Lifetimely: Subscriptions Report
At a glance: The Subscriptions report shows the health of your subscription business in one place: MRR, active subscriptions and subscribers, ARPU, churn, new and cancelled subscriptions, and a cohort-retention table grouped by subscription start. Use it to tell whether subscription performance changed because your active base grew or because existing cohorts retained better.
Related: For customer-level value over time, see the LTV Cohort Report Overview. For how order scope works in filters, see Understanding Filters - First Order, Any Order, and All Orders.
Why this report matters
If you sell on subscription, recurring revenue and retention tell you more about the health of your business than one-off sales do. The Subscriptions report helps you:
- Track your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and active subscriber base.
- Monitor churn and see how many subscriptions you're gaining and losing.
- Compare how well each group of subscribers is retained over time.
- Segment subscribers by starting product, marketing source, and more.
Before you start: connect your subscription app
This report only works with a connected subscription app. Until one is connected, the page shows a sample report with a Connect a subscription app button that takes you to Integrations.
Supported apps, with setup guides:
Right after connecting: the report may show zeros until the first sync finishes. You don't need to do anything; data appears once the sync completes. After that, Recharge, Loop, Stay AI and Appstle data syncs every 2 hours, and Seal data syncs daily.
The Data from ... label below the KPI cards shows which subscription apps the numbers come from.
Note: Only subscriptions from a connected app appear in this report. Subscriptions tracked through Shopify order tags alone, apps without a Lifetimely integration (such as Checkout Champ), and Amazon Subscribe & Save orders are not included.
Where to find it
Go to Lifetime value in the left navigation and select Subscriptions.
Customize the view
Time period and timeframe
- Time period: choose custom dates or a preset such as Last 6 months, Last 12 months, or This year. Presets end yesterday.
- Timeframe: group results by Week, Month, or Year (Month by default). This sets the period used for churn and for the cohort rows and columns, so changing it changes the numbers, not just the labels.
Cohort table options
These options change the cohort table only, not the KPI cards:
- Metric: Active subscribers (default) or Revenue.
- Format: % (default) shows retention as a percentage of each cohort's starting value. # shows subscriber counts or revenue amounts instead.
How the report is structured
KPI cards
The KPI cards show where your subscription business stands at the end of the last week, month or year in your range (today, if your range ends yesterday).
MRR, Active subscriptions and ARPU show the value at the start of the range (From). Churn, New, Cancelled and Net-new compare with the previous range of the same length. Active subscribers has no From value. Where a comparison is shown, the card also shows the percentage change.
| Metric | What it shows |
|---|---|
| MRR | Monthly Recurring Revenue from all active subscriptions at the end of the last week, month or year in your range (today, if your range ends yesterday), including paused subscriptions. This is a snapshot of recurring revenue, not cash collected during the period. |
| Active subscriptions | Subscriptions active at the end of the period. One customer can have several. |
| Active subscribers | Customers with a subscription that is active right now. Paused subscriptions are not included. |
| ARPU | MRR divided by the number of customers with a subscription that hasn't been cancelled, including paused ones. |
| Subscription churn | Cancellations of subscriptions that were active at the start of each week, month or year, divided by the number active at those starts. It's a per-period rate, e.g. average monthly churn when Timeframe is Month. |
| New subscriptions | Subscriptions started in the period. |
| Cancelled subscriptions | Subscriptions cancelled in the period. |
| Net-new subscriptions | New subscriptions minus cancelled subscriptions. |
New, cancelled, and net-new are counted per subscription, not per customer. A customer with two subscriptions counts twice.
Cohort-retention table
Below the KPI cards, the table groups subscribers by when their subscription started.
- Each row is one cohort: subscribers who started a subscription in that week, month, or year. A customer who started subscriptions in more than one period is counted in each of those cohorts.
- Column 0 is the starting period. Each column after it shows how many of those subscribers (or how much of their recurring revenue) remained at that age.
- Retained means the subscription was active at any point during that period.
- Darker cells mean higher retention.
- Blank cells don't mean zero retention. Newer cohorts simply haven't reached those ages yet.
- Revenue view shows the recurring revenue (MRR) of subscriptions still active, not revenue actually collected.
Tip: If your date range starts partway through a month (for example, Last 6 months or Last 12 months), the first cohort row is hidden. Start the range on the 1st to see it.
Weighted average
The Weighted average row shows overall retention at each age, weighted by cohort size. Larger cohorts count for more, so one small cohort can't skew the result.
Example: one cohort starts with 100 subscribers and keeps 70 at month 3 (70%). Another starts with 20 and keeps 10 (50%). The weighted average at month 3 is (70 + 10) / (100 + 20) = 66.7%, not the simple average of 60%.
Use the weighted average to judge your overall subscriber base, then check individual rows to see whether a specific starting period is driving the result.
