Understanding the difference between these three concepts is essential for interpreting your analytics accurately.
Subscribers
A subscriber is a unique individual customer who has at least one active subscription.
If Jane Smith has two active subscriptions in your store, she counts as 1 subscriber.
Subscriptions
A subscription is a unique subscription contract. Each subscription has its own billing schedule, products, and status.
If Jane Smith subscribes to coffee and also subscribes to tea as two separate contracts, that's 2 subscriptions even though she's only 1 subscriber.
Products (subscription lines)
A product or subscription line is an individual item within a subscription. One subscription can contain multiple products.
If Jane's coffee subscription includes both ground coffee and whole bean coffee, that's 1 subscription with 2 products (or 2 subscription lines).
Why this matters
These distinctions affect how you read your dashboards:
- Subscriber-level analysis helps you understand customer behavior and loyalty. Use this when you want to know how many unique people are subscribing.
- Subscription-level analysis helps you understand contract performance and churn. Use this when tracking individual subscription lifecycles.
- Product-level analysis helps you understand which items drive retention and revenue. Use this for inventory planning and product strategy.
Many dashboards let you toggle between Subscriber view and Subscription view to analyze the same data from different angles.
What's the difference between Total Quantity and Total Distinct Count?
Total Quantity counts the units of each product, not just the lines. If Jane's subscription includes 3 bags of coffee, that's:
- 1 subscription line (the coffee product)
- 3 units of quantity
Total Distinct Count would count that as just 1 product, regardless of quantity.
For more details on how these concepts apply across dashboards, see the Analytics Glossary.