An in-depth guide on Subscription Billing Platforms (and 5 alternatives)

Most subscription billing platforms let you:

• Automate billing and making payments.
• Manage and customize the subscription or trial models.
• Provide a self-service portal to clients to control their accounts (including seating information, payment details as well as many more).
• Create and manage add-ons that are one-time, coupons, and more.
• Collect metrics and review reports of monthly recurring revenues.

The vast majority of businesses that use subscription billing will need a solution for different aspects of subscription billing management including:

• Payment processing.
• Prevention of fraud and chargebacks.
• Remitting and collecting consumption tax.
• Legal conformity.
• And more.

Many subscription billing platforms won't provide these crucial issues that are involved in managing subscriptions.

Plus, you'll need to consider whether or not the billing platform supports businesses like yours. Some, for instance, payment platforms solely provide support to SaaS firms, while other solutions offer support for companies selling physical items and/or services (e.g., fitness memberships, food programs, remote accounting).

 In this post, we compare five top payment platforms for subscriptions by describing the aspects of the billing process they can support, the alternatives you'll have to include, and the types of companies they serve.

Our solution allows worldwide SaaS firms handle everything listed that is listed above. We'll begin with an in-depth look at . Other options in this list are geared towards e-commerce and companies selling physical goods as well as services.

 Table of Contents

•   Recurly
•   Chargebee
•   Chargify
•   Zuora

A Comprehensive Subscription Billing System for Global Software Companies

A complete solution for payment developed to cater to SaaS businesses and for companies that sell digital and/or downloadable goods. Through the use of B2B and B2C software companies can manage:

• Different subscription plans, trial versions and one-time add-ons as well as other features.
• Automatic invoices and notifications to customers.
• Processing of payments (for tons of payment methods all over the world).
• Self-service portal that is fully managed for clients.
• Reporting and analytics.
• And many and more.

Additionally, takes on the responsibility for transactions, that means we handle chargesbacks, fraud prevention as well as collecting and paying consumption tax as well as legal compliance.

As you grow, there won't be any surprise costs because the entire feature set is offered at an affordable price that is based upon how many transactions you're involved in -You'll be charged when transactions take place.

 In the next sections in the following sections, we will take a deeper examine how to:

•   Make Custom Subscription Models and Trials without Coding
•   Help Customers Manage Their the details of their accounts from a user-friendly portal
•   Enhance the Checkout Process for More Conversions
•   Guard Your Business from Legal Liability of Transactions
•   Let's Collect and Remit VAT and Sales Tax to You
•   Automated Payment Failure Handling and Cut Back the Churn
•   Automatically collect key metrics and View Detailed Reports

Build Custom Subscription Models and Trials with no code

The majority of companies require a range of recurring billing models and trial models to meet the needs of diverse products and various target markets. The models that work for you initially might not be the best long-term models as your business changes.

Many billing platforms will allow the creation of custom subscription plans but you'll need your developers team to configure these custom plans manually (with very little assistance from the billing service provider).

 offers lots of pre-built options so anyone can set up personalized subscription plans, even without any the technical expertise.

Here are a few examples of of trials and subscriptions you could create:

• Free, paid, or trial-based on usage.
• Automatic billing when the trial period has expired (or let customers manually start a paid subscription).
• You can set the frequency of your bill and/or dates (or let your customers decide).
• Usage-based billing.
• Discounts, coupons, prorated amounts, and single-time additions.
• Automatically store information about payment (or allow customers to choose).
• Auto-renew for a new subscription plan.
• And more.

If you need even more customizations, you can make use of's API as well as Webhooks Library to design your own subscription model. developers are always available to provide you with the ideal solution, and to answer any queries you might be having.

Allow customers to manage their account details through a user-friendly portal

is a self-service platform where your clients can access:

• Subscriptions active and inactive (or trial subscriptions).
• Order history (and IDs).
• License keys and download histories.
• Payment details.
• Contact details.
• Plus.

From this portal, customers are able to manage their upgrade, downgrades, and credit card or bank account details, and more with no need to contact your support team.

manages the entire portal to ensure that your staff doesn't need the burden of. However, you'll retain full control over the design and layout of the website. It allows you to create an experience that is consistent for users and not put more stress on your team of developers.