How "active" is counted
A subscription counts as active until it is cancelled. This means:
- Paused and skipped subscriptions are included in MRR, active subscriptions and retention, but not in Active subscribers.
- There is currently no option to exclude paused or skipped subscriptions. This is on our roadmap.
Why your numbers may differ from your subscription app
Some difference from your subscription app's own analytics is expected, because each tool defines these metrics in its own way. The most common reasons:
- Paused subscriptions. Lifetimely includes paused subscriptions in MRR. If your app reports only active, billing subscriptions (for example, scheduled renewals), its figure will be lower.
- How retention is measured. Lifetimely counts a subscriber as retained if they were active at any point in the period. Some apps check each subscription on its monthly anniversary instead, which typically shows lower retention.
- How cohorts are grouped. Lifetimely groups cohorts by subscription start. Compare against a view in your app that uses the same grouping.
- Snapshot vs. period totals. MRR and active counts are a snapshot at the end of your selected period. Compare them with your app's figures for that same date, not with revenue collected across the whole period.
Tips for comparing:
- Match the date range and timeframe (week, month, or year) to the view you're comparing against.
- Compare the same cohort at the same age, and don't count blank future cells as churn.
- Check Data from ... and your Integrations page to make sure every subscription app shows as connected and syncing.
Filters
Click Filters to narrow the report. You can save combinations you use often with Save cohort. Filters apply to both the KPI cards and the cohort table.
| Section | Filters |
|---|---|
| Marketing | First and Last Touch: Landing Page, Channel, Source, Medium, Term, Content, Campaign. Also Klaviyo list and Klaviyo segment |
| Tags | Customer tags, Order tag |
| Products | Product, SKU, Product Type, Vendor, Product Tag |
| Channels | Sales Channel |
| Subscriptions | Subscription Platform |
| Upsells | Upsell Provider |
| Other | First order value, First order discount %, Countries, States, Discount code |
| Surveys | AMP questions and responses, Fairing questions and responses |
Most order-based filters let you choose First Order, Any Order, or All Orders. See Understanding Filters for what each option means.
Common ways to segment
- By starting product: go to Products, pick your product (or SKU), and set the scope to First Order. First Order is the customer's first order in your store. For most subscribers this is the order their subscription started with, but if a customer bought a one-time product before subscribing, their first order will be that earlier purchase.
- By UTM / marketing source: go to Marketing and use the Source, Medium, Campaign, Term, or Content filters. Choose First Touch or Last Touch depending on which visit you want to credit.
When a filter is applied, only subscribers who placed an order in the selected date range are included. With First Order, their first order must be in the range, so set the range to cover when those subscribers started.
How filters combine
- Different filters combine with AND. For example, a Product filter plus an Order tag filter shows only subscribers who match both. Stacking several filters can narrow results to very few subscribers.
- Values in the same filter row combine with OR. To include several products, add them all to one Product row instead of creating separate rows.
Important: Please don't use the Subscription Platform filter on this report for now. It currently keeps only subscribers whose subscription is still active, which removes cancelled subscriptions and makes churn and retention look much better than they are. A fix is in progress. The report already shows your connected app's data without this filter.
Known limitations
- Paused and skipped subscriptions count as active (see above).
- Historical subscription status isn't stored. Lifetimely sees each subscription as it is today, so status-based analysis such as pause-vs-skip trends over time isn't available.
- Switched subscription apps? Subscribers from an app you no longer have connected won't appear in this report.
- No export or drill-down. The report doesn't currently offer a data export or a way to click into individual cells.
Going further
- Compare with your LTV Cohorts. Subscription retention and the LTV Cohort report won't match, because one groups by subscription start and the other by a customer's first order. Looking at both shows how subscribers compare with your wider customer base.
- Ask the Profit Agent. Need a view this report doesn't offer, such as retention measured on each subscription's monthly anniversary, or MRR that excludes paused subscriptions? Ask the Profit Agent to build a dashboard. You can describe exactly how each metric should be calculated and which subscription statuses to include or exclude. See Profit Agent: Full Capabilities Overview.
Quick reference metrics
- MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue): Recurring revenue from subscriptions that haven't been cancelled, including paused ones, at the end of the last week, month or year in your range (today, if your range ends yesterday).
- Active subscriptions: Subscription contracts that haven't been cancelled. One customer can hold several.
- Active subscribers: Customers with a subscription that is active right now. Paused subscriptions are not included.
- ARPU (Average Revenue Per User): MRR divided by the number of customers with a subscription that hasn't been cancelled, including paused ones.
- Subscription churn: Cancellations of subscriptions that were active at the start of each week, month or year, divided by the number active at those starts. It's a per-period rate, e.g. average monthly churn when Timeframe is Month.
- Net-new subscriptions: New subscriptions minus cancelled subscriptions.
- Retained: Active at any point during that period.
- Weighted average: Retention at each age across all cohorts, weighted by cohort size.