Payment and Subscription Management: A Comprehensive Analysis of 5 Alternatives -

Most billing and subscription management solutions let you:

• Develop a range of trial and subscription models (e.g., free or paid trials, use-based or fixed-price subscriptions).
• Manage active subscriptions (e.g. upgrading or downgrades as well as moving or removing items).
• Make payment or invoice notifications.
• Offer your clients an account management portal that they are able to manage their account.
• Reports on the major metrics that affect revenues.

However, most businesses find that they need to use additional software for various aspects of the process, for example:

• Payment processing
• Collecting sales tax and VAT
• Look up the translations
• Currency conversion
• Chargebacks
• Plus...

If you need any of these features, you'll need to make sure that these features are available through the billing software you choose (or easily incorporate with other solutions).

In this tutorial, we compare five options by examining the subscription and billing features they provide and the additional features they offer beginning with an in-depth look into our service that caters to SaaS businesses, .

 Table of Contents

1.   Chargebee
2.   Recurly
3.   Chargify
4.   Zoho Subscriptions

1.  The Subscription Management Process, Processing Payments and More for SaaS Companies

offers several options for subscription management (which we discuss below), however, it's not just a subscription management platform -We're also the Merchant of Record (MoR) for software companies.

 We, as MoR accept transaction responsibility on behalf of you, meaning we:

• Collect and pay the appropriate amount of sales tax, VAT, and GST for you.
• Check that all the processes and documents are in place to stay in compliance with transaction law in every location that you offer to sell.
• We are the first to lead audits.

 Plus offers complete solutions that cover the whole process of making a payment. It includes:

• Localized checkout (i.e. Currency exchanges, translations of languages design customization, and other features)
• International processing of payments (for hundreds of payment options)
• Fraud detection
• Chargebacks
• Analytics and reporting
• And there's more...

In the sections below in the next sections, we will look at some of these features and services in more in depth.

Recurring and Customized Subscription Models for B2C , B2B or B2C

makes it easy to set up nearly any subscription type in just a couple of clicks. You can set up most subscriptions without writing codes, but you may also create more complex subscription logic using our API and webhooks library.

Here's an overview of the options available to you:

 Trials

Certain subscription management software require payment information as potential clients sign up to trial, including free trials. It can lead some potential customers to become cold and may not complete the registration process. It is your choice whether or not to collect the payment information for each trial.

You can also:

• Create trials of any length.
• Make free, paid or trial-based, usage-based ones.
• Choose to automatically bill the user after the trial ends or wait for them to initiate a payment manually.
• Allow subscribers to reactivate old trial accounts.
• Choose when sends reminders of ending trials (e.g. 3 days before the trial ends).
• Automatically detect when a single user attempts to sign up for multiple trials and only let just one trial account.

 Subscriptions

Each business and each product in a given business could get greater results with different subscription options. As an example, lower-end products may perform better if offered in a monthly basis, whereas top-tier products may benefit more if they are sold in an annual contract.

Additionally, what was effective at one point in time might not be the most effective option in the near future.

This is why we allow you to:

• Select the frequency of subscription and billing date (or let your clients choose).
• Create subscriptions that auto-renew, that require an manual renewal (i.e. clients have to enter payment details each when they are billed), or ask your staff to begin the charge through API API (this is an ideal choice for billing on the basis of usage).
• Coupons and discounts are available.
• Allow prorated billing if a customer wants to upgrade, reduce, or even pause the service midway through the billing cycle.
• Make one-time purchases in the original bill but don't include regular billings.
• Manage upsell and cross-sell products when you check out.
• Give customers the option of the storage of payment information (or let them decide on behalf of all customers).
• Automatically renew certain subscriptions for different subscriptions (e.g., when retiring an item or service).

 Recurring Billing and Invoicing

can manage B2B orders alongside B2C purchases with Digital Invoicing.

Digital Invoicing can help you:

• Create and manage custom quotes that are updated in real time (including custom tags coupons, discounts and much more).
• Set expiration dates for quotes.
• Include notes to your customer or prospective customer.

Fully Branded Self-Service Features to Your Customers

provides a self-serve portal where customers are able to:

• Renew subscriptions
• Control billing times
• Make changes to payment details
• View payment history
• and there's and more ...

We handle all the maintenance of the backend for this portal to ensure that your team does not have to.

As your MoR As your MoR, we will take care of your customer's billing inquiries, including refund requests, billing issues, questions about the subscription they have, and so on. Our platform includes a customer portal that allows your customers to control their subscriptions.

The picture below illustrates the basic design of the self-service portal, however, to provide a seamless user experience, the whole site can be personalized to match your branding.

It is also possible to enable customer-generated quotes. The feature lets customers create a quote based on the contents in the cart, without having to contact the sales department. This can be extremely useful in securing potential customers who require approval before they make an purchase.

