Table of Contents
Running a SaaS or subscription business takes a lot of work, but you can save time by automating the subscription billing process with the help of the right payment system. While the functionality of payment platforms varies widely, Recurly and Chargify are both excellent options — and they’re even built for use with recurring payments from the ground up.
Ultimately, subscription management requires the right payment processor, but that’s just one tool in the stack. To make the most of your recurring billing and invoices, you need a tool like Baremetrics to help you do it.
With a Baremetrics free trial, you can see how Baremetrics works in tandem with these services to help you reduce churn, increase retention, and build a better subscription-based business.
All the data your startup needs!
Get deep insights into your company’s MRR, churn and other vital metrics for your SaaS business.
Recurly
Stripe, Chargebee, and PayPal are all big names in the world of payment processors. But there’s a reason many subscription businesses opt for another solution.
Most businesses choose Recurly because, first and foremost, managing subscriptions is at its core. This billing platform helps you do business with subscribers in a way that keeps the focus on a long-term relationship.
Features
- Make subscription invoicing easy.
- Rapidly adjust subscription plans, promotions, and pricing on-the-fly.
- Automate your billing processes.
- Scale your startup with ease.
With Recurly, you can manage your subscription-based business more efficiently with hosted payment pages, automated customer invoicing, better communication, credit card payments, and easy-to-generate reports.
You can even offer coupons and discounts. Based in San Francisco, the company offers 24/7 chat-based support along with online documentation.
Pricing
Plans start at $149/month plus 0.90 percent of your revenue. This payment model is common among subscription management platforms, but it’s important to do the math. After all, SaaS companies notoriously rack up major fees.
Chargify
With similar offerings to Recurly, Chargify is also gaining ground in the market as its subscription-focused offerings help steer new businesses in the right direction.
With solutions for the modern business, Chargify offers additional features that you might appreciate, including many external integrations along with data import and export and two-factor authentication.
Features
- Flexible billing logic that automates and scales with ease.
- Split testing to help you send the right offers to the right customers.
- No need to write or maintain code. Customize with APIs as needed.
- High-level security and level 1 PCI compliance.
- More robust reporting compared to Recurly.
While more expensive than Recurly, Chargify justifies its price point with a number of additional features. Chargify customers will appreciate the company’s continued advancement as they work to offer the same functionalities you’d expect from some of the biggest players in the business (including 2fA). Chargify is based in San Antonio, TX.
Pricing
Chargify’s monthly fees are $299 for revenue up to $50k, with a 1 percent fee on all overages. The next tier up is $599 for up to $75k monthly revenue, with a 0.9 percent fee on overages. Custom plans are available for larger businesses.
Recurly or Chargify: Which System Is Right for Your Business?
Automating billing management is a wonderful thing to have. Knowing the plans, add-ons, and setup fees for both Recurly and Chargify will certainly factor into your decision.
Unfortunately, neither platform publishes all of these fees as both platforms change with the size of your plan. However, you can reach out to each platform for a quote before proceeding. This way you can make a fair comparison of the two services for your specific case.
Of course, no payment gateway could do all the work you need to do to make your subscription business thrive. Your success isn’t just a matter of Chargify vs. Recurly. Aside from sorting out billing bottlenecks, you need to take the time to build a tool stack that will support your startup’s growth year over year.
How Baremetrics Can Help
So, as you move forward and begin selecting the right payment system to back your subscription business, it’s also a good time to begin reviewing Baremetrics and similar tools that will help you on your journey.
If you haven’t already heard about how Baremetrics can help you track and reduce churn while increasing retention rates and growing your base of happy subscribers, now is the time to begin exploring the platform.
Sign up for the free trial here! You can also check out the demo where you can play with a Baremetrics account with no strings attached.
Want to Reduce Your Churn?
Use Baremetrics to measure churn, LTV and other critical business metrics that help them retain more customers. Want to try it for yourself?
