If you’re here, chances are that the ChargeBee.com subscription billing software hasn’t won you over.
Perhaps you’re:
- Put off by the platform’s high fees.
- Unhappy with how it locks various features behind more expensive plans.
- Dissatisfied by its quality of customer support, or something else.
So you’re looking around for ChargeBee alternatives and wondering: “What about Stax Bill?”
Having been in business for over a decade, we’re well-versed in the subscription management and billing needs of eCommerce and SaaS businesses. So, we’ve built Stax Bill to be a top-notch subscription billing platform for businesses of all sizes and industries—and a strong choice if ChargeBee has left you looking for more. .
Let’s compare Stax Bill and ChargeBee head-to-head, and you’ll why Stax Bill comes out on top for fast-growing subscription businesses.
Features
Stax Bill is one of the only billing solutions on the market which is geared towards the needs of fast-growing SaaS businesses. Being constrained to one set of features or one pricing plan due to revenue or transaction volume makes subscriptions costly and difficult to manage, especially for startups whose growth can be challenging to predict.
Inside the Stax Bill platform, you’ll find all the features you’ll need to effortlessly manage both customer subscriptions and recurring payments. These include:
A flexible product catalog
Market trends and customer expectations make it essential for SaaS businesses to make changes to their subscription plans on the fly. With Stax Bill’s flexible catalog, you can package and price your product or service in any way that suits your business or your customers. This includes one-off plan or pricing changes for loyal customers with precise needs, so you can evolve with subscribers and retain them for longer.
Advanced dunning management
According to PYMNTS, 48% of subscription churn is caused by failed payments. Smart dunning management enables you to automatically follow up on failed credit and debit card payments and significantly reduce revenue loss due to involuntary churn. With Stax, subscribers can reduce late or failed payments by up to 700%, thanks to seamless credit card retry scheduling. Automate all customer notifications with fully customizable emails and SMS messages, so your subscribers know that has information is coming directly from you.
Comprehensive reporting
SaaS businesses need holistic overviews of their financial health to make data-driven decisions regarding growth and strategy. Stax Bill gives access to comprehensive subscription metrics with access to over 40 automatically updating reports that give you insight into cash flow, retention, churn, MRR growth, and more.
What makes Stax Bill unique
As an established subscription billing and revenue operations platform, ChargeBee offers a similar feature set to Stax Bill. However, there are some key differences for SaaS businesses to be aware of. For example:Stax Bill includes payment gateway functionality out of the box, while ChargeBee requires users to choose and integrate their own payment gateway at additional time and cost (more on this later).Stax Bill’s account hierarchy feature lets child accounts assign subscriptions to both themselves and their parent accounts.
However, ChargeBee’s allows only parent accounts such flexibility.ChargeBee provides multilingual support, meaning you can display both customer-facing and backend interfaces in different languages.
The Stax Bill platform is available only in English, but you can customize customer self-service portals and invoices to display text in any language you wish.To explore how Stax Bill’s advanced features can enhance your business’s subscription billing processes, schedule a demo here.
This demo is free—you won’t have to pay a cent unless you sign up.So on that note, how do our pricing plans compare with ChargeBee’s?
Pricing
Finding the right set of features for the right price can be a challenge for subscription management, especially if your business is growing rapidly. Most pricing plans will put limits on either transaction volume or yearly revenue, automatically updating businesses to more expensive plans once the limit is reached.
ChargeBee similarly has revenue limits on its plans. However it also bars access to various features unless you opt for a higher-tiered—and more expensive—plan. This effectively forces you to pay more to access features that you need, even if you are nowhere near to reaching ChargeBee’s revenue cap on a lower plan.
Moreover, if you reach your plan’s revenue cap, ChargeBee will impose an overage fee calculated as a percentage of exceeded revenue. This percentage ranges from 0.6% to 0.75% of overage revenue, and can really cause your fees to add up. For example, if you clock $100,000 in overage revenue, you’re looking at an overage fee of at least $600 – valuable revenue that your business could use to further streamline your operation.
