An in-depth guide on Subscription Billing Platforms (plus 5 options)

Most subscription billing platforms let you:

• Automate billing and making payments.
• Manage and customize one or more subscription and trial models.
• Provide a self-service portal to clients to manage their accounts (including seating information, payment details and much more).
• Offer and manage one-time add-ons coupons, add-ons, and other.
• Collect metrics and review reports regarding monthly recurring revenue.

But, the majority of companies doing subscription billing will also need solutions for different aspects of managing subscription billing, such as:

• Payment processing.
• Chargeback prevention and fraud prevention.
• Incorporating and paying consumption tax.
• Legal Compliance.
• And more.

Some subscription billing systems don't cover these essential elements in managing subscriptions.

Additionally, you'll have be aware of whether the platform you're using for billing supports companies similar to ones like yours. As an example, certain billing services only offer support for SaaS firms, while other solutions offer support for companies selling physical items and/or services (e.g. fitness memberships, food club memberships, or remote accounting services).

 In this article this article, we review five of the top bill-paying platforms that allow subscriptions, stating the aspects of the billing process they are able to support, which other solutions you'll need to integrate, as well as the kind of business they can support.

Our solution lets the world's SaaS businesses handle all the details that is listed above. We'll begin with an in-depth look at . The other options on the list cater to ecommerce and businesses that offer physical goods or services.

 Table of Contents

•   Recurly
•   Chargebee
•   Chargify
•   Zuora

Complete Subscription Billing System for Global Software Companies

It is a complete payment system designed to cater to SaaS firms and businesses selling downloadable and/or digital goods. Through the use of B2B and B2C software companies can manage:

• Trials, multiple subscription options and one-time add-ons, and many more.
• Automated invoices and customer notifications.
• Payment processing (for tons of payment methods all over the world).
• Self-service portal that is fully managed to customers.
• Analytics and reporting.
• And there's 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 compliance.

If you expand, there won't be any surprise costs since the entire feature set is offered at an affordable price that is based upon the volume of transactions that you makewhich means you'll only be charged after transactions take place.

 In the following sections in the following sections, we will take a deeper review of how you can:

•   Create Custom Subscription Models, Trials, and Subscriptions without code
•   Help Customers Manage Their Account Details from a User-friendly Portal
•   Improve Your Checkout Process to Increase Conversions
•   Secure Your Business from the Legal Liability of Transactions
•   Let Gather and Remit VAT and Sales Tax for You
•   Automate Payment Failure Handling and reduce Churn
•   Automatically Gather Key Metrics and view detailed reports

Make Custom Subscription Models, Subscriptions and trial without code

Most companies need a variety of recurring billing models and trial models to meet the needs of various products and market segments. Also, the models that you are using in the beginning might not be the most efficient long-term models as your business grows.

A lot of billing platforms allow the creation of custom subscription plans but you'll need your team of developers to configure these custom plans manually (with minimal or no help from your provider of billing solutions).

 offers lots of built-in options, so that anyone can set up customized subscription plans with no knowledge of technology.

Below are some examples of of trials and subscriptions that you could set up:

• Paying for, free or use-based trial.
• Automatic billing when the trial has ended (or the customer can manually sign up for a paid subscription).
• You can set the frequency of your bill and/or dates (or let your customers choose).
• Usage-based billing.
• Discounts, coupons or prorated quantities, plus one-time add-ons.
• Automatically store payment information (or allow customers to make the decision).
• Auto-renew to a different subscription plan.
• and more.

If you need even greater customizations, use 's API as well as Webhooks Library to build 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.

Let Customers Manage Account Details via a simple and user-friendly website

offers a self-service portal through which customers are able to view:

• Active and inactive subscriptions (or trials).
• Order history (and identification numbers).
• License keys and download histories.
• Payment details.
• Contact details.
• And more.

From this portal, customers can manage upgrade, downgrades, and banking account or credit card information, and many more, all with no need to contact your support team.

manages the entire portal in a way that you don't need to. However, you'll have full control over the appearance and experience of the website. This lets you create an unified experience for your customers and not put more stress on the development team.

Improve the Checkout Process of Your Business to Increase Conversions

With most subscription billing solutions, you'll require an additional solution to manage checkout and payment processing (which means additional fees as well as software to handle).

 can manage subscriptions, checkout, as well as payment processing, all in the same solution.

With nearly 20 years of experience helping software companies, we have gained valuable knowledge of how to optimize checkout for increased conversions. In particular, clients are more likely to follow the purchase through if:

• You accept their preferred payment method.
• The money is accepted after the first attempt.
• Checkout takes place in the local language and currency.
• The design and style of the checkout process is in line with to the overall design of the website.

Each one of these is included in the platform

• preferred payment method: lets you accept the most commonly used payment methods around the world.
• Rates of approval for payment that are high: Each card network and the bank that issued it has distinct acceptable levels of fraud and chargebacks. makes sure you're in compliance with these regulations so you are able to keep high authorization rates. Additionally, transactions are more likely to be accepted if the payment gateway has an official legal entity located that is located in the same place as the customer. works with multiple payment gateways all over the world, and sends each transaction through that gateway that has the highest approval rates for that area.
• Automated currency conversion that converts the price into the buyer's local currency. You may choose to either select an amount that is set for each place or convert in real-time.
• Checkout language translations: can also assist you in translating the checkout process into local languages. You can choose to have pick the correct language based on the buyer's location, or you can let the purchaser choose the one they would prefer.
• Fully customized checkouts: With , you can choose from three checkout options which include an embedded checkout, a pop-up checkout and a storefront that is managed by our staff. In each case, you are in complete control of the appearance and experience of the checkout or webpage. The majority of checkout options offer a few options for customization (e.g. include the logo, or pick from a preset list of colors), but checkouts can be customized to the pixels.