Improve the Checkout Process of Your Business to Increase Conversions

For most subscription-based billing solutions, you'll require an alternative solution for checkout and payment processing (which implies additional costs and software that you have to control).

 lets you control subscriptions, checkout and payment processing with one solution.

With nearly 20 years of working with software companies to grow their businesses, we've gained invaluable insights into the best ways to improve checkout to increase conversion. For example, customers tend to stick the purchase through if:

• You agree to the preferred method of payment.
• The payment gets accepted on the very first attempt.
• Checkout is in the local language and currency.
• The look and feel of checkout is in line with the other elements of the site.

Each one of these is integrated into the platform:

• Payment methods that are preferred: lets you accept the most common payment methods around the world.
• Rates of approval for payment that are high: Each card network and issuing bank has different acceptability levels for fraudulent transactions and chargebacks. Be sure that your transactions comply to these rules so that you are able to keep the highest rates of authorization. Additionally, transactions are more likely to be accepted if the gateway is an legal entity that is located that is located in the same place as the purchaser. It works with multiple payment gateways across the globe and transfers each payment to that gateway that has the highest approval rates for that area.
• Automated currency conversion: automatically converts prices to the local currency of the buyer. You can either choose an exact amount per location, or let make the conversion in real-time.
• Checkout translations into different languages: can also assist you in translating checkout into the local language. It is possible to select the right language based on the buyer's place of residence, or let the buyer choose which one they would prefer.
• Fully branded checkout: With , you can choose from three checkout options that include an integrated checkout, a pop-up checkout or an individual storefront, which is run by our staff. With each option, you are in complete control of the appearance and experience of the checkout or webpage. Many checkout platforms offer a few options for customization (e.g. include the logo, or pick from a set of colors) However, checkouts can be customized to the pixels.

Guard your Company from legal Liability of Transactions

The experienced SaaS companies know well that it is essential to define the terms and conditions of the subscription. Customers must agree to those terms before taking payments. The challenge is knowing what to include in that contract. The process becomes even more complex for companies transacting internationally because the exact details of what a contract must contain will vary with each country, state as well as province. If you do not include certain elements correctly, you could face severe penalties or be disqualified from conducting business in that particular jurisdiction.

Also, most countries have laws and regulations for automatic recurring payments beyond what's specified by the agreement. For instance, India limits automatic payments up to 15,000 rupees (approximately $180 as of the date of writing). If a recurring payment is in excess of that limit, the user will have to approve the transaction manually each time. To avoid fines Additionally, you must make an eMandate application to the Reserve Bank of India that specifies how you'll be in compliance.

Being up-to-date with regulations like these for each jurisdiction can be a major issue for any company.

To our customers that aren't concerned, this shouldn't be a concern because we handle conformity with local law and regulations. Our legal staff keeps up to date with all transaction legalities and makes certain that all processes and documents are put in place to process automatic payments.

Fully compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as well as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in addition to other laws and regulations.

Get Together and Remit the Sales and VAT on behalf of You

SaaS businesses didn't have to collect consumption tax, however, tax laws for software firms are changing and are being enforced more rigorously.

The majority of payment services will assist you gather consumption tax, however, you're responsible for making sure that it's the right amount and for remitting taxes at the end of each tax season. If you do not make sure you collect and pay the correct amount (and kind) of tax on consumption at the right times, you could face severe penalties and be banned from transacting in that location.

automatically adds the appropriate amount (and kind) in consumption taxes into the customer-facing price and remits those taxes for you.

We are a firm advocate for tax-exempt transactions as well as others special situations. We also take the lead in any audits.

Automate Payment Failure Handling and Reduce Churn

Between the initial payment as well as each subsequent bill, many things can go wrong that stop the payment from being accepted and causes customers to become churned. After working with hundreds of companies We've designed automated procedures to solve common issues that cause churn and get back most payments that failed.

