Planhat vs. Zuora

Planhat is very cost-effective compared to its competitors and offers a similar level of functionality. So if you are looking for a CS platform that will give your CSM's all the data they need to manage their portfolio, then Planhat will do the job very well. I was part of the team that was tasked with selecting a CS platform for Pexip, and the combination of cost and performance made Planhat a clear winner against the other two products we were evaluating.

I still use Salesforce on a daily basis because that's the platform we use to generate quotes. It would be nice if I only had one platform to perform all of my CS tasks in. I'm not sure if that's a criticism of Planhat or not, as I don't know if it has a quoting module that we haven't implemented, or whether that function simply isn't available.

Incentivized

Zuroa is very well-suited for B2B businesses that primarily have a subscription stream of revenue. It is less appropriate for B2C and retail, if you are only selling one-time products or services, this tool would be overkill and confusing instead of helpful. However, if you need to recognize revenue from subscriptions over the service period, Zuora is a lifesaver.

Incentivized

• Excellent customer support and onboarding experience. They are very quick to respond to queries via the live chat. Our CS manager was brilliant in helping us get set up and making sure we were getting the most from all the features.
• The platform and features are very user friendly and intuitive. It's an extremely powerful tool with a lot of functionality, but thankfully it doesn't take long to learn how to use it.
• The customer portal is a game changer. The ability to share playbooks, data, and meeting notes all in one place is so useful for our customers and helps build trust and transparency.

• 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

• Allow for cc'ing of AEs or others within the same organization from the messaging center. When I went to send a message from within Planhat, I had to manually type out the AE's email address every time if I wanted them cc'd.
• The fonts were funky if I went to add text into an existing email template. For example, if I added in an extra sentence or paragraph, in Outlook on the recipient's end, the font was different despite looking the same within Planhat. Gmail was all consistent, Outlook was showing a different font.

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.

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.

It takes a while to learn Planhat even for experienced users. It has limitations in terms of what data you can present where, but its important to set internal guides outside Planhat as well so everybody working collaborative. But as CSM Planhat is a great- and critical tool which I use daily to optimise my work schedule and customer interaction with various topics.

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

Planhat support is excellent. We have a dedicated resource allocated to work with us, and he is extremely knowledgeable, articulate and responsive. The wider support team at Planhat is also very good, responding quickly to any issues logged. As an end-user, you can chat with Planhat support if you encounter any issues or have any questions, and they have always helped me.

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

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

I believe Planhat is the best Customer Success Management tool in the market. It gives me a 360-degree view of all my customers and has a modern interface as compared to the other similar tools that I have used. Planhat also offers a competitive pricing that makes it easier for my team to evaluate as compared to other similar platforms. The support team of Planhat is also great which makes it the right fit for my organisation

Incentivized

Briefly evaluated BillingPlatform during routine vendor review but decided to stay with Zuora. I don't really have any insights; I just wanted to understand other players and see how Zuora stacked up in the competitive landscape. Prior to the implementation of Zuora, we used a homegrown legacy system that the Company outgrew.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Planhat has, for the first time, given us a 360-degree view of all our customers and access to all the different types of communication we have with them across different departments and functions.
• The ability to automate workflows, tasks, and assign playbooks to the various phases of our customer lifecycle has aligned all our departments.

• Positive impact: we're able to invoice our customers timely and correctly.
• Positive impact: recurring payments are simple and accurate.
• Negative impact: Zuora and the Customer Management System that my organization use are no longer integrated because of some issues in the past with double billing and things of that nature.

Incentivized