Protect Your Company from the Legal Liability of Transactions

As the experienced SaaS companies know well that it is essential to define the terms and conditions of the subscription, and to have users accept those conditions prior to receiving payment. It's a challenge to determine what should be included in the contract. It gets even more complicated when you are transacting internationally since the exact details of what a contract must contain will vary with each country, state, and province. If you don't include all the necessary elements, you could face heavy fines or be banned from conducting business in that particular jurisdiction.

Also, most states have extra rules and laws for automatic periodic payments that go beyond the amount stipulated by the agreement. For instance, India limits automatic payments up to Rs15,000 (approximately $180 as of the date of this writing). If the recurring amount is over that amount users will need to approve the transaction manually every time. To avoid fines You must also submit an electronic Mandate to the Reserve Bank of India that outlines how you will adhere to the rules.

Staying current with laws like these that apply to any jurisdiction is a massive issue for any company.

To our customers who are not concerned about this, it isn't an issue since we ensure compliance with local transaction laws and regulations. Our legal staff stays up to date on all transaction legalities and makes sure all the necessary procedure and documentation is put in place to process the automatic payment.

It is completely compliant with EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) as well as other regulations.

Let Gather and Remit the Sales and VAT to You

SaaS firms didn't need to collect consumption tax but tax regulations for software businesses are evolving and being more strongly enforced.

Many payment platforms will assist you gather consumption tax, but you're still responsible for making sure you collect the correct amount and remitting those taxes after each tax season. If you fail to collect and remit the correct amount (and the correct type) of consumption tax in the appropriate dates, you may be subject to heavy fines and/or be barred from conducting business at that particular location.

automatically adds the right amount (and kind) of tax on consumption onto the customer-facing price and remits those taxes for you.

We are a firm advocate for tax-exempt transactions as well as other cases of specialization. We also take the lead on any audits.

Automate payment failure handling and Reduce Churn

Between the first payment and each subsequent rebill, there are many issues that stop the payment from being accepted and causes customers to churn. Working with numerous companies, we've developed automatic processes to address common problems that cause churn and get back most payments that failed.

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

• Reminders that are proactive:In our experience, informing customers of upcoming payment dates and notifying them about expired payment methods, is one of the most efficient strategies to cut down on involuntary churn , as well as the failure of transactions. By using this software , you can create automatic reminders for upcoming payments.
• Multi-reminders If a purchase fails, consumers typically require multiple reminders until they fix the issue (e.g. to add money to their account, update the payment process, etc.). You can choose to remind them for two or three, five, seven 14or 21 days following the initial unsuccessful payment ( will retry the payment after every reminder).
• Continued service: Another effective way to cut down on involuntary churn is to continue the service while you attempt to get the money. It will provide a better customer experience since the client has an opportunity to address issues without having to endure the unpleasant feeling of having a suspended service. The more pleasant the experience for customers is, the more likely they will stay.
• Reactivation is simple: Once all reminders have been made it is possible to suspend instead of cancelling the customer's subscription. This will allow subscribers to restart their subscription without the hassle of onboarding again (onboarding is usually a huge barrier to restarting a service).

We have already discussed it also automatically retries each transaction using a different processor (without anybody on your team having to lift one finger) to fix any failures in payments due to network issues.

Automatically collect key metrics and view detailed reports

Analytics and Reporting can help you answer questions such as:

• How is each product contributing to my profit margin?
• What products have proven to be the most effective and which ones consume resources?
• Which promotions, coupons, or discounts attract greater numbers of customers?
• Which subscription model is most effective?
• What markets are most effective and which have the highest potential?

It has two dashboards in the main that include the revenue overview dashboard, as well as the dashboard for subscription overview.

The Revenue overview dashboard gives you an summary of the entire company' performance, including:

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

The subscription overview dashboard lets you track the monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and dig deeper into what's impacting your MRR as time passes. This dashboard gives you information on:

• Cross-sells, upsells, and add-ons.
• The value that each customer.
• The total customer turnover.
• When in the billing cycle churn happens most often.
• The value over the life of a client.
• Plus.

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

Four Other Subscription Management Platforms

Recurly

Recurly is a recurring-billing and management platform designed by companies that sell:

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

Recurly supports easy integrations with various payment gateways, however, you're responsible for the setup and management of each one. The majority of companies that use Recruly will also add software solutions for:

• Taxes (e.g., Avalara).
• Accounting (e.g. the QuickBooks).
• Security against fraud (e.g. Sift- customers are automatically protected through Sift).

You'll also be responsible for taxes and transaction costs, so you'll likely need a dedicated department to manage compliance. (With , all of this is covered in one package and managed entirely by our experts.)

Chargebee

Chargebee is a subscription-based billing and revenue management system designed for:

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

Similar to Recurly, Chargebee is primarily an online subscription-based billing system, which means you'll likely need additional solutions to prevent fraud, taxes, payment processing, and many more. Chargebee does provide lots of integrated integrations (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, SalesForce, and QuickBooks) but they do not come with every Chargebee plans.

Chargify

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

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

Chargify has also joined forces with SaaSOptics to form a new company, Maxio. Through the merger, businesses that subscribe to services will be able to manage their finances such as automated expense reporting and revenue recognition and automated report-writing.

Zuora

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

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

Zuora offers typically subscription-based pricing models (e.g., a usage-based freemium service that can be upgraded to a paid plan) However, they provide features that streamline processes for accounting, dunning and processing payments (although some companies are able to connect to other payment gateways).