A Comprehensive Guide to Subscription Platforms for Billing (+ 5 Options)

Most subscription billing platforms let you:

• Automate invoices and payment.
• Manage and customize one or more subscription and trial models.
• Provide a self-service portal to customers to help them manage their accounts (including seat information, payment information and much many more).
• Manage and offer one-time add-ons, coupons, and more.
• Collect metrics and review reports regarding monthly recurring revenue.

The vast majority of companies doing subscription billing will need solutions for other aspects of management of subscription bills, including:

• Payment processing.
• Chargeback prevention and fraud prevention.
• Collecting and remitting consumption tax.
• Legal Compliance.
• and more.

Many subscription billing platforms won't cover these essential elements in managing subscriptions.

Additionally, you'll have to consider whether or not the billing platform supports businesses similar to ones like yours. For example, some billing solutions are only able to support SaaS businesses, while some offer support for companies selling physical items or services (e.g. subscriptions to gyms, monthly food clubs, or remote accounting).

 In this blog this article, we review five of the top bill-paying platforms that allow subscriptions, stating the aspects of the billing process they support, what alternatives you'll have to add, and what kind of business they can support.

Our solution lets the world's SaaS companies handle everything on both lists above. So, we'll start with the deepest dive of . Other options in this list are geared towards e-commerce as well as companies that sell physical products and services.

 Table of Contents

•   Recurly
•   Chargebee
•   Chargify
•   Zuora

A Comprehensive Subscription Billing System for Global Software Companies

A complete solution for payment developed for SaaS businesses and for companies that sell downloadable and/or digital goods. With , B2B as well as B2C software firms can handle:

• Trials, multiple subscription options additions that are one-time, discounts and much many more.
• Automated invoices and customer notifications.
• Payment processing (for tons of payment methods around the world).
• A fully managed self-serve portal for clients.
• Reporting and analytics.
• and much plus.

Additionally, takes on the risk of transactions and we take care of chargebacks, fraud prevention as well as collecting and paying consumption tax, and legal conformity.

If you expand, there won't be any surprise costs since all features are offered for one flat-rate price based on how many transactions that you makeYou'll be charged after transactions occur.

 In the following sections We take a close review of how you can:

•   Make Custom Subscription Models and Trials without Coding
•   Help Customers Manage Their account details from a simple portal
•   Optimize Your Checkout Process to Increase Conversions
•   Protect Your Company from the Legal Liability of Transactions
•   Let Gather and Remit VAT and Sales Tax to You
•   Automated Payment Failure Handling and reduce The Churn
•   Automatically collect key metrics and View Detailed Reports

Make Custom Subscription Models, Subscriptions and trial without code

A majority of businesses require a wide range of billing as well as trial options to suit diverse products and various market segments. Additionally, the types that work for you initially might not be the best in the long run as your company changes.

Many billing platforms will allow for custom subscription plans, however, you'll require your development team to manually configure those customizations (with very little assistance from your provider of billing solutions).

 offers lots of built-in features so anybody can create custom subscription plans without knowledge of technology.

Here are just a few examples of the types of trials and subscriptions you can set up:

• Free, paid, or use-based trial.
• Automated billing once the trial is over (or allow customers to manually begin the paid subscription).
• Preset billing frequencies or dates (or allow your clients to choose).
• Usage-based billing.
• Coupons, discounts or prorated quantities, plus single-time additions.
• Automatically store payment information (or allow customers to make the decision).
• Auto-renew for a new subscription plan.
• And more.

If you're in need of more customizations, you can use 's API and Webhooks Library to design your own subscription models. The developers are on hand to help you build the ideal solution, and to answer all questions that you might have.

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

offers a self-service portal through which your customers can view:

• Subscriptions that are active and inactive (or trials).
• The history of your order (and Identifications).
• Keys to licenses and download history.
• Payment details.
• Contact details.
• Plus.

From this portal, customers can manage upgrades, downgrades, credit card or bank account information, and much more, with no need to contact your support team.

handles the whole portal so that your team doesn't need the burden of. However, you'll retain full control over the look and feel of the portal. This lets you create an unified experience for your customers without straining your team of developers.