Local Transactions and Indirect Tax Compliance made Simple

Two main areas of compliance when it comes to transactions with recurring nature:

1. Transaction compliance (i.e. the system you use for collecting payments).
2. Sales tax, VAT, and GST conformity (i.e. what you do to collect and remit taxes that are indirect).

In order to avoid penalties and fines You must be aware of both transaction laws and tax law for each place you operate in. The following sections will help you understand: we discuss:

• Examples of transaction laws which affect subscription-based businesses.
• Whether or not software companies have to collect sales tax, VAT or GST.
• How handles all of this .

Transaction Compliance

Each country, state as well as province have their individual laws and regulations on how companies can gather payment and store customer information. Many companies are aware of privacy regulations such as GDPR, however there are other rules governing transactions that aren't so widely known.

For example, in some nations, including Canada and Korea consumers are entitled under the law to get the prorated amount of their refunds in the event that they end their subscription prior to the close of the period for payment. It's just one illustration for one aspect of the entire subscription cyclethe law and regulations are continuously evolving.

In the case of most subscription management software, you'll be on yourself to research transaction laws and regulations and implement the necessary processes. Additionally, some subscription platforms won't offer the necessary alternatives to meet the requirements of rules and laws (e.g., some services don't allow rebates that are prorated).

On the other hand, manages all this all of this for you. Our legal expert team keeps up-to-date with the relevant laws as well as regulations. We assist you establish the proper procedures needed for ensuring compliance. also supports all necessary subscription models for compliance.

Sales Tax, VAT and GST Compliance

Software companies weren't required to pay taxes on sales, VAT, as well as GST. In many jurisdictions, that's still the situation. However, tax laws for digital goods and services are changing fast in many areas.

More and more nations are now requiring software firms to pay some kind of indirect tax. Some nations are now requiring companies that use digital technology to fill out tax forms regardless of whether they are eligible for tax exemption.

Finally, remitting sales taxes is often more involved than filling out a tax form and wiring the funds. As the number of nations are imposing more obligations to stay compliant.

Examples:

• Some countries like Colombia, Japan, Mexico, Serbia, and others are governed by local representation, meaning you have employ someone who has a physical presence in that country in order to pay your tax liability. It can range from $5k to $15k per year.
• Countries such as Serbia, United Kingdom, Taiwan, and others require electronic invoices for any business that sells in their country. The EU is rolling out worldwide electronic invoicing by 2028.
• Countries such as Taiwan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Vietnam, and others have you declare the tax on your income in addition to indirect tax.

takes care of the entire procedure for collecting and processing sales tax, VAT along with GST for you. .

We will ensure that the correct amount (and the correct type) in indirect taxes are taken at checkout (including tax-exempt transactions within the US and 0% reverse charges for transactions that are permitted internationally).

Our team then remits these taxes on your behalf and makes sure that all necessary processes are in place to ensure total tax compliance.

In the event that a foreign country or state comes to you with questions regarding tax compliance, our team will help you figure out how best you can respond, even in the form of copy and paste answers.

International Payment Processing to Dozens Of Payment Methods

The majority of payment processors concentrate their efforts on a specific location, while all payment processors are limited in their set of payment options that they can accept. For example, some payment processors have a goal of supporting transactions that are accepted in the U.S. They'll therefore only accept the payment methods that are popular across the U.S. (e.g., Mastercard or Apple Pay) and they aren't going to support something like UnionPay as it is often utilized in China.

Furthermore, many payment processors will only process payments within certain currencies and countries. For example, they could support Amazon Pay but they won't process payments from Turkey.

SaaS companies that want to accept payments around the world have to connect to and manage numerous payment processors. This can be quite a daunting job.

In HTML0 , SaaS businesses automatically gain access to a variety of payment processors that specialize in international payment. maintains relationships with many payment processors, as well as hundreds of card networks so that you don't have to. Just turn on our localized payments feature and you can begin accepting international payment right away.

Also, it offers a range of options to make sure that payments are successful and reduce involuntary churn, for example:

• Local payment gateways: Transactions are more likely to be accepted when the gateway used for payment is located in the same area that the purchaser (e.g., a transaction originated in Germany goes through a payment gateway that is located in Germany). Automatically routes payments to the payment gateway with the best authorization rates in that area.
• Rerouting payments from the gateway If a payment fails at the first try, the system automatically retries the payment by using a second gateway- all without either you or any other member of the support team needing to intervene. This often solves payment failures due to connection issues or other system problems.
• Reminders for payments that are proactive. If a customer's credit card is due to expire, will inform the user prior tothe expiration date to ensure they can change the information on their payment. You can use our pre-made templates for notification or create the message you want to send.
• Multiple follow-up messages. If a recurring payment is declined You can set up multiple payment failure notifications to be sent 2 days 5, 7 14 and 21 days after the first failure. Prior to sending each reminder, you will attempt to make the payment.

