Chargebee vs. Recurly

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Chargebee
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
ChargeBee is an all in one subscription billing solution designed to handle all the complexity of recurring billing. The product integrates with a range of other SaaS applications including SalesForce, accounting, and order fulfillment systems. Some key features include: Managed Subscription Billing, Flexible Billing Support and Automated Notifications.
$249
per month
Recurly
Score 7.2 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Recurly is a subscription billing platform and manages customer communications via email, business performance monitoring, and account changes. A merchant bank account is required to work with Recurly. A payment gateway is part of the product but it integrates with other gateways, such as PayPal, to give shoppers a more comprehensive suite of payment options.
$0
per month
Pricing
ChargebeeRecurly
Editions & Modules
Rise
$249
per month
Scale
$549
per month
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Core
$0/month plus first $40k/mo. in revenue included for first 12 months
per month
Professional
Get a custom quote
per month
Elite
Get a custom quote
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ChargebeeRecurly
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsNo transaction based fees. No setup cost. No monthly contracts. No hidden fees.—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ChargebeeRecurly
Considered Both Products
Chargebee
Chose Chargebee
Honestly I didn't look into Recurly much, nor have I used them because it was a lot more expensive (for an early stage startup like ours was when we started using it). At least as far as I recall, they could have changed their pricing structure but they don't list their pricing …
Chose Chargebee
Chargebee's price per feature set beat out Recurly, it's the closest competitor that we evaluated. Its automated subscription billing was a core feature over Xero (our accounting and invoicing system, which we still use in tandem with Chargebee). Stripe's new features that just …
Chose Chargebee
We evaluated Chargebee vs. Zuora and Stripe. Zuora has a lot of enterprise-level companies, so from an optics perspective is "safer", but we found their integration to be more difficult, their cost to be more expensive, their UI to be more complicated, and their APIs to be …
Chose Chargebee
A strong balance between flexibility and simplicity -- Chargebee has proved to be a product that is well liked across the organization, and from a technical standpoint does not present too many hiccups for our developers. We also feel the pricepoint is good in a market which …
Recurly

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
ChargebeeRecurly
Small Businesses
WooCommerce Subscriptions
WooCommerce Subscriptions
Score 7.5 out of 10
WooCommerce Subscriptions
WooCommerce Subscriptions
Score 7.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct
Score 8.7 out of 10
Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Salesforce CPQ
Salesforce CPQ
Score 7.7 out of 10
Salesforce CPQ
Salesforce CPQ
Score 7.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ChargebeeRecurly
Likelihood to Recommend
6.9
(19 ratings)
6.0
(14 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
ChargebeeRecurly
Likelihood to Recommend
Chargebee Inc
Well-suited:
  • In a B2B set up - Post achieving some scale and having outgrown Google Sheets/ Excels. Won't add much value if you are dealing with fewer than 400-500 invoices a year.
  • We haven't explored their B2C subscription management side - but that is one of the key strengths of the platform.
Read full review
Recurly
I think it works best for scenarios where it involves recurring billing. A subscription-based business model can benefit on the platform and maximize its features. It has great customization when it comes to billing cadence, pricing, prepayment, discount options, among others. It also works perfectly with one-off charges so either way, it's a win. It has great integration with Stripe too.
Read full review
Pros
Chargebee Inc
  • Reliable: We've had virtually no issues since launch.
  • Care about customers: Chargebee's account managers/support team have always been very helpful/responsive.
  • Feature-rich: Chargebee has a ton of features that help us do what we want and they are consistently adding new features every quarter.
Read full review
Recurly
  • It is very easy to track MRR, which gives you insights into your overall revenues and health of the subscriptions. Though MRR is pretty easy to calculate Recurly puts it beautifully on the dashboard which is very easy to read.
  • LTV, Recurly calculates lifetime value which is a good insight for adjusting Marketing spends. Even this is available on the dashboard.
  • The other features like Subscriber churn Rate, Average revenue per customer etc are really great and would help the marketing team a lot.
Read full review
Cons
Chargebee Inc
  • It wasn't allowing us to add a one time purchase without making it an ongoing subscription with only one payment. They may have fixed it very recently but that was a big pain from a reporting perspective (it was including one time purchasers as subscribers)
  • Email automation is not very robust. Difficult to customize triggers by subscription, you have to send the same message to all subscribers for a specific action
  • Wish it had a way to write off and cancel the subscription of customers who haven't updated their cc info. That can be a long painful and very manual process. And if that feature is available somewhere they don't do a good job of making that clear.
Read full review
Recurly
  • The coupons feature is a bit cumbersome. It can become tricky to set up, apply, and un-apply coupons for a particular client. If you have special billing cases where you discount for a few months or give a client service in any irregular fashion, using coupons can become tricky.
  • We have a referral program with our clients where they receive a perpetual monthly discount for each client they refer to use. The client receives this discount as long as their referral remains active with us. We would like to be able to apply a discount to a client account, and have the ability to remove that discount in the event a referral ends service with us. In some cases a client has referred several clients, and we would like to apply a discount for each referral, and still have the ability to remove one or more discounts as referrals begin and end service with us. Currently there is no way to do this in Recurly. There isn't even a very good work-around, which is disappointing.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Chargebee Inc
No answers on this topic
Recurly
I believe we would continue to use Recurly because they have shown that they are continually improving their software, and they listen to their customers
Read full review
Usability
Chargebee Inc
It's very easy to use once you know what you're doing. I found it very straight forward once I got the hang of things and was able to create plans easily for my business. I was also able to just charge my clients right away easily. Refunding was also easy when needed.
Read full review
Recurly
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Chargebee Inc
Chargebee is simple to use, and we have had little need for support.
Read full review
Recurly
They have always been quick to respond and help. I love their chat feature at the bottom right-hand corner of the platform.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Chargebee Inc
The major reason to go with chargebee is its costing as compared to its competitors it is much useful and value for money.Also it has many features that is very practical and efficient to use it.I recommend to the people who involves low costing as well as futuristic features.
Read full review
Recurly
Fewer codings are needed, however, the simplicity with Recurly is found once all the information needed is there. I have seen where Recurly is integrated with any other product we use; however, Salesforce does have the ability to be integrated with other products. This is done through coding.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Chargebee Inc
  • It was a step in the right direction compared to ReCharge
  • It had negative impacts on our revenue before we had our developers put some work into improving its capabilities with our website and software
  • Now, we are seeing some positive results (after some costly updating from our end)
Read full review
Recurly
  • Providing an interface for our subscribers to manage their own accounts has simplified our business tremendously. This alone has freed up hours of our staff's time each day.
  • Many customers receive new credit cards due to expiration or fraud. The time we spent in updating this information prior to using Recurly's Revenue Recovery feature versus now is significant.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Chargebee Screenshots

Screenshot of Recurring Business Command CentreScreenshot of Customizable Hosted Checkout PageScreenshot of Reporting and MetricsScreenshot of Subscription ManagementScreenshot of Customer Portal: Self-Service Portal

Recurly Screenshots

Screenshot of Features to set up and test different products, plans, and pricing options, plus promotional tools like free trials, coupons, and gift subscriptions and cards to attract more customers.Screenshot of payments with smart routing to improve transaction success rates and conversions by offering a variety of payment methods, such as credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and ACH.Screenshot of the flexible ways to configure subscription billings workflows, and automate recurring invoicing based on the subscription parameters.Screenshot of automated dunning communications to increase collection effectiveness. Configurable across period and timing, if the payment is past due or declined, selected and personalized dunning campaign launch.