Subscription auto-ship for gloves, masks, sterilizer pouches, ReCharge vs Vault vs Bold?
High-velocity dental consumables, gloves, masks, sterilizer pouches, prophy paste, burs, bibs, suction tips, evacuation traps, sell better on auto-ship than one-off. Auto-ship lifts repeat revenue 30-55% on consumables in the dental category. Three Magento options:
- Vault Subscriptions for Magento, Magento-native, built specifically for the platform. Best fit for B2B with Net-30 (subscription orders auto-bill to the clinic’s Net-30 account, not a card on file). ~$200, $500/mo + setup. Most-shipped option for dental distributors.
- Bold Subscriptions, Magento extension available but Bold’s primary focus is Shopify. Workable but the Magento connector lags Shopify features by 6-12 months. Skip unless you’re a hybrid Shopify+Magento shop.
- ReCharge, the Shopify subscription leader. To use with Magento you need a headless setup (Magento as the catalog+order-of-record, ReCharge as the subscription engine via API bridge). $99, $499/mo + per-transaction fees. Overkill for most dental distributors unless you’re running >$25M GMV and want best-in-class subscription analytics.
Per-clinic features that matter:
- Cadence selection, monthly (gloves), 6-weekly (masks, pouches), quarterly (burs). Per-line cadence so one subscription can mix cadences.
- Pause-on-vacation, clinic closes for 2 weeks, pause shipments without cancelling.
- Skip-next-shipment, one-click skip, no support ticket.
- Auto-billing to Net-30 account, not a card on file. The biggest dental-specific requirement.
- Pre-shipment SMS / email, 3 days before ship so the clinic can pause if overstocked.
Vault is the answer for ~80% of dental distributors. Build time: 3-5 weeks.