With Stax Bill, you don’t have to worry about being penalized for reaching your plan’s limit. All Stax Bill pricing plans are billed at a flat fee per month and include the full range of advanced payment tools for subscription management and recurring billing. To determine your monthly fee,e we just use your yearly net invoiced revenue figure.
And here’s one thing ChargeBee levies that Stax Bill doesn’t: overage fees! Put simply, we don’t penalize your business for doing well. If you go over your plan’s revenue band, we simply move you to a higher plan at the end of your annual contract with us. The result is flat and predictable monthly fees—which is the way we like to operate at Stax Bill.
Payment gateway availability
A payment gateway is essential for collecting payments from customers. No matter which recurring billing software you end up using, you’ll need to have a payment gateway to make the payment experience seamless and easy.
So, we decided to keep things simple by throwing in a payment gateway with every Stax Bill subscription. No ifs or buts.
Dubbed Stax Bill Payments Powered by Stax, this high-powered payment gateway integrates directly with our subscription billing software to make payment processing seamless. There’s no need to waste time scouting around for a separate payment gateway provider—with Stax Bill,, you’ll be set up for getting paid from day one.
Stax Bill Payments Powered by Stax also includes powerful features such as:
- Low-cost ACH payment processing, so your revenue isn’t undermined by expensive credit card processing fees.
- Credit card auto-updating for keeping customers’ credit card details up to date within your system.
- Accept a range of foreign currencies, no matter where your customers are in the world.
- Detailed visibility into your transaction fees so you have a clear picture of what you’re paying.
Payment methods
On the other hand, ChargeBee doesn’t include a payment gateway with its software. This means you’d need to integrate an appropriate third-party payment gateway, which introduces complexity to your payments setup.
Not only that, but you may also have to get help from two separate businesses—namely ChargeBee and the payment gateway provider—if your payment gateway is giving you trouble. Not every integration is built alike, and there is a risk of outages or problems with webhooks that result in payment errors – and a lot of stress for your business.
And while you can bring your own third-party gateway to Stax Bill, you’ll have the option to avoid such a headache. Our customer success team can competently handle any query you may have on either the core Stax Bill platform or Stax Bill Payments Powered by Stax.
Localization
If you have customers from all over the world, you’d need your recurring billing system to:
- display customer-facing interfaces in your customers’ local language,
- charge and collect recurring payments in their native currency, and
- comply with the laws and tax regulations of their jurisdiction.
As mentioned earlier, ChargeBee includes multilingual features for customizing the languages of both your customer-facing and backend interfaces. It also provides SEPA compliance, which is a plus if you do a lot of business in Europe.
On the flip side, Stax Bill works best for businesses that operate mainly in the U.S. That’s because our platform is designed with a strong focus on compliance with PCI and other U.S. financial and data security requirements.
But let’s say you become a Stax Bill user and subsequently expand your subscription business abroad. Will you have to say goodbye to the Stax Bill features you love and endure a tedious migration to another platform?
Not at all.
The USD isn’t the only currency that our platform can bill in: we also support the Euro and any other world currency you may need. The customer-facing text fields on self-service portals and invoices are also 100% customizable for displaying text in any language.
At the same time, Stax Bill provides an integration with merchant of record solution Digital River to help you maintain international compliance.This includes facilitating the collection of domestic taxes and navigating red-tape issues, so that’s a few things off your plate as you venture abroad.
Stax Bill is the only ChargeBee alternative you need
ChargeBee is a possible subscription billing tool option, but it certainly isn’t flexible or convenient enough for every business’s needs. If your gut is telling you that ChargeBee isn’t the right subscription management software for your business, you’ll likely find Stax Bill to be a superior alternative to ChargeBee.
