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Managing performance metrics is crucial for SaaS and subscription businesses. This article compares two of the best platforms: Stripe vs. Baremetrics!
For millions of subscription companies, Stripe has become the go-to tool for managing payments and subscribers. The platform’s sheer popularity and recent $95 billion valuation speak for themselves, right?
That said, there are some key features, calculations, and dashboards that Stripe is missing that Baremetrics does better for SaaS companies serious about metric management.
In this guide, we’ll break down the (friendly!) battle of Stripe vs. Baremetrics, highlighting how both platforms can wrangle your essential company data.
Stripe vs. Baremetrics: What Our Dashboards Do (and Don’t Do!)
Let’s be clear: Stripe and Baremetrics are totally on the same team when it comes to empowering companies to make sense of their numbers.
In fact, Baremetrics integrates with Stripe!
To kick things off, let’s take a look at the strengths of each platform’s dashboards and what sets them apart.
Stripe: A Powerhouse for SaaS Payments and Pricing
At a glance, the Stripe dashboard answers loud and clear, “How am I getting paid?”
In-depth reporting breaks down balances, payouts, subscription volumes, and more. Users can clearly see where their money comes from and how revenue compares month to month. Stripe’s data visualization is clean, straightforward, and easy to read.
Beyond the payment dashboard, the platform boasts several features specific to subscription-based businesses, such as:
- Simplified payment options to entice new subscribers
- Intelligent dunning management for timely payments that reduce churn
- The ability to quickly adjust pricing models, add new plans, and experiment with trials and discounts (see below)
Stripe’s pricing customization features are particularly powerful.
We’ve talked about the ups and downs of the various SaaS pricing models out there. With a tool like Stripe, you can instantly test and switch between pricing structures in a snap, meaning you can customize your service offering as needed.
To be clear, Stripe’s reporting features are nothing to scoff at. Even so, they aren’t the be-all, end-all of metric monitoring.
The fact that Stripe started as a payment processor is telling. First and foremost, many of the platform’s features are geared toward e-commerce companies.
Stripe’s subscription-specific features are a solid starting point for SaaS companies, but certain reporting aspects leave much to be desired.
And that’s where Baremetrics comes in to pick up the slack.
Baremetrics: The SaaS Control Center that Empowers Users to Take Action
Unlike Stripe, Baremetrics was designed specifically for SaaS and subscription businesses.
These companies live and die based on their subscribers' activity (or inactivity). Thus, the Baremetrics dashboard addresses crucial metrics for every step of the SaaS business model and your customers’ lifecycles.
In short, we make monitoring your subscribers’ every move easy and uncover trends as they happen. You can think of Baremetrics’ dashboard as Stripe on steroids as we put your most important metrics front-and-center to support your long-term growth.
That means watching your MRR. Reducing churn. Tracking upgrades and downgrades.
And that doesn’t even scratch the surface.
Perhaps most importantly, Baremetrics' insights encourage companies to be more proactive and build better customer relationships. Rather than second-guessing what their next move should be or which subscribers deserve their immediate attention, our platform spells out all of the above in black and white.
As a bonus, Baremetrics can automate many pressing tasks (such as dunning management or customer outreach) for you.
Stripe vs. Baremetrics: How Robust Reporting Helps SaaS Companies Level Up
Now, let’s dive deeper into the features that separate Stripe vs. Baremetrics.
Remember that analytics tools aren’t necessarily a matter of either-or for SaaS companies. The average company juggles a software stack consisting of dozens of tools: Stripe and Baremetrics should be on your radar.
That said, we strongly believe in our ability to give users the most comprehensive understanding of their data, which produces positive outcomes. Below, we’ve broken down five ways Baremetrics can help you do exactly that.
1. Correctly Calculate your MRR to Encourage Steady Growth
The importance of MRR can’t be overstated for SaaS businesses. Sustaining and growing your base of subscribers is your end-game and MRR is a key metric to assess your business’ health.
Monitoring MRR might seem like a no-brainer, but it is something that both Stripe and Baremetrics can do.
