If you run a SaaS company, it’s practically a given that you should have a subscription management platform to handle revenue management. Done right, not only can it automate billing, it can also improve customer retention, renewals, upgrades; reduce cancellations and downgrades; lead to monetization opportunities; provide data-driven insights; and maximize efficiency—so you can focus on running your business the best way possible.
At the end of the day, a great all-in-one subscription billing solution benefits not only the company, but also your customers through a frictionless billing experience. But with a plethora of platforms out there, it can feel a bit overwhelming. Not sure how to find the best recurring billing platform for your SaaS organization that can integrate into your existing tech stack? Here’s our guide that’ll help you do just that.
TL;DR
- When choosing a subscription billing platform, keep an eye out for features like automated billiing, payment proccessing, and dunning management.
- Once you’ve chosen your top picks for your new subscription management platform based on the most important factors mentioned above for you, check out what reviews they have on independent sites like G2 or Capterra.
- StaxBill is built specifically to help subscription businesses scale. If you’re ready to integrate an all-in-one subscription management platform into your tech stack today, we’re here to help.
9 Key Subscription Billing Platform Features to Look Out For
A great all-in-one subscription billing software solution will feel like it was designed specifically for your company. But to have that happen, you need to understand your business needs. Think critically about your current billing model and how you generate revenue. Do you plan to expand into new territories? Do you have insight into your key SaaS metrics? With a good understanding of your business model and targets, you can ensure you find the best subscription management platform for your needs, based on the following factors.
Automated billing and invoicing
This might seem like a no-brainer, but it is worth mentioning: the solution you opt for should basically be digital accounting software. It should streamline the collections process, accept a range of payment options (ACH, wire transfer, credit card, PayPal, etc) and manage and automate as many of the routine aspects of the account payable and receivable workflow as possible.
Flexible subscription management
Make sure your subscription billing platform utilizes prorated billing, which ensures customers only get billed for the amount of days they use the service. That way, if they sign up or make changes to their billing plan in the middle of a cycle, they’ll be automatically and accurately charged with built-in revenue recognition software—improving the overall customer relationship.
Payment gateway integrations
Ideally, you’ll find a provider that also offers a gateway solution add-on you can integrate into your tech stack, reducing costly interchange fees and fluctuating monthly costs. If the billing system and payment processing system are designed from the bottom-up to integrate seamlessly, you can automate even more tasks with everything handled under one roof.
Payment collections management and revenue recovery
You can recover revenue and minimize churn with an optimized dunning strategy that recovers lost revenue from failed payments. Through automatic retries, communicating with the customer, and empowering them to make payment updates themselves through the self-service portal, you can recover significant savings in the long run.
Analytics and reporting
With real-time analytics, you can understand if your efforts are working and see exactly where you need to improve. Opt for a provider that not only provides data, but repackages it into an easy-to-understand system to show you how to take actionable, data-driven decisions for long-term sustainable growth.
Security and compliance
It’s of the utmost importance that you take security seriously so you can protect your customers’ data and finances, (and your reputation, too!) Non-compliance with PCI DSS standards (which you must comply with if you accept credit card payments) can lead to serious risks, so ensure your provider is PCI compliant, and ideally meets Level 1 certification.
Usability and customer support
How straightforward and easy-to-use is your potential new subscription billing platform? Look at it not only from your lens, but also through that of your future customers. Don’t forget to ask what implementation and onboarding will look like: will you get assistance when transitioning to a new system? Do you have a dedicated account manager you can reach out to? If anything goes wrong, how quickly can it be solved? What resources do they provide?
Cost and Pricing Models
There’s a range of pricing strategies that subscription management software providers can use, including usage-based billing, flat-rate, and tiered, but it’s important you fully understand the total cost of ownership and hidden fees (like monthly minimum, overage, or cancellation fees) upfront. It’s best to choose a provider that offers a straightforward, simple approach to pricing and won’t penalize you for growing too rapidly in a billing cycle.
Integration
A great subscription billing platform fully integrates into your way of working: whether you want your new billing management solution to integrate with functionalities like inventory tracking or your CRM, ask if your provider has a custom API your developers can work with to build best practice subscription billing workflows to maximize your company’s efficiency.
Making the Decision
OK, so you know what to be on the lookout for. What’s next? Once you’ve chosen your top picks for your new subscription management platform based on the most important factors mentioned above for you, check out what reviews they have on independent sites like G2 or Capterra. Then, ask for a trial or demo to see how it works in practice. If all goes well, use the other factors above to help make the final cut. If you’re treated professionally and the terms and conditions look fair, then it’s time to make the leap towards smarter and better business growth.
The Stax Bill Difference
You might be wondering what makes Stax Bill stand out as the industry-leading choice for subscription billing software. Why don’t we show the difference we’ve made for our customers?
Uberflip, a B2B SaaS company, needed a scalable billing solution to accommodate growth. After using an internal billing system that outgrew their rapidly scaling business, they ditched manual accounting (which took up to 5 days to finish) and chose Stax Bill’s streamlined system, which freed up over 40 hours a month through automated revenue recognition and more granular reporting functions. And with our annual cost certainty, they always know exactly how much they’re spending with us.
bitHeads, a software development leader, was looking for a scalable way to bill their customers in the fast-growth gaming industry, due to having a complex usage-based model they manually billed customers for. In 2015, they chose Stax Bill to be their recurring building provider, and thanks to our automated collections functionality, we recovered 5-10% of their MRR, all without overburdening their software engineers who could now focus on innovating their own in-house software solutions.
We could go on and on about the benefits of choosing our subscription billing software, but the best way to find out is to experience it for yourself. At Stax Bill, we know recurring billing can be the make-or-break factor for your business, which is why our platform is built specifically to help businesses scale. If you’re ready to integrate an all-in-one subscription management platform into your tech stack today, we’re here to help.
Take your business to the next level with Stax Bill. Contact us today.
