Avoiding churn during a Shopify subscription migration with Fildi

What you’ll learn in this section

We work with Fildi to expand our subscription domain expertise and insight, helping us to mitigate risk and find opportunities.

• Why migration is the best moment to modernise your subscription infrastructure
• Why subscription migrations are one of the highest churn-risk events for DTC brands
• How payment tokenisation failures silently destroy recurring revenue
• Why historical subscriber data is more valuable than most brands realise
• The hidden dangers of legacy promotions and pricing logic
• How to plan a Shopify subscription migration that protects trust, LTV, and cash flow
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Migration as a revenue risk event

For subscription businesses, a platform migration is not just a rebuild, it’s a live revenue event.

When migrating to Shopify, most brands are forced to change two core systems at once:

• The storefront
• The subscription platform

That usually means moving to Shopify-native tools such as Recharge, Skio, Loop, or Smartrr.

This dual transition introduces risk, but also opportunity.

Handled poorly, it creates:

• Failed payments
• Passive churn
• Customer confusion
• Lost historical insight

Handled properly, it becomes the moment you:

• Eliminate technical debt
• Modernise subscription logic
• Strengthen retention foundations
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Why payment continuity is critical

Subscription revenue lives or dies by payment success rates.

Payment tokenisation does not automatically transfer between platforms.

If this is mishandled:

• Banks reject transactions
• Cards fail silently
• “healthy” subscribers churn without ever cancelling

This is the most dangerous form of churn because:

• Customers didn’t choose to leave
• You often only notice after revenue drops

A properly orchestrated migration ensures:

• Billing schedules remain intact
• Retries and dunning logic continue to function
• Subscribers experience little to no disruption

This is not a technical detail, it’s revenue protection.
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Preserving subscriber intelligence

Your subscription data represents years of learning:

• Which acquisition channels produce long-term value
• How cohorts behave over time
• What signals predict churn
• How pricing and promotions impact LTV

A careless migration can flatten or fragment this data.

When that happens, brands lose:

• LTV forecasting
• CAC efficiency insights
• Cohort analysis
• Strategic decision-making confidence

A well-planned migration preserves this intelligence, allowing teams to continue making informed growth decisions from day one on Shopify.
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Legacy promotions: the silent churn trigger

Most subscription businesses carry historical baggage:

• Old discount codes
• Early-stage promotional pricing
• One-off launch offers
• Custom pricing logic from years ago

Many of these are forgotten, but still active.

If subscribers lose a long-standing benefit without warning:

• Trust is broken instantly
• Churn spikes
• Customer service volume explodes

Before migration, every active promotional structure must be:

• Audited
• Mapped
• Intentionally preserved or retired

Anything less is asking for avoidable churn.
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Creating safe migration windows

Subscription databases are constantly moving:

• New customers join
• Payments process
• Retries occur
• Behaviour changes daily

Migrating a live, changing dataset massively increases complexity.

A controlled approach includes:

• Temporarily pausing subscription checkout
• Creating a clean, stable migration window
• Reducing reconciliation risk

This discipline dramatically lowers failure rates and post-launch surprises.
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How FILDI approaches subscription migrations

FILDI brings enterprise-grade migration discipline to DTC subscription businesses.

Their work covers:

• Payment migration and billing continuity
• Subscription and customer history transfer
• Retention-focused communication planning
• Data architecture and reporting integrity
• Customer service readiness and capacity planning

Crucially, FILDI helps brands identify where complexity concentrates, and how to neutralise it before it becomes a revenue problem.

That includes:

• Extending billing cycles to create operational buffers
• Defining rollback procedures
• Structuring subscriber communication that builds confidence, not confusion

Migration becomes a controlled transformation, not a gamble.
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Why this matters during migration

Many brands focus on:

• Design
• UX
• Performance
• AI tools
• Theme architecture

…but underestimate subscription risk.

For recurring revenue businesses, migration is the most dangerous moment, and therefore the most valuable moment, to get things right.

Protect the foundation, and Shopify becomes a growth platform.

Ignore it, and churn does the damage quietly.
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About FILDI

FILDI is a subscriptions consultancy helping Shopify-based DTC scale-ups build, understand, and grow recurring revenue.

They specialise in:

• Complex subscription migrations
• Revenue protection during platform change
  Modernising subscription infrastructure without disrupting customers
  
  

Website: https://www.fildi.co