If you are looking for the right billing and invoicing solution for your business, Zuora and Chargebee should be at the top of your list. Both companies have top-notch features and excellent functionality.
However, before spending your money on either, you need to know what you are getting.
Do they support the payment platform you desire?
Do the automation features match your interest?
Is one of them better than the other?
Do any of them have what you want in a subscription management service?
Baremetrics is an online subscription management tool designed for both organizations and individual brands that use a subscription billing system.
In this Chargebee vs. Zuora debate, we seek to learn more about these platforms. Is Zuora better than Chargebee, or is Chargebee better than Zuora? Let’s find out.
These two platforms are quite useful for billing and invoicing. You do not need any coding knowledge to set up everything. They are both web-based, serving different enterprises and offering billing solutions.
Their main difference lies in the total number of integrations, with Chargebee taking the edge. Baremetrics integrates with Chargebee and Chargify to help growing SaaS & subscription driven-businesses with accurate metrics.
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If you’re curious about how your churn stacks up with similar companies, our Open Benchmarks show you average churn rates based on average revenue per user.
This billing and invoicing platform allow businesses to have recurrent billing plans for their subscription customers. It also allows one-time usage-based payment depending on how a company charges its customers.
Chargebee allows you to choose your preferred payment gateway easily from thirty options without the help of a programmer or coder. Businesses can also run product promotions and discounts, especially when working on new subscriptions.
Chargebee is quite pricey, with charges starting at $299 a month. However, it offers several user integrations that customers find useful.
Users enjoy automatic back-end operations such as invoicing, discount management, payment collections, tax applications, and customer communications, saving them time and effort.
You can also customize your email notifications once a customer signs up for a subscription. Chargebee is extremely easy to use with an excellent and receptive support team.
However, transitioning data from the playground to the live environment can be quite confusing.
Founded in 2007, Zuora is an enterprise billing and invoicing company that helps businesses launch and manage their subscription-based services. It offers automatic recurring billing, quoting, collection, revenue recognition, and metrics.
It is perfect for any cloud-based business of any size that manages subscriptions through product catalogs and multiple payment methods. Just like Chargebee, it is web-based and offers 24-7 customer service.
It offers users one central hub for tackling their operations, allowing quick control of customer accounts, orders, invoicing, and update payments. Users can also quickly get reports within the hub and easily access its marketplace.
However, report building with Zuora can be hectic since you cannot link between multiple data sources. Their integration to SF is also quite awful, and most of the time, the data does not appear.
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These two companies support all kinds of payment gateways, which users find amazing. They also allow businesses to charge for subscriptions or one-time usage. Both platforms have top-notch features and functionality.
Where then do the differences come in? Let’s take a look.
It would be best to consider that the cost of billing and invoicing software covers the software license, subscription fees, software training cost, required hardware, customization, maintenance, and support.
These costs define the system’s total cost of ownership. Zuora’s pricing starts at $49 a month, whereas Chargebee charges $299 upwards.
Billing and invoicing platforms usually have a defined customer size. Zuora best serves large and medium enterprises.
It was mainly set up to help companies move towards delivering services instead of products and those who aim to replace their existing billing and subscription model.
On the other hand, Chargebee serves all types of customers, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises.
This is an important feature that you should always look out for before choosing a billing platform. Chargebee offers users a fast and easy setup with an intuitive UI and rich features.
It is also stable and offers quick updates of clients who have paid for their subscriptions.
Zuora also has a user-friendly system and is well designed for subscription billing. Users enjoy several easy-to-use features.
However, building reporting can be challenging from the number of reviews that we have seen, and the platform can be relatively slow when it comes to specific reports.
The best way of establishing ease of usage is through looking at the user reviews.
Both of these platforms have commendable customer support. You can reach Chargebee via several mediums when asking for help or clarifications, and their 24-7 customer care will be willing to listen.
Zuora also has outstanding technical and customer support that will leave you fulfilled. However, they lack a Service Level Agreement where the support team can get back to you.
Chargebee, Zuora, or other solutions like Stripe, PayPal, Chargify, Braintree, and Recurly are options to consider for your business operations.
You know what you need for your business based on the features that we have discussed. You can use Chargebee if you are running a small, medium, or large business and would like to automate your operation and focus on making money.
Zuora, on the other hand, best serves companies moving towards service delivery and those that want to exchange their existing billing and subscription model.
At the end of the day, make sure that you settle for a platform with a generous price model for the subscription economy.
Both Chargebee and Zuora have their fair share of advantages. Therefore, ensure that you know the features you want in billing and subscription software.
Ensure that you check our blogs for more in-depth information on how you can grant your subscription customers a better experience.