Tailor-Made Checkout to Reflect Your Personal Image

Most payment solutions offer a checkout module that offers a variety of possibilities for customizing it, like adding your logo and choosing a color palette. However, these customization options don't always represent your brand's visual identity and create a seamless experience for your customers, and improve your checkout to increase the highest conversion rates.

 provides custom branding tools, as well as CSS overrides so that you can have a variety of customization choices to alter the appearance and experience of your shopping cart.

You'll also have access to the Store Builder Library -- a JavaScript library that lets you to customize the buyer experience leading to checkout.For instance, you could create a cross-sell or upsell funnel. This allows you to improve your customer experience to increase sales.

checkout comes in three versions that include popups, embedded or as a website storefront. The web storefront redirects your customers to a separate webpage that is hosted by .

With any of these options (including the storefront on the internet), you'll be able to personalize the checkout process using branding tools and CSS overrides to match the visual style of your brand.

These are just a few additional features which can help you improve your checkout experience

• Localized Checkouts:Let customers choose their preferred language and preferred currency or let them choose the right language and currency based on the country of purchase. It supports 19 languages and over 23 currencies.
  
• Personalized developer support:Our team is always willing to support you to create the perfect checkout experience for your company. Certain businesses only offer personal support for their biggest customers and do not provide support to smaller firms. At our company, we believe that each firm deserves the same amount of consideration and attention.

Analytical and Comprehensive Reporting

• Where are the majority of my highest paying customers located?
• What are the products that generate the most revenue?
• Which discounts bring in revenues vs. the revenue draining ones?
• And there are many more...

Reports are split into two main dashboards: Revenue Overview and Subscription Overview.

If you can't locate the report you require You can modify every report, and save it to your dashboard. Our support team is there to assist you in creating custom reports that will provide the information you require.

Webhooks and data API make it easy to bring in subscription and revenue data to whatever software for business intelligence or CRM you are using. Any report can also be downloaded as a CSV PNG, CSV, or XLSX format.

All-in-One Pricing (No Hidden Fees)

A lot of payment processors charge a base price for processing payments and some of the core features such as the ability to embed checkout. However, you'll typically be charged extra for other features such as currency conversions or fraud detection. Very few payment platforms are a complete solution, so most companies need to add an additional piece of software. It is hard to expand globally when your business expands because the price will grow as you add more features and software.

is a complete payment system for SaaS companies with everything included in one flat-rate charge determined by the amount of transactions you move through . Additionally, you'll only get charged when transactions take place.

Next, we cover four more payment platforms that cater to subscription-based companies.

2. Chargebee

Here are some highlights of Chargebee highlights:

• Usage-based billing, automated invoice, proration, and many more
• Automated process for the processing of accounts receivable
• Revenue recognition that is compliant and subscription models that are compliant with revenue recognition and subscription
• Support for in-app purchases
• Portal for self-service to customers
• Smart dunning

You can use the Chargebee platform at no cost for the first $100k in revenue earned. Then, they'll offer a variety of pricing plans to suit different amounts of income per month.

3. Recurly

Recurly is a recurring-billing platform designed for optimising your growth strategy. Recurly easily integrates with various merchant accounts and payment gateways, however, you still need to be responsible for these services in addition to your Recurly plan.

Below are some other highlights of Recurly's features:

• Customizable subscription models
• Automated, recurring invoices
• Tools for revenue recovery
• Intelligent retention
• Customer subscription analytics

Recurly has three pricing plans but you must contact their support team for more details.

4. Chargify

Chargify is a subscription billing application that is in the process of merging with SaaSOptics which is a revenue management platform. This merger will let you manage subscriptions accounting for revenue and expenses, and SaaS metric tracking from one revenue management system.

Here are a few of the highlights of the functions Chargify has to offer:

• Global and usage-based billing
• Tools for billing and recognition of revenue instruments
• System of billing analytics and metrics
• Integrations built-in to other programs (e.g. accounting software such as QuickBooks or Xero)
• Payment gateways from around the world

The pricing structure of Chargify is for businesses that earn at least 75k in monthly billings However, if you have more income or access to every feature, you'll have to contact their support team.

5. Zoho Subscriptions

Zoho Subscriptions is a component of Zoho Subscriptions is one of the components that make up Zoho platform (a suite of software to help you manage every aspect of your enterprise, e.g., CRMs and ERPs). If you already use this feature of the Zoho platform, this might be a good choice. But, those who are new to the platform generally find that it comes with an arduous learning curve.

The benefits of Zoho Subscriptions are:

• Multiple pricing models
• Tax-compliant, customisable invoices that can be customized
• Multi-currency conversions
• More than 30 pre-built reports that track each stage of the subscription lifecycle
• Cash and check transactions (in combination with payment via credit card)
• Integrations out of the box with other bill options (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, etc.)
• The tools can be used to design specific workflow rules

Every aspect associated with the Zoho service is priced individually which includes Zoho Subscriptions. This could make it difficult and costly to build an all-inclusive payment system.