My Journey With Subbly: From Advocate and Certified Expert to Serious Concerns About Where the Platform Is Heading

Around 2020 and 2021 I was already running a growing subscription business. It was built on WordPress, and for a while that was fine. But the maintenance, security and backend concerns kept stacking up, so I went looking for a platform built specifically for subscription commerce.

I searched the way any founder searches - best subscription ecommerce platform, best subscription box platform, subscription ecommerce software - and the same names kept coming up: Shopify, Cratejoy, Subbly. Subbly caught my attention. It was specialized. It was focused on subscription commerce rather than treating subscriptions as an afterthought. And it had an approachable, startup feel to it.

I started using it. And honestly? I was impressed.

I want to give this real weight. What came later drove me from being a true advocate to someone who still uses Subbly but questions a lot of the background and the people. During my early years with Subbly, its customer support was exceptional. Not pretty good. Not good for a SaaS company. The best software support I had personally experienced.

The team understood the platform. Problems were investigated. Questions came back with knowledgeable answers rather than copy-pasted deflections. Subbly's backend was genuinely complicated to learn, and there were moments when the platform frustrated me. But the people kept me there.

By around 2022 I was building more sophisticated Subbly websites. The legacy website builder was limited - that's not a secret - but I managed to extract considerably more from it than most, because I brought experience from outside the Subbly ecosystem.

• +20+ years in digital marketing
• +Website design and development
• +Conversion optimization and sales psychology
• +UX and customer behavior
• +Systems architecture
• +Subscription commerce and business consulting

My Subbly sites started attracting attention. Eventually Subbly approached me about becoming a Certified Subbly Expert. I want to frame that as important: I wasn't someone who appeared years later and started criticizing the platform from the sidelines. Subbly itself recognized my expertise and brought me into its ecosystem.

At its strongest, the Certified Expert program had roughly a dozen or more specialists covering website design, subscription strategy, marketing, paid advertising, logistics, social media, technology and business consulting. It was genuinely collaborative.

Subbly periodically referred merchants to experts. Experts brought businesses onto Subbly. Experts created educational resources. Subbly invited experts to webinars. Experts contributed templates. I participated in website-template competitions and created templates that were subsequently used by Subbly merchants. I also participated in educational webinars covering conversion optimization, subscription website strategy, increasing average order value, and sales psychology.

"Everyone won. Subbly acquired and retained merchants. Independent experts received opportunities. Merchchants gained access to specialist expertise Subbly did not necessarily employ internally."

It felt like an ecosystem rather than simply a SaaS company. That distinction is the whole story of what happened next.

In June 2024 I attended SubSummit with Subbly and participated in free advisory sessions for subscription entrepreneurs. I helped merchants with subscription strategy, websites, conversion, growth and platform questions. I paid my own travel and accommodation; Subbly provided access through its presence at the conference.

I began hearing from existing private clients that Subbly representatives were approaching them offering services such as landing pages, websites, platform implementation and additional development. These weren't simply unknown merchants. Some were businesses already paying me to perform precisely those services.

I raised the concern directly with Subbly leadership. I was assured Subbly did not intend to become an agency and did not want to compete with experts like me. Yet over the following months, Subbly increasingly began offering precisely these kinds of services. Eventually this expanded into what became The Subscription Agency.

Moving into 2025, Subbly was preparing its new AI-driven website builder. I should have been incredibly excited about this. I had already been working extensively with AI and agentic website development tools. I understood prompting. I understood web architecture. I understood Subbly. And I understood the merchants who would have to migrate from the legacy environment.

Subbly approached me during the pre-launch beta period. I immediately saw an opportunity to create onboarding resources, migration guidance, prompt frameworks, tutorials, educational material and merchant support.

My concern, however, was that the builder simply wasn't ready for broad release. In my experience during beta it was buggy, unpredictable, prone to breaking things, and difficult for inexperienced entrepreneurs to navigate. I recommended a longer controlled beta with experienced users before mass adoption. My recommendation was not followed.

Around June 2025, I was discussing bringing one of my launch clients into the new builder environment. Scott Normore, from Subbly, told me access would cost approximately $2,500 - all in for a year - with six months of SubblyX included.

I strongly objected. The product was effectively beta software and was approaching wider availability. Shortly afterward, access to the builder became available at a dramatically lower normal platform price.

I was encouraged by Subbly leadership to communicate with my audience about the transition from the legacy builder toward the new AI builder. I did so. I also communicated honestly about concerns I had with the transition.

Later, communications I had sent were screenshotted and challenged publicly within the Subbly community. One of my own clients was tagged and asked whether my communications were making her uncomfortable or anxious.

1. Private instruction to communicate the transition
2. I communicate the transition, honestly, including concerns
3. My communication is screenshotted
4. I am publicly challenged over the message - to my own client

During conversations about my private launch clients, I explained that some comprehensive projects were worth approximately $10,000-$15,000 because they could encompass strategy, website, systems, subscription architecture, launch planning, marketing, conversion and ongoing consulting.

A subsequent message involving Subbly leadership and Andrija referenced these clients and suggested this was exactly the type of business Subbly itself should pursue.

One of my coaching clients reported being contacted with an opportunity she understood to mean she had won a free website build. Work subsequently took place on the project.

I'm not going to characterize this as a proven bait-and-switch. I wasn't on the calls. I'll say only this: from the client's account as it was relayed to me, the expectation created at the beginning and the price presented later were radically different.