 Here are a few features that can help you reduce churn and failed payment:

• Proactive reminders:In our experience, letting customers know about upcoming payments and notifying them of payments that have expired is one of the best methods to decrease involuntary churn , as well as the failure of payments. You can also create automatic reminders for future payments.
• Reminders in multiple formats: After a payment has failed, customers typically require multiple reminders until they can fix the problem (e.g. adding funds to their account, modify their payment method, etc.). It is possible to issue follow-up reminders at intervals of two or three, five, seven or 21 days after the first unsuccessful payment ( it will try to make the payment again before sending out each reminder).
• Continued service: Another effective way to cut down on involuntary churn is to keep the service running while you attempt to collect the payment. This will give your customers a more pleasant experience because the customer has a chance to resolve the issue without the negative experience of a paused service. The more pleasant the experience for customers and the better the likelihood that to remain.
• Easy reactivation: Once all reminders have been sent it is possible to pause instead of cancelling the client's subscription. This will allow users to renew their subscriptions without having to onboard once more (onboarding can be a major barrier to restarting a service).

As we covered earlier it also automatically retries each transaction using a different gateway (without anyone on your team needing to lift the finger) to fix any failures in payments due to network issues.

Automatically Gather Key Metrics and review detailed reports

Analytics and Reporting allows you to tackle questions such as

• How does each product contribute to my bottom line?
• Which are the products that have been most successful and which consume resources?
• Which promotions, coupons, and discounts are attracting greater numbers of customers?
• Which subscription models are the most efficient?
• What markets are the most successful and which have the highest potential?

Two main dashboards are available The revenue overview dashboard and the subscription overview dashboard.

The revenue overview dashboard gives you an summary of the entire company's progress, such as:

• Your customers' locations.
• Which payment options and currencies do customers prefer.
• Net sales by product.
• Total transactions by the country.
• and more.

This Dashboard for the overview of subscriptions allows you to track your the monthly recurring income (MRR) and delves into what's affecting your MRR as time passes. This dashboard gives you metrics on:

• Cross-sells and upsells as well as other add-ons.
• Long-term value for each customer.
• The total customer turnover.
• When the cycle of billing it is commonplace for churn to occur.
• The value over the life of a client.
• Plus.

You can customize your report, save it and also share them with important stakeholders via the dashboard or in the form of a PNG, CSV or XLSX spreadsheet file export.

Four Other Subscription Management Platforms

Recurly

Recurly is a recurring billing and management system for subscriptions designed to help companies sell:

• B2C and B2B software.
• Mobile app.
• Entertainment and Media.
• Retail and consumer goods.
• Professional services.
• eLearning.

Recurly is able to integrate easily using multiple payment gateways. However, it is your responsibility to the setup and management of each one. Many companies who use Recruly are also able to add applications for:

• Taxes (e.g., Avalara).
• Accounting (e.g. the for example, QuickBooks).
• Fraud protection (e.g., Sift -Customers are protected automatically through Sift).

It's also your responsibility to manage taxes and transaction costs, so there's a good chance you'll require a separate department for compliance. (With , all of this comes in one cost and is fully managed by our staff.)

Chargebee

Chargebee is a billing for subscriptions and revenue management platform built for:

• B2B SaaS.
• eCommerce.
• eLearning.
• Publishing.
• YouTube and OTT.

Like Recurly, Chargebee is predominantly an application for billing subscriptions, so you'll probably require other solutions to prevent fraud, taxes payments, fraud prevention, and many more. Chargebee has a number of built-in integrations (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, SalesForce, and QuickBooks) but they do not come with every Chargebee package.

Chargify

Chargify provides subscription-based billing services to B2B SaaS businesses.

It is likely that you will require other solutions for tax, fraud prevention payments processing, tax prevention, and many more. However, Chargify does offer simple accounting software to recognize revenue (for different business models).

Chargify has also joined forces with SaaSOptics in order to create a brand new business called Maxio. With this merger, subscription-based businesses will be able to control their financials which include automated expense and revenue recognition, as well as automated reports.

Zuora

Zuora can be described as an all-in-one monetization system that includes subscription management software within. They primarily serve companies that are in the following sectors:

• Manufacturing and IoT.
• Software.
• High tech.
• Entertainment, Media and Entertainment.

Zuora supports typically subscription-based pricing (e.g., a usage-based freemium product that upgrades to a paid plan) However, they offer features to streamline the accounting process, such as dunning and payment processing (although certain companies do have the option of connecting to different payments gateways).