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

Most subscription billing platforms let you:

• Automate invoicing and payments.
• Manage and customize one or more subscription and trial models.
• Provide a self-service portal to customers to help them manage their accounts (including payment information, seats and much other details).
• Offer and manage one-time add-ons Coupons, discounts, and more.
• Gather metrics and view reports of monthly recurring revenues.

But, the majority of organizations that do subscription billing will require an option for various aspects of management of subscription bills, including:

• Payment processing.
• Fraud prevention and chargebacks.
• Collecting and remitting consumption tax.
• Legal Compliance.
• Plus.

Some subscription billing systems don't cover these essential issues that are involved in managing subscriptions.

In addition, you'll want to consider whether or not the billing solution is compatible with businesses like that of yours. Some, for instance, bill-paying solutions solely provide support to SaaS businesses, while some provide support to companies that sell physical products or services (e.g., subscriptions to gyms, monthly food clubs, or remote accounting).

 In this article, we compare five 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 service lets the world's SaaS businesses handle all the details on both lists above. So, we'll start with a deep dive into . The other options on this list are geared towards e-commerce as well as companies that sell physical products as well as services.

 Table of Contents

•   Recurly
•   Chargebee
•   Chargify
•   Zuora

: Comprehensive Subscription Billing System for Global Software Companies

A complete solution for payment developed to cater to SaaS firms and businesses selling digital and/or downloadable goods. Through the use of B2B and B2C software businesses can control:

• Different subscription plans, trial versions and one-time add-ons as well as other features.
• Automated invoices and customer notifications.
• Payment processing (for a myriad of payment methods across the globe).
• A fully managed self-serve portal for customers.
• Analytics and reporting.
• Plus there's and more.

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

As you grow, there won't be no unexpected costs because the entire feature set is offered at one flat-rate price based on the amount of transactions you move through -which means you'll only be charged when transactions are completed.

 In the next sections We take a close examine how to:

•   Build Custom Subscription Models and Trials with no Code
•   Allow Customers to Manage Account Details from a User-friendly portal
•   Enhance the Checkout Process to Increase Conversions
•   Secure Your Business from legal liability of Transactions
•   Let's Collect and Remit VAT and Sales Tax to You
•   Automate Payment Failure Handling and Reduce Churn
•   Automatically collect key metrics and display detailed reports

Build Custom Subscription Models and trial without code

The majority of companies require a range of recurring billing models and trial models to meet the needs of various products and areas of focus. Also, the models that you are using at one point might not be the most efficient longer-term ones as your business grows.

Many billing platforms will allow for custom subscription plans, however, you'll require your team of developers to configure these custom plans manually (with minimal or no help from the billing service provider).

 has a wide range of pre-built options so anyone can set up customized subscription plans with no knowledge of technology.

Here are just a few examples of of trials and subscriptions that you could set up:

• Paid, free, or usage-based trials.
• Automatic billing after the trial has ended (or let customers manually start a paid subscription).
• Set up your billing frequency and/or date (or let your customers decide).
• Usage-based billing.
• Coupons, discounts or prorated quantities, plus single-time additions.
• Automatically store the payment details (or let the customer make the decision).
• Auto-renew for a new subscription plan.
• And more.

If you're looking for more customizations, you can make use of's API and Webhooks Library to design your own subscription models. The developers are on hand to provide you with the perfect solution and answer all questions that you might be having.

Allow customers to manage their account details via a simple and user-friendly website

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

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

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

manages the entire portal in a way that you don't have the burden of. However, you'll retain full control over the appearance and experience of the portal. This lets you create an experience that is consistent for users without putting more strain on the development team.

Improve the Checkout Process of Your Business to Increase Conversions

With most subscription billing systems, you'll need an alternative solution for payments and checkout (which means additional fees and software that you have to control).

 lets you manage subscriptions, checkout, as well as payment processing, all in one solution.

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

• Accept their preferred payment method.
• The payment gets accepted on the very first attempt.
• Checkout is in the local currency and language.
• The look and feel that the process for checkout match the rest of the website.

Each of these areas are built into the platform:

• preferred payment method: lets you accept the most popular payment methods around the world.
• high approval rate for payments: Each card network and issuing bank has different acceptance levels for fraud as well as chargebacks. Make sure that your transactions comply with the regulations in order that you are able to keep an acceptable rate of authorization. In addition, transactions are more likely to be accepted if the payment gateway has a legal entity with the same address as the customer. It works with multiple payment gateways across the globe and sends each transaction through the gateway with the highest rate of approval for the area.
• Automatic currency conversions that converts the price to the local currency of the buyer. You can either choose an amount that is set for each place or do the conversion instantly.
• Checkout Language Translations can also assist you in translating checkout into the local language. You can choose to have pick the correct local language for the buyer based on their place of residence, or let the purchaser choose the preferred language.
• Fully customized checkouts: With , you can choose from three checkout options which include an embedded checkout that pops up, or a separate 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. Most checkout solutions only have the option of modifying a couple of things (e.g. include an image or select from a pre-set list of colors) However, checkouts can be tailored to just the pixels.

Guard your Company from legal Liability of Transactions

As the experienced SaaS companies know well, it's necessary to outline the terms and conditions for the subscription, and to have users be able to agree to these terms prior to collecting the payment. The challenge is knowing the right terms to add in that contract. This becomes more difficult for international businesses because the details of what the contract should contain differ with every nation, state, territory as well as province. If you don't include certain elements correctly it could result in massive fines, or even be barred from conducting business in that particular jurisdiction.

