PaySimple vs. Stripe Payments vs. Zuora

PaySimple has made it next to impossible to become PCI compliant unless we purchased a separate computer for the sole purpose of invoicing. We switched to Chase Bank who does not store sensitive info on our computers allowing us to accept credit cards and still remain PCI compliant. Our money is available much faster by not using the 3rd party. Additionally, a simple company name change required more paperwork than closing the account and setting up a new one even when the same bank account was going to be used. This was the primary reason to shop around. We happily contacted Chase Bank and now save $125 a month and receive access to our funds faster. I cannot believe I stayed with PaySimple as long as I did. It's amazing anyone would jump through the hoops of PCI compliance when the technology exists to keep sensitive information off your small business computers. If this review stops anyone from paying those monthly fees, the time was well worth it! PaySimple, requires business owners to fill out forms that make no sense in laymens terms. Chase Bank fills them all in for you and highlights the areas that need to be signed and initialed. PaySimple, charges excessive fees and in my opinion has very emotional customer service reps. Chase Bank, was eager to help and get things rolling so you can focus on your business. I would never recommend PaySimple.

We had a client who wanted a QR to use in their marketing, which enabled their clients to donate to us. It was so useful to be able to set it up, and we can track the views and donations received using this code. Another client with issues with our website wanted to set up a monthly subscription, so I sent her a payment link, which worked brilliantly. For clients that want to make one-time donations, it also lets the client choose the amount. The only scenario where we haven't been able to help is when clients want to change the card associated with the payment - whilst we understand it is for security/gdpr, it means they have to cancel and set up something new, which poses the danger that we may lose them as a customer.

Incentivized

Zuora is great for smaller subscription businesses that have a limited number of simple or basic products. As more products are added to the catalog, the ability to report on specific product performance has become more challenging. Similarly, as our number of customers has grown significantly over the past few years, the extraction of data through export files is more of a challenge to capture all data points.

Incentivized

• PaySimple is awesome for recurring payments. It's easy to set one up and make changes as needed. Without this feature, our business would be dead. Being able to easily set up recurring payments for our retainer is a must and PaySimple does it beautifully.
• The payment portal feature is also really good fro collecting payments of differing amounts. We setup a single portal where customers enter the payment amount accessed from a link in the invoice email. This feature has transformed out collections and cut down our time to get paid significantly.
• If you do have product type offerings, it's easy to setup individual products or an entire store.

Incentivized

• They are reliable. I can count on everything going smoothly with transactions.
• They are accurate. I don’t run into problems with collecting the proper amounts or being overcharged for fees.
• They have good customer service. If I have a question about the customer portal or a problem with a customer, they help me resolve these issues.

Incentivized

• The implementation of Zuora is very helpful. Their interactive training guides are one of the best I've used. It is very thorough and any salesperson can learn how to use it very quickly.
• Their subscription management offers many ways to sell a subscription. These subscriptions can be evergreen (renewing every month) or termed subscriptions. The subscriptions can be amended to add/remove products very easily.
• The ability to quickly pass through large amounts of usage data for our clients is allowing us to perform billing in a time-effective manner. Once usage data is loaded, a few clicks and all of the invoices for our client base can be generated. Invoices are clean and detailed which help us maintain a good customer experience even with our somewhat complex billing model. The reporting is extremely helpful in calculating the end of month commissions, recognizing and deferring revenue, and overall bookkeeping.

Incentivized

• More proactive and empowering role in merchant fee's and alternative processors. Transparency is challenging in understanding Paysimple's role and relationship to the processors.
• Identifying areas for further value to clients.
• More targeted small to mid-size business perspective to anticipate growth challenges and prevent blocks on funds for legitimate sales and growth.

Incentivized

• It would be nice to be able to see my Shopify payments from my main payment gateway. I currently have to go to Shopify for that.
• The ability to be able to offer discounted rates at a smaller threshold would be nice.

Incentivized

• User Interface - Zuora's UI is still a weak point, however, this is negated through the use of its API's. Zuora has done a lot of work in releasing new products to limit its UI experience and the addition of Orders allows for more functionality to reduce the UI issue.
• Complex system - This is both a pro and a con, but in this instance, it is a con because we may not have taken the time to truly understand the implications of all the options that were available. the Flexibility is great however if you do not take the time to understand the product and what problem you are trying to solve, you can make life difficult for yourself later down the track. Take the time to map out your approach end to end and ensure your assumptions at the start are robust.
• Reporting - reporting is weak as such we have moved away to our own reporting data warehouse.