I raised this with Subbly. According to my experience, some senior team members appeared unaware that this sales approach had occurred. That concerned me even further, because it suggested inconsistent communication internally.

Here's an important technical criticism. Subbly has accumulated features over many years. That is partly a strength. It is also increasingly a weakness.

In my experience, different generations of functionality overlap. There can be multiple ways of accomplishing similar things, legacy settings alongside newer settings, unclear feature dependencies, inconsistent behavior, and functionality that support personnel themselves appear unfamiliar with.

The Patchwork Quilt Problem

Subbly has considerable functionality. But adding functionality and maintaining a coherent system are different engineering challenges. For experienced specialists, the platform can still be extremely capable. For a new merchant, the complexity can become difficult to navigate.

During the difficult AI-builder rollout, I advocated for more transparent communication. Merchants were worried. My suggestion was simple: publish a roadmap. Not necessarily every strategic secret - just communicate what was being fixed, what was being improved, what merchants should expect, approximate development priorities, and what the next several weeks might look like.

Subbly CEO Stefan explained that the company did not want competitors seeing upcoming features. I fundamentally disagreed.

"During a difficult migration, reassuring existing customers should matter more than hiding ordinary product-development priorities from competitors."

I created my own practical onboarding material for the AI builder after repeatedly seeing merchants struggle. Think of it as a recipe book: step-by-step instructions, prompts, setup sequences, common problems, and practical ways to get started.

Historically, this type of expert contribution would have fit perfectly within the collaborative Subbly ecosystem. This time, I was asked not to distribute it within the community. I even offered to remove my branding and simply make the resource available to help merchants. That proposal was also rejected.

I've had several clients exposed to or enrolled in SubblyX-style higher-touch support arrangements. The proposition sounds attractive: premium access, closer support and proactive assistance. However, my observation from clients has been inconsistent engagement.

Some clients receiving extended introductory or free periods did not experience enough proactive value to make the eventual paid proposition compelling. My criticism here is constructive: if someone receives six months of a service that will eventually cost hundreds of dollars per month, the objective should be obvious.

"Make the service so useful that losing it feels painful. That means proactive strategy, regular check-ins, ideas, optimization, and problems identified before the merchant notices them - not simply access to another Slack channel."

Approximately two to three years ago, I worked on potentially migrating a substantial Shopify operation onto Subbly. The opportunity involved approximately five brands with combined revenue around $7 million annually. The migration ultimately did not proceed.

A major obstacle was analytics. According to my experience, the company's CFO considered Subbly's reporting capabilities insufficient for their requirements and rejected the migration. This matters because it demonstrates a broader strategic point: subscription commerce isn't simply checkout plus recurring billing.

• +Cohort analysis
• +Retention reporting
• +Churn analysis
• +LTV
• +SKU performance
• +Forecasting
• +Subscription segmentation
• +Finance-grade reporting

A platform aspiring to serve larger merchants has to satisfy operators beyond the marketing department.

I've experienced multiple occasions where existing clients were subsequently approached about additional Subbly services. One example involves a client named Robert. Subbly had previously created a website for Robert. Robert was unhappy with the result and subsequently hired me to rebuild it. According to my experience, Subbly representatives continued approaching Robert with additional website and service concepts afterward.

I saw this pattern with other clients too. This is where the relationship finally became untenable.

Bring this into 2026. The AI builder today is significantly better than the initial version I used. I want to say that clearly. However, I continue to have serious concerns about its consumption and cost behavior.

Across comparable agentic website-building workflows, I have observed Subbly tasks consuming dramatically more paid usage than I would expect. In some testing and real client projects, I've observed differences of approximately 3x to 12x compared with comparable tasks and workflows elsewhere.

There are two legitimate SaaS strategies: build an ecosystem, or own the ecosystem. Subbly increasingly appears to me to have chosen the second. The risk is that when a platform competes with the specialists who helped grow its ecosystem, those specialists eventually stop advocating for the platform.

No. This is essential. Subbly can still be a good solution. I still have clients using it.

• +Subscription-first architecture
• +Recurring billing
• +Flexible subscription structures
• +Shipping cadence management
• +Relatively rapid subscription launches
• +Subscription-specific functionality
• +An improving AI website builder
• +Useful functionality accumulated over many years

For certain businesses, I would still consider it. But today I would also evaluate alternatives before making a recommendation. Depending on the business, that could include platforms such as Shopify or custom and alternative architectures.

I'm not writing this because I want Subbly to fail. Quite the opposite. I have clients on the platform. Their success depends partly on Subbly remaining healthy. I've invested years learning the ecosystem. I would benefit enormously from Subbly becoming excellent.

But independent consultants cannot genuinely call themselves independent if they refuse to criticize platforms because they are afraid of losing referrals, commissions or relationships.

"I recommended Subbly when I believed it deserved recommending. I criticized it when I believed it deserved criticism. If either of those positions changes tomorrow, I'll change my position again. That's independence."

There was a version of Subbly I genuinely loved working with. I built businesses on it. I promoted it. I created resources for it. I stood alongside its team at SubSummit and helped entrepreneurs understand what subscription commerce could become. That's precisely why the change has been so disappointing.

My criticism doesn't come from six weeks of frustration with a piece of software. It comes from roughly six years of watching the company from unusually close range.

I hope Subbly rediscovers some of what made it special in the first place. Because the subscription industry needs strong specialist platforms. But strong platforms need strong ecosystems around them. And ecosystems only work when everybody is allowed to grow.