Weekly Subscriptions
Should you care?
Hey there, it’s Jacob at Retention.Blog 👋
I got tired of reading high-level strategy articles, so I started writing actionable advice I would want to read.
Every week I share practical learnings you can apply to your business.
“Weekly subscription market share is now over 55%”
There’s been a lot of discussions around weekly subscriptions based on Adapty’s report.
They say the weekly subscription market share is now over 55%
First off, what does this stat really mean?
The obvious part is that it’s not really the “subscription market”, it's specifically of their customers.
These are only equal if Adapty is 100% representative of the entire app market.
I don’t have a problem with that, but there is always some bias in any business’s customers, so it’s important to remind yourself.
The second part is more interesting:
Is this saying that 55% of their apps are offering weekly subscriptions?
Or is this saying that 55% of their active app subscribers are on a weekly subscription?
I checked with Adapty. They confirmed it’s: “55% of Adapty active app subscribers are on a weekly subscription.”
Hmm. This opens up more questions than answers.
(If we take the stat at face value, I agree 100% with Lea Samrani’s conclusions above!)
I wish we could see the breakdown of subscription type by app category…
Oh wait, we can!
This is from RevenueCat’s 2024 report:
I’m not trying to start trouble between RevenueCat and Adapty…😅
Is Adapty biased toward a certain category or type of app? Very likely.
This RevenueCat data makes a lot more sense.
The other slice of this data I would love is by country. Are certain countries more favorable to different subscription lengths?
(Let me know if this exists somewhere and I’ve missed it!)
Let’s look at the top categories for weekly subs:
Gaming: 69.5% weekly
Business: 44.8% weekly
Social and Lifestyle: 43.7% weekly
Utilities: 38.7% weekly
Photo and Video: 33.4% weekly
It makes a lot of sense Gaming skews that heavily to weekly. You may want to pay for free lives to unlock that next level.
Business also makes sense. There are many one-off use cases for business apps.
3 of the top 4 apps are PDF and Fax from iPhone apps.
I probably don’t have a daily use case for sending a Fax, so offering a weekly subscription is actually user-friendly because I can use it once and then cancel.
What about the social and lifestyle category?
The top subscription apps in these categories are mainly dating apps.
Many dating apps have increased visibility, super likes, or more swipes you can pay for. If I want to get a few dates for the next few weeks, I probably don’t want to pay for these features forever.
So again, a weekly plan is appreciated by the users.
Utilities are similar to the Business category in terms of having a lot of one-off use cases.
Two of the top 5 grossing apps are phone storage cleaners. I would definitely only pay to use this for a week.
Also, there are 6 phone cleaner apps in the top 20 grossing apps for Utilities?! I had no idea…
Photo and Video category:
I think you get it by now…more one-off use cases.
I downloaded Photoroom a little bit ago, and paid for a weekly subscription because I had some headshots I wanted to edit and put a different background behind.
I canceled after a week but was 100% happy with the value.
I talked about Flightly last week too, they also have a weekly subscription option.
Have a week of travel? This option may make sense for you. Only travel a few times a year? Again, this is a great option for you.
Notice the copy at the bottom of the weekly paywall? They exclude a few features you may want as a power user to push you toward the annual plan.
This is pretty smart as the annual plan will almost always be higher LTV.
Sure, some users will forget to cancel and they’ll pay for 10+ weeks, but you don’t want to build a business taking advantage of people forgetting to cancel their subscription.
Most of the examples above have weekly pricing that makes sense for the use case.
What else do we see with weekly pricing?
Impulse is an example where the tactic is more deceptive:
$6.99 a week compared to $39.99 a year makes the yearly price seem like a great deal.
And the 3-day trial period means that many more people will forget to cancel and they’ll get a week or two of extra revenue.
They also leverage this crazy weekly price to show a “92% off” discount after you close the first paywall:
In reality, it’s only ~35% cheaper than the annual plan.
I also noticed that Breeze is using a weekly plan by default on their paywall:
Only offering this weekly option for paying feels a bit deceptive. If you subscribed for a whole year you’re paying $400!
Is their goal only new user acquisition and making the most money upfront as possible?
So do you still want to try a weekly plan?
Don’t blindly jump into adding a weekly plan to your paywall.
I would first think carefully about whether it makes sense for your app’s use case.
Unless you’re not trying to build a business that lasts, then feel free to trick your users 🙂
That’s all I’ve got.
Let me know if you’ve had success with weekly subscriptions.
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