Make your Checkout process more efficient for greater conversion

For most subscription-based billing platforms, you'll require an additional solution to manage checkout and payment processing (which means additional fees and software to manage).

 allows you to manage your subscriptions, checkouts and payment processing in one solution.

In our nearly 20 years of experience helping software companies gain valuable insight into how you can improve checkout to increase conversion. As an example, customers will be more likely to go to complete a purchase when:

• You agree to the preferred method of payment.
• The money is accepted after the first try.
• Checkout will be in local language and currency.
• The design and style of the checkout process match the rest of the website.

Each of these areas is built into the platform

• Payment methods that are preferred: lets you accept the most commonly used payment methods around the world.
• High payment approval rates: Each card network and the bank that issued it has distinct acceptance levels for fraud and chargebacks. Make sure that your transactions are compliant to these rules so that you are able to keep high authorization rates. Additionally the transactions are more likely to be approved if the gateway is an legal entity that is located with the same address as the buyer. works with multiple payment gateways all over the world, and sends each transaction through the one with the best approval rates for that area.
• Automated currency conversion is a software that automatically converts prices to the local currency of the buyer. You may choose to either select an exact amount for each place or convert in real-time.
• Checkout Language Translations can also assist you in translating checkout into the local language. You may choose to select the right language based on the buyer's area of residence or let the purchaser choose the preferred language.
• Fully-branded checkouts: With , you have three options for checkout that include an integrated checkout with a pop-up option or an individual storefront, which is run by our team. Each option lets you can completely control the appearance and experience of the checkout or webpage. Most checkout solutions only have only a handful of options to customize (e.g., add an image or select from a preset list of colors) However, checkouts can be tailored to just the millimeter.

Protect your Company from the Legal Liability of Transactions

As experienced SaaS companies know well the importance of defining the conditions and terms of the subscription, and to have users be able to agree to these terms prior to collecting the payment. The problem is figuring out what to include in that contract. This becomes more difficult when you are transacting internationally since the specifics of what the contract should contain change with each country, state, territory and province. If you don't include the right elements it could result in massive fines, or even be barred from conducting business in that particular jurisdiction.

Additionally, many states have extra laws and regulations for automatic recurring payments beyond what's stipulated in the contract. As an example, India limits automatic payments up to Rs15,000 (approximately $180 as of the date of writing). If a regular payment goes in excess of that limit then the customer will have approval manually for the transaction each time. To avoid being fined You must also make an eMandate application to the Reserve Bank of India that specifies how you'll comply.

Being up-to-date with laws like these that apply to each jurisdiction can be a major problem for every business.

For customers that aren't concerned, this shouldn't be an issue as we manage conformity with local law and regulations. Our legal staff stays up to date on all transaction legalities and makes sure that the proper procedures and documentation are put in place to process automated payments.

is fully compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and is fully compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in addition to other rules and regulations.

Get Together and Remit GST and Sales Tax for You

SaaS businesses didn't have to collect consumption tax, however, tax laws for software companies are changing and getting more strict enforced.

Most payment solutions will help you gather consumption tax, but you're still responsible for making sure you collect the correct amount and for remitting taxes at the end of each tax season. If you don't collect and remit the correct amount (and type) of tax on consumption at the right time, you'll be liable to heavy fines and/or be barred from transacting in that location.

automatically adds the right amount (and type) of tax on consumption to the cost of the service and pays these taxes on your behalf..

We also support tax-exempt transactions, as well as other special cases. We also take the lead for any audits.

Automate Payment Failure Handling and Reduce Churn

Between the first payment as well as each subsequent bill, many things can go wrong that prevent the payment from going through and cause customers to turn. Having worked with numerous companies and organizations, we've created automated processes to address common problems to prevent churn as well as get back most payments that failed.