This is especially so if most of your customers are U.S.-based, and you value:
- Best-in-class subscription management and recurring billing features built for large and small businesses at all stages of growth.
- A predictable total cost of ownership for your recurring billing platform.
- The convenience of an integrated payment gateway.
- Having options for localization if you have international expansion in your sights.
Expect all these perks and more when you add the Stax Bill subscription billing software to your fintech stack. Businesses that have entrusted us with their subscription billing have cut billing time by up to 80%, reduced late and failed payments by up to 700%, and also made revenue leakage a thing of the past.
Arrange a demo with our billing experts to learn how Stax Bill can empower your subscription billing operations and set you up for business growth today.
FAQs about ChargeBee
Q: What makes Stax Bill a great alternative to ChargeBee?
Stax Bill surpasses ChargeBee by serving as an all-inclusive solution for subscription management, catering to businesses of all sizes and industries. Its features include the capability to manage customer subscriptions and recurring payments seamlessly, present robust subscription metrics, and include built-in payment gateway functionality. Moreover, one of Stax Bill’s most distinguishing features is its flat-fee pricing, removing the concern of overage fees.
Q: What can unfulfilled businesses expect when switching from ChargeBee to Stax Bill?
By choosing Stax Bill, businesses can avoid certain issues like transaction volume limits or yearly revenue limits that potentially drive them towards more expensive plans. Unlike ChargeBee, Stax Bill does not inhibit accessibility to features based on the chosen pricing plan. With Stax Bill, businesses can leverage the full range of advanced payment tools, irrespective of their growth rate.
Q: How flexible is Stax Bill with subscription adjustments compared to ChargeBee?
With Stax Bill’s flexible catalog, businesses can make changes to their subscription plans as needed. This includes pricing changes for loyal customers with unique needs, in contrast to ChargeBee’s rigid pricing structure.
Q: Does Stax Bill have payment gateway functionality inbuilt unlike ChargeBee?
Yes, Stax Bill includes a payment gateway by default called “Stax Bill Payments Powered by Stax”, removing the need for additional time and cost to integrate a separate payment gateway. This inbuilt payment gateway provides features like ACH payment processing, credit card auto-updating, acceptance of a range of foreign currencies, and the visibility of transaction fees.
Q: What language support does Stax Bill offer compared to ChargeBee?
ChargeBee provides multilingual support for the UI whereas Stax Bill is available only in English. However, Stax Bill allows all customer-facing text fields on self-service portals and invoices to be entirely customized to display content in any preferred language.
Q: How does Stax Bill plan its pricing compared to ChargeBee?
ChargeBee puts revenue limits on its plans and restricts access to features based on the chosen plan. It also levies an overage fee calculated as a percentage of exceeded revenue. In contrast, Stax Bill offers a simple, predictable total cost of ownership with its flat-fee pricing. Also, it does not penalize businesses for exceeding their plan’s revenue band, making it a more effective and equitable solution.
Q: How do Stax Bill and ChargeBee differ in their customer support structure related to payment gateways?
With Stax bill, the in-platform customer success team is equipped to handle any query you may have on either the core platform or the built-in payment gateway, “Stax Bill Payments Powered by Stax”. However, if you use ChargeBee, you may have to get help from two separate businesses—ChargeBee and the third-party payment gateway provider—should you encounter any issues with your payment gateway.
Q: How effective is Stax Bill for businesses focusing on US markets or looking at international expansion?
Stax Bill is ideal for businesses operating mainly in the U.S., given its strong focus on compliance with U.S. financial and data security requirements. However, for businesses planning to expand internationally, Stax Bill maintains compliance in international markets through its integration with Digital River.
Q: What potential benefits can a business have by switching to Stax Bill?
Businesses that have moved to Stax Bill have reported reductions in billing time by up to 80%, fewer late, and failed payments by up to 700%, and minimized revenue leakage. Businesses are expected to experience these advantages and more, setting them up for business growth and efficiency.
