On Page Navigation
On Page Navigation
Chargebee charges no platform fee and takes zero point eight percent of what you bill. Recurly charges two hundred and forty nine plus zero point nine percent above the first forty thousand. Paddle takes five percent and fifty cents a checkout, and becomes the legal seller of your software in exchange. Zuora publishes nothing at all. Three of the four are priced against your revenue rather than against the work.
Before you pick one and configure it
All four of these will invoice correctly and report on it afterwards. They diverge on what they charge you for, and the difference only shows up in the month you grow, or the quarter an auditor asks a question. Three things are worth settling before you commit to any of them.
1
Chargebee meters billing value at zero point eight percent with no platform fee under it. Recurly meters a flat fee plus zero point nine percent above the first forty thousand. Paddle meters every checkout at five percent and fifty cents, and carries your tax liability in exchange. Zuora meters something, and you will not find out what until after a scoping call. Not one of those numbers has any relationship to how complicated your billing actually is.
2
Recurly sells revenue recognition from eight hundred and fifty a month and churn tooling from sixteen hundred, both billed annually. Chargebee gives its adjacent products away, on the condition that you remain a Billing customer paying the percentage. Zuora bundles at enterprise scale and quotes the lot. Paddle includes nearly everything inside the one rate. Work out which pieces you genuinely need first, then compare, or you will compare the wrong two numbers.
3
Every vendor here ships a billing engine and all four of them are good at it. The real question is whether anybody in your business owns the pricing itself, notices when a tier stops selling, or revisits a retry schedule set once by somebody who has since left. A billing platform executes exactly what you configured. It never mentions that nobody has reconsidered the configuration in three years.
Three of them print a figure and it still settles very little, because they are not printing the same kind of figure. Chargebee prints a percentage with nothing under it. Recurly prints a fee and a percentage on top. Paddle prints a rate that also buys your payment processing, your tax compliance and your customers' support. Zuora prints nothing. The comparison you are actually making is about who owns your pricing, and not one of the four answers it.
VS
Zero Point Nine Percent On Top
Two Forty Nine A Month, Then A Cut
RevRec From Eight Fifty A Month
Recurly is the most established name here and it prints its entry price, which not everyone on this page does. Starter is two hundred and forty nine a month plus zero point nine percent of billing volume, with the first forty thousand exempt, and it opens with an unusually long ninety day trial. All-Access needs a million dollars of billing volume before you qualify at all, and revenue recognition and churn tooling are separate annual subscriptions starting at eight fifty and sixteen hundred.
Learn More
VS
No Platform Fee At All
Zero Point Eight Percent Of Billings
A Hundred Million Usage Events
Chargebee is the cheapest option on this page at low volume, and there it beats us comfortably. Flow charges no platform fee at all and takes zero point eight percent of monthly billing value, or ninety nine a month plus zero point six five percent if you commit. A hundred million usage events are included, alongside more than forty payment gateways across a hundred and fifty countries. Their quoting, revenue recognition and growth products are free or cheap, on the condition that you remain a Billing customer.
Learn More
VS
No Published Price Anywhere
Thirty To Ninety Day Implementation
Fifty Pricing Models Supported
Zuora has the deepest platform on this page and publishes no price for it anywhere. The pricing address redirects to a solutions page and every route onward is a demo request. What the quote buys is real enough: around fifty pricing models natively, multi entity consolidation, sixty pre built connectors and a compliance list covering PCI DSS Level One, SOC Two Type Two, ISO twenty seven thousand and one and HIPAA. Their own guidance puts implementation at thirty to ninety days.
Learn More
VS
Five Percent Plus Fifty Cents
They Become The Seller Of Record
Tax Filing Is Theirs, Not Yours
Paddle is the dearest per transaction here and the only one doing something none of the others can. Five percent plus fifty cents a checkout, no monthly fee and no lock in, and they become the legal seller of your software, which makes the sales tax obligation in every country theirs rather than yours. The same rate covers payment processing, chargeback protection and round the clock support for your customers, so compared properly it sits far closer to the others than the headline suggests.
Learn More
What the flat five hundred covers, and what it deliberately does not
Five hundred dollars a month, per organization, to read your pricing and tell you what we think of it, build the plans and the price book, set the proration and upgrade rules, configure tax and gateways, design and tune the dunning, work the failed payments every cycle and revise the whole thing as the business changes. Your Zoho Billing subscription stays in your name and you buy it from Zoho directly. We do not resell it and we do not mark it up.
Here is the qualification, and it is a blunt one. Under about sixty two thousand dollars a month billed, Chargebee costs less than we do, and at ten thousand billed it is eighty dollars against our five hundred. Our fee also sits on top of a Zoho licence and a payment processor you pay for separately. If somebody in your building genuinely owns the pricing, buy the cheap platform and keep your money. What we sell is the judgement and the upkeep, not the software.
A price book that grew one tier at a time is a set of decisions nobody ever made together. We start from what you sell now and who actually buys it, work back to the smallest set of plans that covers that honestly, and retire the ones existing only because they existed last year.
Three of the four vendors on this page charge a percentage of what you bill, so a good quarter raises the invoice they send you. Ours does not move at all. Five hundred a month covers the work whether you invoice forty thousand or four hundred thousand, and the metered costs you carry are paid to Zoho and to your payment processor rather than to us.