 Here are some tools that will help you cut down on churn as well as failed payments:

• Proactive reminders:In our experience, letting customers know about upcoming payments , and also notifying them of the expiration date of payment methods is one of the most efficient ways to reduce the risk of involuntary churn as well as failed transactions. With , you can create automatic reminders for upcoming payments.
• Multi-reminders If a purchase fails, consumers often need multiple reminders before they are able to fix the issue (e.g. to add money to their account, modify the payment method, etc.). You can choose to remind them for two, five, seven, 14, and/or 21 days after the initial failed payment ( you can retry the transaction prior to sending each reminder).
• Continuing the service: Another effective way to reduce involuntary churn is to keep the service running while you attempt to collect the payment. This provides a better customer experience because the customer has an opportunity to solve their issue without suffering the negative impression of a service that is stopped. The better the customer experience and the better the likelihood that they are to stay.
• Simple reactivation When all the reminders have been sent out, you can choose to pause instead of cancelling the customer's subscription. This makes it easier for customers to restart their subscriptions without having to sign up again (onboarding is usually a huge hurdle to restarting services).

We have already discussed it also automatically retries each payment with a different method (without anybody on the team lifting one finger) to fix any failures in payments due to difficulties with your network.

Automatically collect key metrics and review detailed reports

Analytics and Reporting allows you to address questions like:

• What is the contribution of each product to my profit margin?
• Which products are the most effective and which ones can be a burden on resources?
• Which promotions, coupons, or discounts attract greater numbers of customers?
• Which model of subscription is the most efficient?
• What markets are the most successful and which ones have more potential?

Two main dashboards are available: the revenue overview dashboard, as well as the dashboard for subscription overview.

The revenue overview dashboard offers a complete overview of your entire business's progress, such as:

• Where your customers are located.
• Which currencies and methods of payment do customers prefer.
• Net sales per product.
• The total number of transactions per country.
• Plus.

Subscription overview dashboard Subscription Overview Dashboard lets you track the monthly recurring income (MRR) and dig deeper into the factors that affect your MRR as time passes. The dashboard offers information regarding:

• Upsells, cross-sells, and other add-ons.
• Long-term value for every customer.
• Customer churn is the total number of customers.
• When the cycle of billing it is commonplace for churn to occur.
• The lifetime value of a consumer.
• And more.

You can customize your report, save it and also share them with important users via the dashboard, or as a CSV, PNG, or XLSX spreadsheet export.

Four Other Subscription Management Platforms

Recurly

Recurly is a recurring-billing and subscription management platform built to help companies sell:

• Software for B2C and B2B.
• Mobile app.
• Entertainment and media.
• Retail and consumer goods.
• Professional service.
• eLearning.

Recurly supports easy integrations with various payment gateways, however, you're responsible for creating and managing each of them. Most companies using Recruly are also able to add software solutions for:

• Taxes (e.g., Avalara).
• Accounting (e.g., for example, QuickBooks).
• Security against fraud (e.g. Siftclients are protected through Sift).

It's also your responsibility to manage taxes and transaction costs, so it's likely that you'll need a separate department for compliance. (With , all of this is covered in one package and fully handled by our staff.)

Chargebee

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

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

As with Recurly Chargebee is mostly a subscription billing software so it is likely that you will require additional options for tax, fraud prevention as well as payment processing and many more. Chargebee offers a variety of integrations built in (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, SalesForce, and QuickBooks), however, these do not come with any Chargebee package.

Chargify

Chargify is a provider of subscription billing solutions to B2B SaaS businesses.

You'll likely need additional solutions for taxes, fraud prevention, payment processing, and many more. However, Chargify does offer simple accounting software to recognize revenue (for different businesses).

Chargify is also merging with SaaSOptics in order to create a brand new business called Maxio. As a result of this merger, subscription-based businesses will have more functionalities to manage their finances, including automated expense and revenue recognition, as well as automated reports.

Zuora

Zuora can be described as an end-to-end platform for monetization with subscription management software built within. The majority of their customers are that are in the following sectors:

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

Zuora supports typically subscription-based pricing (e.g. the usage-based freemium service that can be upgraded to a paid plan), but they also offer features to streamline the accounting process, such as dunning and processing payments (although there are some businesses that are able to connect to other payment gateways).