Additionally, many countries have rules and laws for automatic regular payments, which are not stipulated in the contract. For instance, India limits automatic payments up to 15,000 rupees (approximately $180 as of the date of this writing). If a recurring payment is over that amount, the user will have to manually approve the transaction every time. To avoid being fined Additionally, you must make an eMandate application to the Reserve Bank of India that outlines how you will be in compliance.

Staying current with regulations like these for each jurisdiction can be a major challenge for any business.

Customers that aren't concerned, this shouldn't be an issue as we manage the compliance of local laws and regulations. Our team of legal experts keeps up to date with every aspect of transaction law and makes certain that all procedures and documentation are set up to collect automatic payments.

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

Get Together and Remit GST and Sales Tax to You

SaaS businesses didn't have the obligation to collect tax on consumption but tax regulations for software firms are changing and are being enforced more rigorously.

Many payment platforms will assist you gather consumption tax, however, you're responsible for making sure that it's the right amount and for remitting taxes after each tax year. If you do not collect and remit the correct amount (and the correct type) of consumption tax at the correct time, you'll be liable to severe penalties and be banned from conducting business at that particular location.

automatically adds the appropriate amount (and the type) of consumption tax onto the price that customers pay and then remits these taxes on your behalf..

We are a firm advocate for tax-exempt transactions as well as other special cases. We also lead in any audits.

Automate payment failure handling and reduce churn

Between the initial transaction and every subsequent rebill numerous things could go wrong which prevents the transaction from being accepted and causes customers to turn. Working with hundreds of businesses, we've developed automatic processes that address the most common issues, prevent churn, and recuperate the majority of failed transactions.

 Here are a few tools that will help you cut down on churn as well as failed payment:

• Reminders that are proactive:In our experience, informing customers of upcoming payment dates and notifying them about the expiration date of payment methods is one of the best strategies to cut down on involuntary churn , as well as the failure of transactions. With , you can set up automatic reminders about future payments.
• Multiple reminders: After a payment has failed, customers typically require multiple reminders until they fix the issue (e.g. to add money to their account, modify the payment method, etc.). It is possible to send out follow-up reminders two, five, seven, or 21 days following the initial failed payment ( will retry the payment after every reminder).
• Continued service: A different method to cut down on involuntary churn is to continue the service as you try to collect the payment. This will give your customers a more pleasant satisfaction since they have an opportunity to solve the issue without the negative impression of a service that is stopped. A better customer experience and the better the likelihood that they will stay.
• Easy reactivation: When all the reminders have been sent out, you can choose to pause instead of cancelling the client's subscription. This allows subscribers to restart their subscription without having to sign up again (onboarding can be a major barrier to restarting a service).

Like we mentioned earlier, also automatically retries every payment with a different gateway (without any member of your team needing to lift a finger) that can fix failures in payments due to network issues.

Automatically collect Key Metrics and view detailed reports

Analytics and Reporting allows you to address questions like:

• What is the contribution of each product to my bottom line?
• Which are the products that have been most successful and which can be a burden on resources?
• What promotions, coupons or discounts attract new customers?
• Which subscription models are the most effective?
• Which markets have been the most profitable and which have the highest potential?

It has two dashboards in the main The revenue overview dashboard, as well as the subscription overview dashboard.

The Revenue overview dashboard offers a complete summary of the entire company' performance, including:

• Where your customers are located.
• What currencies and payment methods consumers prefer.
• Net sales by product.
• All transactions for each country.
• And more.

The Dashboard for the overview of subscriptions will allow you to monitor monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and delves into the factors that affect your MRR over time. The dashboard provides statistics about:

• Upsells, cross-sells, and additional products.
• The long-term value of each client.
• The total customer turnover.
• When the cycle of billing it is commonplace for churn to occur.
• The life-time value of a client.
• and more.

You are able to modify the report you want to save and also share them with important people via the dashboard. You can also export reports as a CSV, PNG, or XLSX spreadsheet export.

Four more subscription management platforms

Recurly

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

• Software for B2C and B2B.
• Mobile app.
• Entertainment and media.
• Consumer goods and retail.
• Professional services.
• eLearning.

Recurly is able to integrate easily with various payment gateways, but you're accountable for setting up and managing each of them. The majority of companies that use Recruly also end up adding programs to:

• Taxes (e.g., Avalara).
• Accounting (e.g. Accounting (e.g., QuickBooks).
• Fraud protection (e.g. SiftCustomers are protected automatically by Sift).

You'll also be responsible for transaction and tax liability so you'll likely need a dedicated department for compliance. (With  all this, everything is covered in one package and fully handled by our experts.)

Chargebee

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

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

As with Recurly Chargebee is predominantly a subscription billing software so you'll probably require other solutions for taxes, fraud prevention, payment processing, and much more. Chargebee has a number of built-in integrations (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, SalesForce, and QuickBooks), however, these do not come with every Chargebee plans.

Chargify

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

You'll likely need additional solutions for taxes, fraud prevention as well as payment processing and many more. Yet, Chargify does offer simple accounting software to recognize revenue (for multiple types of business).

Chargify will also join forces with SaaSOptics to create a new business called Maxio. With the merger, businesses that subscribe to services will benefit from more tools for managing their finances such as automated expense reporting and revenue recognition and automated reports.

Zuora

Zuora is an end-to-end platform for monetization with subscription management software built within. The majority of their customers are in the following industries:

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

Zuora supports typically subscription-based pricing models (e.g. it's a use-based freemium plan that is upgraded to a premium plan), but they also include features for streamlined the accounting process, such as dunning and payment processing (although some companies end up connecting to additional Payment gateways).