Billing does not fail loudly. Nothing errors, the invoices keep going out on time, and the middle tier simply stops being chosen without anybody noticing for four quarters. We read the numbers every cycle, work the failed payments, and say plainly when a plan has stopped earning its place in the catalogue.
How do you compare four billing platforms that charge in different shapes?
You work out your own numbers first, then price against them. Take your monthly billing value, your transaction count and the countries you sell into. Chargebee is zero point eight percent of billing value, or ninety nine a month plus zero point six five percent on a commitment. Recurly is two hundred and forty nine plus zero point nine percent above the first forty thousand. Paddle is five percent plus fifty cents a transaction and includes your payment processing and your tax in that. Zuora will not tell you. Price each against your real numbers and compare the totals rather than the headlines.
How does a billing platform decision go wrong?
Almost never on the software, and almost always on ownership. The platform gets chosen carefully, configured well, and then belongs to nobody. Two years on, the retry schedule is still the one that shipped, a handful of customers sit on prices that no longer exist anywhere, and a tier nobody has bought since spring is still on the pricing page. Nothing broke. Nobody was running it.
Who owns the account and the subscription if you set this up?
You do, entirely. You hold your own Zoho Billing subscription in your own name and pay Zoho directly for it, and your payment gateway settles into your own bank account. We work inside it as administrators and never sit between you and your money. End this tomorrow and every plan, every live subscription, the whole invoice history and all the reporting stay exactly where they are.
Should we simply use one of these instead?
For a lot of businesses, yes, and we would rather say it here than after you have signed. Under about sixty two thousand a month billed, Chargebee costs less than our fee and does the job perfectly well. If you sell into many countries and nobody wants to own tax compliance, Paddle is the right answer and we cannot match it. Come back when nobody in the building can name who owns the pricing.
Which one actually comes out cheapest?
Chargebee at low volume, and it is not close, because there is no platform fee underneath the percentage. Above roughly sixty six thousand a month billed their commitment plan beats their pay as you go one. Above sixty two thousand five hundred their percentage passes our flat fee. Recurly is cheaper than us under about sixty eight thousand billed. Paddle looks dearest and is not, once you account for the payment processing and the tax work it replaces. We are the most expensive on a naive reading and the flattest as you grow.
What happens when nobody looks at the billing after go live?
First somebody has to notice, and that is the part that fails, because nothing is broken. No support tier covers it. Recurly puts churn tooling in a separate subscription from sixteen hundred a month. Chargebee gates its growth product on remaining a Billing customer. Zuora sells technical account managers on premium support. Paddle offers advisory services to its larger accounts. All of that helps your people work the tool. With us, reading the numbers every cycle is part of the fee, so the noticing is ours rather than yours.
Do we have to move everything at once?
No, and it usually goes better if you do not. The normal order is the plans carrying most of your revenue, then anything tied to a pricing change you are making now, then the long tail of retired rates and one off arrangements. Most of the value sits in the first group and most of the tidying sits in the last.
Can you take over billing somebody else set up?
Often, and it is real work rather than a tidy up. We read what is configured, find the two plans doing almost the same thing at different prices, identify the customers sitting on rates that appear nowhere in the catalogue, and settle which version wins. Expect that last part to be the bulk of it. Inherited billing is usually accurate about what was charged and completely silent about why.
How long does this actually take to set up?
Four to eight weeks for most businesses, and longer where prices were agreed individually and never written down anywhere. Configuring the platform is a couple of days. The time goes on agreeing what the plans should be, on finding every customer sitting on a non standard rate, and on the first live billing cycle, which has to run and be read line by line before anybody relaxes.
We already have somebody who owns billing. What is left for you?
Possibly nothing, and that is a fine answer. Somebody who owns this properly will do it better than a monthly retainer, because they are there every day and they know the business. The question is whether it is actually on their list. Reviewing the price book in a month where every invoice went out correctly is the work that is always reasonable to postpone until next quarter.
When would you tell us to walk away?
Two cases, and both are common. If you bill under about forty thousand a month, Chargebee costs a couple of hundred dollars, the configuration is small enough for one person to hold in their head, and the money is better spent elsewhere. And if you sell into a lot of countries with nobody willing to own tax compliance, Paddle is a better answer than we are, and we will say so on the first call.
What if the billing turns out not to be the problem?
We will say so before you pay us anything, because the fit review exists to catch exactly that. Often the real problem is that the pricing is fine and the product is not converting, or that finance and sales have never agreed which number is the real one, or that the churn is a support problem rather than a billing one. Each of those is worth settling first, and no amount of billing configuration fixes any of them.
What does this cost through you, stated plainly?
Five hundred dollars a month, per organization. That figure sits on the Managed Zoho Billing service page, and neither your headcount nor your revenue moves it. You buy the Zoho Billing licence from Zoho and hold it in your name. Payment processing is yours as well, settling into your own account.
What happens if we decide to leave?
Thirty days notice ends it. Everything stays exactly where it is, because the subscription and the merchant account were always yours. We hand back the administrator seat, write up what every plan is for and why the proration and dunning rules are set the way they are so the next person is not guessing, and list what we would change next.
What do you need from us to start?
Your current price book, a list of any customers on terms that differ from it, and an honest account of what you actually sell today rather than what the website still says. Neither list is ever complete and neither needs to be. They tell us the shape of the problem, and the fit review finds the rest.
