In 2022, there were dozens of headlines about SaaSOptics and Chargify merging into one company with a new name: Maxio. Expectations were high, but unfortunately, so was the price tag. So, like many other SaaS SMB leaders, you may be looking for an alternative that provides equal or better functionality at a more reasonable price.
If so, you’ve come to the right place.
Read on to learn more about what Maxio is, its pros and cons, and an alternative solution.
What is Maxio?
Maxio is a cloud-based financial management and revenue operations platform that helps businesses manage their revenue processes, including subscription management, billing, and expense recognition. As mentioned above, Maxio is the name for the collective rebrand of SaaSOptics and Chargify after they merged in 2022. The platform was designed to serve B2B SaaS, subscription, and recurring revenue businesses of all sizes by providing them with tools to automate their revenue processes, streamline financial operations, and gain real-time insights into revenue performance.
Pros and cons of Maxio
There are several pros and cons of Maxio as it relates to other similar billing and subscription management platforms, according to users. These are the most commonly mentioned pros and cons:
Pros:
- It makes recording contracts and transactions very easy and fast
- Reporting capabilities make revenue recognition simple
- Real-time data allows for smart, data-driven decisions
- Invoices are generated automatically and are easy to sync and send out
- It has plenty of available integrations, such as Quickbooks Desktop
- Eliminates manual work (and potential for errors) for revenue recognition
- The team builds new features according to customer feedback
Cons:
- Reporting can be confusing
- Some users experience hiccups with revenue recognition
- There’s a steep learning curve
- Lack of customer support – some users report that they can’t get on the phone with an agent right away although they offer quick help via email, and support is not available immediately in all timezones
- System uses some outdated technology that isn’t scalable
- Very expensive – Maxio starts at $599 per month
- Potential for inaccurate accrued expense calculations
- Search function isn’t very user friendly as you have to type in the exact name – it wont find accounts if you’ve got a typo or don’t type in the whole name exactly
- Can be cumbersome and awkward to address tax errors
- Custom reporting can’t always handle business needs
- It’s complicated to configure simple subscriptions
- Integrations don’t always function properly
- It’s not easy to merge duplicate accounts
- It’s hard to drill down into MRR entries
The bottom line?
Maxio is a good—but not great—tool for automating subscription billing and revenue processes. It has an impressive selection of integrations, but they don’t always work properly. And, considering the high price point, it doesn’t necessarily offer proportionally more value than more affordably priced alternatives, which leads us to…
What’s the best alternative to Maxio?
Allow me to introduce Stax Bill.
I know what you’re thinking—of course a competitor of Maxio would position themselves as the better alternative. However, bear with me while I lay out the facts.
Stax Bill offers similar features and abilities to what Maxio does. With Stax Bill, you can:
Maximize revenue with intuitive and simple subscription management tools
Stax Bill integrates seamlessly with the rest of your tech stack, which means you can easily:
- Send recurring invoices and accept recurring payments
- Automate and manage dunning processes
- Automate complex revenue recognition processes
- Offer multiple payment gateways to support payment processing
- Make data-driven decisions based on real-time data and analytics
One of the cons that many users mentioned for Maxio is that there is a steep learning curve. Stax Bill consistently ranks higher for ease of setup and ease of use—which means less hassle for you and a faster transition time.
Reallocate up to 90% of time spent on billing
Manual billing processes may have worked in your startup phase, but they quickly become infeasible when scaling—there’s simply too much manual number-crunching and not enough time in the day. Not to mention, using spreadsheets for storing billing information is risky business and it’s sure to cause some back office headaches. With Stax Bill, SaaS businesses like JustLogin have been able to scale 3X while reducing time spent on manual billing processes by 90%. If your accounting team had 90% more time on their hands, just imagine the strategic growth projects that could be completed.
Recover revenue that would otherwise be lost
Did you know that you could be losing as much as 9% of your monthly recurring revenue (MRR) to revenue leakage from involuntary churn? Involuntary churn is when customers don’t actively cancel their subscriptions, but due to unintentionally missing payments, their subscription is deactivated. On the whole, these customers want to continue paying you for their subscription, but small issues like failed payments cause them to churn.
Fortunately, 32% of failed transaction situations can be solved by simply retrying the transactions a few days later. To make this even easier, Stax Bill can automatically retry failed payments without you having to lift a finger. On The Map recovered $600,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with this simple strategy.
Run pricing experiments to optimize your strategy
Less than half of SaaS businesses think about their pricing models more than once a year, and only about 6% actually do research into developing an effective strategy. This can cause all kinds of backlash, especially if a new pricing scheme is introduced that doesn’t sit well with your customer base. With Stax Bill, you can easily run A/B pricing experiments to determine the sweet spot. You’ll be able to split your customers into cohorts based on price, monitor both groups’ subscription lifecycle, and analyze the data to choose the best option which you can then roll out to the rest of your customers.
Remove barriers to purchase for customers
Stax Bill allows you to create hosted registration pages and self-service portals that streamline processes for new customers as well as existing customers that want to make changes to their plans or upgrade their subscriptions. This saves your business time spent on administrative tasks and leaves your customer service team free to deal with more pressing concerns.
Improve customer experience
Your customers will appreciate the self-service options and the clean interface of the white label payment processor that you can implement with Stax Bill, among many other customer-friendly benefits. And, as we all know, happy customers stick around, upgrade their accounts, and tell all their friends about the amazing subscription service they use.
…All without breaking the bank!
As one of the cons listed above points out, Maxio starts at $599 per month and goes up in price if your business makes more than $1 million in ARR. Stax Bill, on the other hand, starts at $199 for the same volume.
Get started with Stax Bill today
Sometimes, the most expensive option isn’t the best solution. To learn more about how Stax Bill can affordably automate your financial operations and take your SaaS subscription business to the next level, schedule a demo. We can’t wait to see your business scale and experience astronomical growth while you eliminate manual processes and your business functions like a well-oiled machine.