Stripe is the leader in the industry when it comes to any type of industry. All that is needed is a plan and then implementing that plan either with a developer, or through the help of Stripe's customer service team to assist in getting you setup. The ease of use time it takes to get up and running is second to none

Incentivized

Our business is now, more than ever, focused on our core business rather than homegrown support tools for quoting, contracts, billing, invoicing, payments and the rest of the subscription economy. We evaluated other solutions and found this the best and most viable solution given the strong ties to Salesforce and it's integration. Zuora works, and it works well.

Stripe offers a very easy-to-navigate platform with many different functions. From linking it to our website and accounting platform to tracking our payments, being able to issue a refund quickly if required, and setting up QR codes and payment links for subscriptions or one-time donations, it really covers so many aspects that we need and use on a weekly and monthly basis.

Incentivized

I had 20+ years of accounting experience before taking on the revenue role. I had several things to [learn] but was able to easily master the software in a matter of weeks. Zuora is our preferred billing platform that we currently use - very efficient and much more automated than our other platform/process.

Incentivized

There have only been a few days/instances in the past 2.5 years of using zuora that I, personally have had issues or been notified of issues relating to Zuora.

Incentivized

Zuora does a superb job for all the tasks I use it for. Billing - it is trustworthy and accurate. Customer data- it holds it and keeps past records for even cancelled accounts, and subscription builds - it has the ability to make very difficult subscriptions seem easy.

Incentivized

Stripe's support is nearly perfect – great attention to detail, fast response times, and a willingness to really dig into issues and get to the bottom of them. In the five years we've been using Stripe, the only negative thing I can say about their customer support is that it seems like there has been a slight shift to less technical front-line support agents, which means it's more likely your issue will have to be escalated before you get more information. This, however, has happened as Stripe rolled out more real-time support features like call and chat, and that really isn't workable if you're escalating everything right off the bat. It's absolutely an acceptable trade-off.

Incentivized

A support request is emailed to their support team, then an automated response is sent to you in a couple hours saying "Hey, someone will take a look at your support request soon". Then somewhere around 12-18 hours later, an actual support member responds with "Have you checked out our tutorials? Here's one that sounds like it might help you". I don't want a tutorial given to me that I've already read through that only exists because of the terrible user design of Zuora's user interface

Incentivized

The onsite was so helpful and worth the hours spent. All three people that came to represent Zuora had a lot to offer.

Incentivized

It was reliable.

Incentivized

It took less than an hour to have everything setup and running

Incentivized

I think Zuora did a great job. However, they could have provided more guidance on how to deal with out Payment Gateway and Processor provider, as well as guidance around providing a Mobile Responsive experience for sites using the Zuora HPM.

Incentivized

Authorize.net and a handful of other merchant processors and gateways. Most payment gateways (online portals to process payments) are rudimentary and not extremely intuitive. PaySimple is not and they are constantly coming up with new ways to improve upon an already very impressive platform.

Incentivized

Stripe is easier to use and offers better support and rates. My favorite part with Stripe is probably their ready-to-use plug-in that's offered for me. We have multiple eCommerce stores and we rely on our payment process going smoothly. The plug-in from Stripe is free, constantly updated, secure, and very easy to implement.

Incentivized

Zuora provides way more functionality than Recurly or SaaSOptics as a billing engine. However, it is not a general ledger system like NetSuite ERP, it is still designed to be primarily a billing function that feeds into a general ledger via automated general entries. It has simplified our invoice management and automated billing while connecting with Salesforce for high-powered reporting and cross-departmental collaboration. The automation of revenue recognition has the potential to significantly reduce the time spent on accounting close by a few days.

Incentivized

The product is capable of a lot, small companies and large companies can utilize it with ease

Incentivized

• Because we've got a really awesome rate with them it's definitely a positive ROI. I can't say what that figure is but it's pretty good. Also, our customers have a huge ROI over their prior way of getting payment from their customers.

Incentivized

• It makes getting money from your clients really easy
• It gives your clients the guarantee that their payment information is totally secure and confidentially used and kept
• It is very easy to integrate with online assets of the company
• In a couple of occasions, some companies have wanted me to use Stripe for them to pay me, and I have had a couple of hiccups. This was more related to the way that these companies set up the Stripe integration of my account to their platform. In both cases, the integration has not been possible and to this date, I still do not know why with exactitude.
• As I said before, the commissions kept by Stripe could be lower, and shared with the CC companies, rather than having us clients pay for all of o it.

Incentivized

• Poor support has slowed down our implementation of features and resolution of issues
• Lack of flexibility has led to some complex and unwieldy workaround solutions
• No useful built in AR reporting so we had to come up with our own solution
• Challenges with finance due to unreliability of Salesforce sync