. “I think people are being a lot more intentional about discretionary spending.”
The platform allows subscribers to select six items per month, with the option to add more for an additional fee. Subscribers can also return items early and refresh their selection before the month ends. Items that have been previously rented are available to purchase at a discount, and new items can be bought at full price.
Sheriff noted that multiple consumer trends are converging to make fashion rental a practical option. Affordability is the most obvious one: subscribers can access designer and on-trend pieces without committing to full retail prices. Sustainability is another driver, as consumers look for ways to participate in fashion cycles without the waste associated with buying and discarding.
She also pointed to GLP-1 medication users as an emerging segment, noting that consumers whose body sizes are changing may find a rental model more practical than building out a traditional wardrobe.
“Think about the GLP-1s as a use case for somebody whose needs and sizes and tastes may change over time as they reap the rewards of losing weight,” she said.
What Traditional Retailers Are Testing
Recurly works with clients across categories, and Sheriff said she’s watching more traditional retailers experiment with subscription layers on top of their core businesses.
“I think we see a lot of retailers experimenting with subscription models is maybe the way that I would put it,” she said. “We see retailers dipping their toes in things like events or VIP. Maybe it’s early access to something.”
One model she highlighted: pairing a physical product with a recurring digital service. A retailer selling a piece of exercise equipment, for example, might also offer a subscription to accompanying workout content, warranty coverage or performance analytics.
“You buy the appliance, you may not buy it over and over again, but what you could be buying over and over again in the subscription model is the analytics or the warranty or the digital exercise video that goes with your treadmill,” Sheriff said.
The appeal for retailers extends beyond incremental revenue. Sheriff framed subscriptions as a mechanism for building the kind of ongoing customer relationship that’s difficult to create through one-time transactions.
“How do we really deliver an amazing customer experience so they develop a long-term relationship with our customers and our consumers, and we can keep them around and they kind of grow as we grow and as we change our business model?” she said.
But she was also direct about the risk. With more subscriptions competing for a finite consumer budget, brands that don’t deliver ongoing value won’t survive the curation process consumers are now running on their own spending.
“You have to be careful because, as we talked about earlier, there’s a lot of subscriptions in the market today and consumers are being a lot more intentional about what they’re going to continue to pay for,” she said. “Really focusing on delivering value, really focusing on the flexibility that you can offer to your customers—and then finally just that customer experience. You have to differentiate yourself from just the multitude of subscriptions out there.”
