An In-Depth Guide on Subscription Paying Systems (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 customers so they can manage their accounts (including seating information, payment details, and many more).
• Offer and manage one-time add-ons, coupons, and more.
• Review reports and gather metrics of monthly recurring revenues.

The vast majority of companies doing subscription billing will require an option to manage various aspects of management of subscription bills, including:

• Payment processing.
• Chargeback prevention and fraud prevention.
• Remitting and collecting tax on consumption.
• Legal compliance.
• Plus.

Some subscription billing systems don't address these vital aspects of managing subscriptions.

Additionally, you'll have take into consideration whether the platform you're using for billing supports companies like yours. As an example, certain billing solutions solely provide support to SaaS businesses, while some support companies selling physical goods and/or services (e.g., fitness memberships, food programs, remote accounting services).

 In this blog this article, we review five of the top subscription billing platforms by specifying what parts of the billing cycle they are able to support, which other solutions you'll need to integrate, as well as the kind of business they can support.

Our service lets global SaaS companies handle everything on both lists above. So, we'll start with an in-depth look at . Other options in the list cater to ecommerce as well as companies that sell physical products or services.

 Table of Contents

•   Recurly
•   Chargebee
•   Chargify
•   Zuora

: Comprehensive Subscription Billing Platform for Global Software Companies

is a comprehensive payment solution developed for SaaS companies and companies selling products that are digital or downloadable. With , B2B and B2C software businesses can control:

• Different subscription plans, trial versions additions that are one-time, discounts, and other features.
• Automated invoices , customer notification and invoices.
• Processing of payments (for tons of payment methods around the world).
• Self-service portal that is fully managed for clients.
• Reporting and analytics.
• And many more.

Plus, takes on the liability of transactions, and we take care of chargebacks, fraud prevention as well as collecting and paying consumption tax, and legal regulatory compliance.

If you expand, there won't be any surprise costs because all features are offered for the same price, based on the amount of transactions that you makewhich means you'll only be charged for transactions that take place.

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

•   Build Custom Subscription Models and Trials without Code
•   Let Customers Manage Account Details from a User-friendly Portal
•   Enhance the Checkout Process to Improve Conversion
•   Secure Your Business from legal liability of Transactions
•   Let's Collect and Remit VAT and Sales Tax to You
•   Automated Payment Failure Handling and Reduce the Churn
•   Automatically Gather Key Metrics and View Detailed Reports

Create 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 diverse products and various target markets. The models that work for you at one point may not be the most effective in the long run as your company grows.

Many billing platforms will allow to create custom subscription plans however you'll have to ask your development team to set up these customizations manually (with little or no assistance from the billing service provider).

 provides a variety of built-in features so anybody can create customized subscription plans with no knowledge of technology.

Here are just a few examples of the types of trial and subscription plans you can set up:

• Free, paid, or usage-based trials.
• Automatic billing after the trial has ended (or let customers manually start an active subscription).
• Set up your billing frequency or dates (or let your customers decide).
• Usage-based billing.
• Discounts, coupons Prorated amount, discounts, as well as one-time add-ons.
• Automatically store the payment details (or let the customer decide).
• Auto-renew to a different subscription plan.
• and more.

If you're looking for greater customizations, make use of's API as well as Webhooks Library to design your own subscription model. The developers are on hand to help you build the perfect solution and answer any questions you may be having.

Let Customers Manage Account Details from a User-friendly Portal

is a self-service platform where customers are able to view:

• Active and inactive subscriptions (or trial subscriptions).
• History of orders (and IDs).
• Keys to licenses and download history.
• Payment details.
• Contact details.
• And more.

On this site, clients can manage changes, upgrades, or downgrades to their the bank or credit card information, and much more, with no need to contact your support team.

manages the entire portal so that your team doesn't have to. However, you'll be in complete control of the design and layout of the website. This allows you to provide an experience that is consistent for users without straining your development team.

Improve the Checkout Process of Your Business to increase conversions

In the case of most subscription billing systems, you'll need a separate solution for checkout and payment processing (which means additional fees and software that you have to control).

 can manage your subscriptions, checkouts and payment processing with one solution.

In our nearly 20 years of experience helping software companies to grow their businesses, we've gained invaluable insight into how you can optimize checkout for increased conversions. For example, customers are more likely to follow through with a purchase if:

• You accept their preferred payment method.
• The payment gets accepted on the first attempt.
• Checkout is in the local currency and language.
• The design and style that the process for checkout match to the overall design of the website.

Each of these areas are built into the platform:

• Payment methods that are preferred: lets you accept the most commonly used payments methods in the world.
• High payment approval rates: Each card network and issuing bank has different acceptance levels for fraud as well as chargebacks. Make sure that your transactions are compliant with the regulations in order that you will be able to maintain your the highest rates of authorization. Additionally, transactions are more likely to be approved when the gateway is an official legal entity located that is located in the same place as the customer. It works with multiple payment gateways all over the world, and sends each transaction through that gateway that has the highest rate of approval for the area.
• Automated currency conversion is a software that automatically converts prices into the buyer's local currency. You may choose to either select an amount that is set for each location or let do the conversion instantly.
• Checkout language translations: also helps you translate checkout into the local language. You can choose to have choose the appropriate local language for the buyer based on their location, or you can let the buyer choose which preferred language.
• Fully customized checkouts: With , you have three options for checkout -- an embedded checkout with a pop-up option, or a separate storefront, which is run by our team. Each option lets you are in complete control of the look and feel of the checkout or webpage. Many checkout platforms offer a few options for customization (e.g. you can add an image or select from a pre-set list of colors) But checkouts are able to be customized down to the millimeter.

