Chargify vs. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing

If you are a small startup, likely to be charging only in one currency, then Chargify will likely be suitable for you, as it was for us when we first started. However, as you expand and need to charge in additional currencies and require good reporting, you might find Chargify becomes more cumbersome. You do get a very stable and reliable billing platform with Chargify. I can't recall any downtime dues to issues. In the last 5 years, there have been only been 2 times where the app was down, both for scheduled maintenance. The communication leading up to the downtime was excellent, the app was up and running well within the maintenance window and everything kept functioning smoothly afterward.

Incentivized

Oracle Customer Care and Billing is well suited for smaller to mid size companies. I don't believe that it is structured in a way, currently, that is easy to use for larger utilities. For smaller to mid size utilities, with less data and customers, Oracle Customer Care and Billing will perform quicker and appear less cluttered. The utility I work at serves 600k+ customers.

Incentivized

• Chargify's API is solid and easy to use, including JSON and XML interfaces.
• Chargify's customer service is responsive and thorough; always making sure your needs as a customer are met.
• Chargify listens to its customer base and their suggestions for feature enhancements.

Incentivized

• It is highly configurable.
• It is highly extendable and customizable.
• Its base batch programs allow you to perform most billing functions with no intervention.

Incentivized

• Reporting - It doesn't provide the reporting we need so I have to do it manually. It doesn't track individual components like we need it to for monthly reporting.
• Emails - The system's emails sometimes end up in junk mail, so I also follow up once a customer has missed 2 payment attempts.
• Transactions - An easier way to get to the transactions would be nice. It takes many clicks to see the transaction history.

Incentivized

• As much as I believe CCB is a user-friendly interface, I also believe it has room to be even simpler and easier to use and navigate.

Incentivized

They are a crucial piece of what we do. We hope to have them as a vendor for a long time to come.

We spent a lot of time reviewing the Oracle products and we have invested a lot of time, money and resources into utilizing it. It is a good product and we are happy with how effective it has been for us. Good Choice!

Incentivized

They are willing to help with most challenges and are pretty easy to get ahold of by phone. They are limited in their reach, when it comes to bulk cancellations, along with some other bulk edits. It is no fault to them, Chargify is just a system that hasn’t been upgraded much over the years.

Incentivized

Good support. It's knowledgeable and best used for consulting.

Incentivized

Chargify met a list of set requirements and our budget at the time. The main items were:

1. Salesforce integration
2. Payment gateway support
3. Billing portal / self service
4. Strong API
5. Tax invoice support
6. Multi country and multi currency support

Incentivized

Previously, my company was on an aging mainframe system. The cost and effort to move to Oracle Customer Care and Billing, as well as integrate with the Oracle Utility MDM and MWM modules, was done out of necessity but also larger external acceptance and innovation. By this, I mean that Oracle's product line was growing quicker with newer features than the competitor we weighed (SAP).

Incentivized

• The positive impact was mostly when we actually did need subscriptions. The negative impact came when we pivoted to a more focused type of product, which did not need user subscriptions. Because we were reusing the code and had already done all the setup (and had a skeleton crew), we stayed with Chargify, but many times it got in the way. Had we continued as a business, we would have switched to just using Braintree.

Incentivized

• I'm not aware of any negative impacts implementing the application had from a financial perspective

Incentivized