However, accuracy counts when it comes to MRR, where Baremetrics goes the extra mile.
Stripe’s platform can potentially include trial users in your MRR calculations, which could inflate or throw off your data. If your monthly revenue numbers aren’t 100% correct, you could put yourself in a situation where you make premature business decisions (think: new hires or campaigns you can’t afford).
Avoiding these headaches means pulling accurate numbers. Baremetrics delivers in that department by providing users with detailed MRR reports broken down by day and sources such as new subscribers, expansions, and reactivations.
2. Highlight your Most Valuable Customer Relationships
Keeping subscribers around for the long haul means forming relationships with your customers rather than simply treating them like numbers.
By identifying your “best” customers (think: most loyal, biggest spenders), you can understand which accounts deserve your undivided attention. For example, your most longest-term customers are prime candidates for VIP treatment in terms of bonuses, offers, and rewards.
You can likewise find common threads between your best customers to help refine your audience targeting in the future.
Rather than dig for this data “by hand,” Baremetrics can uncover it in just a few clicks. For example, you can assess your best customers based on their LTV, amount spent, or both. This process can also highlight which products, features, and plans correlate with more loyal subscribers.
3. Determine when (and why) customers are churning in real-time
Churn is a massive thorn in the side of any SaaS business.
You should not only keep an eye on turnover for the sake of your bottom line, but also assess why customers decide to leave in the first place. This can help you uncover potential leaks in your funnel and areas where your company isn’t delivering.
Maybe your onboarding process is subpar. Perhaps you’re just too pricey. Either way, Baremetrics’ cancellation insights can clue you in on these issues and drive you to take action ASAP.
4. Produce more accurate revenue forecasts to prepare for the future
While Stripe does a great job of highlighting where your company has been numbers-wise, Baremetrics excels at showing you where you’re headed as well.
Specifically, our platform can put together accurate revenue forecasts based on your month-to-month performance data.
Assessing past trends, you can look toward the future and temper your expectations accordingly. Having this data handy allows you to create better benchmarks and budget for new initiatives.
For example, our cash flow calculator assesses your subscription data to forecast future revenue…
…while our customer projections highlight how many new subscribers you’re poised to gain based on your current trajectory.
See how that works? The beauty of using Baremetrics is that you have access to this data instantly, no formulas or spreadsheets required.
5. Recover customers faster (and put the process on autopilot)
If you aren’t actively working toward retaining and recovering customers on the verge of churning, you’re leaving money on the table.
Of course, identifying subscribers in danger of churning and reaching out to them manually is incredibly time-consuming.
Thankfully, Baremetrics’ ability to immediately highlight failed charges and trigger messages to keep customers in your funnel without leaving our platform. Combined with our own slew of integrations, you can totally customize the winback process yourself.
Ready to step up your SaaS reporting and analytics with Baremetrics?
We get it: SaaS companies have plenty of metrics to track and many tools to choose from.
There’s no denying that Stripe is an incredibly powerful tool. If your main concerns are streamlined billing and flexible pricing options, it can deliver big in those areas.
But if you’re more interested in powerful analytics and automation to help win and retain more subscribers, Baremetrics has you covered. Our platform dives deep into the most important SaaS Metrics and trends that ultimately support your company’s growth.
If you’re still curious or torn between tools, read more about what separates us from Stripe.
Or better yet, get started with a free trial of Baremetrics if you haven’t already to see all of the features above in action!
The dunning layer that sits on top of all of them
None of the tools compared above ship with a dedicated dunning layer for customer-facing failed-payment recovery. Whichever billing or analytics tool you pick, that recovery work happens above the billing system itself. SPI Media CEO Matt Gartland on the gap: "I will always sing Stripe's praises, but we weren't impressed with the results of its dunning software. Having increased control with Baremetrics is essential." Across 148 Baremetrics customers using Recover in December 2024, $1.35 million was reclaimed in a single month. The full capability breakdown is in our dunning management guide.