Secure Your Company from legal Liability of Transactions

The experienced SaaS businesses know, it's necessary to outline the conditions and terms of the subscription, and to have users be able to agree to these terms prior to receiving payment. The challenge is knowing the right terms to add in that contract. The process becomes even more complex for international businesses because the details of what the contract should contain vary with each country, state, territory and province. If your contract doesn't contain certain elements correctly it could result in heavy fines or be banned from conducting business in that particular jurisdiction.

Also, most jurisdictions have additional laws and regulations for automatic periodic payments that go beyond the amount specified in the contract. For example, India limits automatic payments to 15,000 rupees (approximately $180 at the time of this writing). If a recurring payment is above that threshold, the user will have to approve the transaction manually every time. To avoid being fined, you also have to submit an electronic Mandate to the Reserve Bank of India that specifies how you'll comply.

Being up-to-date with regulations like these for every jurisdiction is a huge problem for every business.

For customers who are not concerned about this, it isn't an issue as we manage conformity with local law and rules. Our team of legal experts keeps up to date with the legalities of transactions and make sure all the necessary procedures and documentation are in place for collecting automatic payments.

is fully compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), among many other laws and regulations.

Let Gather and Remit VAT and Sales Tax on behalf of You

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

Many payment platforms will assist to collect the consumption tax however, you're responsible for making sure it's the correct amount, and then remitting the tax after each tax year. If you don't collect and remit the correct amount (and the correct type) of tax on consumption at the right time, you'll be liable to severe penalties and be banned from transacting in that location.

automatically applies the correct amount (and kind) in consumption taxes to the price that customers pay and then remits those taxes for you.

We support tax-exempt transactions and others special situations. We also serve as the primary representative for any audits.

Automate Payment Failure Handling and reduce churn

Between the initial transaction as well as each subsequent bill, there are many issues which prevents the transaction from being processed and cause customers to churn. Working with numerous companies and organizations, we've created automated processes to solve common issues that cause churn and get back most payments that failed.

 Here are some tools that will help you reduce churn and failed payment:

• Proactive reminders:In our experience, informing customers of upcoming payments and notifying them of expired payment methods, is one of the most efficient methods to decrease the risk of involuntary churn as well as failed payment attempts. By using this software , you can create automatic reminders for future payments.
• Multi-reminders If a purchase fails, consumers typically require multiple reminders until they can fix the problem (e.g. adding funds to their account, update the payment method, etc.). The option is to remind them two, five, seven, 14, and/or 21 days following the initial failed payment ( you can retry the transaction before sending out every reminder).
• Continuing the service: Another way to cut down on involuntary churn is to keep the service running in the meantime you are trying to collect the payment. This provides a better customer satisfaction since they have an opportunity to address the issue without the negative feeling of having a suspended service. The better the customer experience and the better the likelihood that to remain.
• Simple reactivation After all reminders have been made You can decide to stop instead of cancelling the client's subscription. This allows subscribers to restart their subscription without having to onboard once more (onboarding is usually a huge barrier to restarting a service).

As we covered earlier the system automatically attempts to retry every transaction using a different method (without any member of your team having to lift one finger) to fix any problems with failed transactions caused by problems with the network.

Automatically collect Key Metrics and View Detailed Reports

Analytics and Reporting can help you address questions like:

• How is each product contributing to my profit margin?
• Which products are the most successful and which consume resources?
• What coupons, promotions, and discounts are attracting more customers?
• Which subscription model is most effective?
• Which markets have been the most successful and what ones are the most promising? potential?

provides two main dashboards The revenue overview dashboard, as well as the dashboard for subscription overview.

The Revenue Overview Dashboard provides you with a comprehensive overall view of your business's progress, such as:

• Where your customers are located.
• Which currencies and methods of payment do clients prefer.
• Net sales by product.
• Total transactions by country.
• and more.

The Subscription Overview Dashboard will allow you to monitor the monthly recurring income (MRR) as well as dig deeper into what's impacting your MRR over time. The dashboard offers statistics on:

• Cross-sells and upsells as well as add-ons.
• The value that every customer.
• Total customer churn.
• In the billing cycle, it is commonplace for churn to occur.
• The value over the life of a client.
• Plus.

You can customize and save any report and share reports with key users via the dashboard, or as a CSV, PNG or XLSX spreadsheet export.

Four more 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.
• Consumer products and retail.
• Professional services.
• eLearning.

Recurly is able to integrate easily using multiple payment gateways. but you're accountable for setting up and managing each one. Many companies who use Recruly will also add applications for:

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

Additionally, you'll be accountable for transaction and tax liability so it's likely that you'll need a separate department for compliance. (With  all this, everything is included in one price and managed entirely by our experts.)

Chargebee

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

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

Similar to Recurly, Chargebee is predominantly an online subscription-based billing system, which means you'll probably require other solutions for taxes, fraud prevention, payment processing, and much more. Chargebee does provide lots of integrated integrations (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, SalesForce, and QuickBooks) but they do not come with any Chargebee plan.

Chargify

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

There's a good chance that you'll require additional options to prevent fraud, taxes payments processing, tax prevention, and much more. However, Chargify does offer simple accounting software that can be used to track revenue (for different businesses).

Chargify has also joined forces with SaaSOptics to form a new companycalled Maxio. With the merger, businesses that subscribe to services will benefit from more tools for managing their finances which include automated expense and revenue recognition and automated reporting.

Zuora

Zuora can be described as an all-in-one monetization system which includes subscription management software into. The majority of their customers are within the following fields:

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

Zuora supports typically subscription-based pricing (e.g. it's a use-based freemium product that upgrades to a premium plan) However, they provide features that streamline accounting workflows, dunning, as well as payment processing (although there are some businesses that are able to connect to other payments gateways).