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.
$249
per month
Zoho Billing
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Zoho Billing (formerly Zoho Subscriptions) is a one stop recurring billing and
subscription management solution. Zoho Billing automates the entire
recurring billing process and takes users to the market in few minutes.
This solution enables users to:
Create subscription billing pricing plans, add coupons and
add-ons to suit their business needs. Run in-depth subscription metrics and assess the
health of their business in no time. Zoho Subscriptions is…
$20
per month per organization
Pricing
Recurly
Zoho Billing
Editions & Modules
Starter
$249
per month
Professional
Get a custom quote
per month
Elite
Get a custom quote
per month
Standard
$20
per month per organization
Professional
$50
per month per organization
Premium
$100
per month per organization
Elite
$300
per month per organization
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Recurly
Zoho Billing
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
$49 per month
Additional Details
For startups and SMBs looking to launch today and grow their subscription business fast, the Starter plan (formerly Core) is available with no monthly platform fee plus no payment volume fee for first $40,000 USD per month in first 3 months for new customers only.
25% discount available for annual plans and pricing.
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.
[Zoho Subscriptions is great] for startup agencies or businesses that charge monthly subscriptions of some kind. For most other [softwares,] you are paying at least $100 per month just to have the software. Zoho [Subscriptions] gives you the chance to take advantage of starting at [zero dollars,] which keeps your cost down until you understand the software before you have to upgrade. I feel like you can easily bootstrap your startup business to keep costs down. As you [are] moving forward, and are bringing in several thousand per month in revenue, it can scale up without costing a lot. [The subscriptions] [...] [start] to cost more, [...] if you have one time payments; you then need additional software from Zoho [Subscriptions] to handle the needs, and it starts adding up to typical [back- end] management software, with multiple log in points which start to drain your time budget. [At] that point, I ended up looking for a more all in one software that manages both contacts, one time and recurring invoices, reminders, etc. By the time our revenue exceeded [$5,000] per month[,] I [needed] to save time and looked for other options. [However,] I have other friends who still use it and they are generating $10k or more per month.
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.
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.
Declined payments, there wasn't a big alarm that went off automatically when a payment was declined. I have set up different notifications when this happens in the future though.
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
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.
Zoho [Subscriptions] is a lot easier to set up recurring payments and notifications than [Stripe] or [PayPal] alone. They offer notification reminders that will help manage clients, versus setting up an API [..] communication system [to] your own with the others. Clients have an easier time changing credit cards around in Zoho [Subscriptions,] whereas in Stripe and Paypal, you have a lot more manual work.
Thryv is [an] all in one [package] for both one time and recurring payments, which I prefer over Zoho [Subscriptions], without having to create new client files in each system; [Thryv] [...] also has notification options which is a time saver. Thryv can also send test email review requests after a trigger or an [invoice] has been paid, whereas you would have to create an API integration with another service to do so in Zoho [Subscriptions]. Overall, Zoho [Subscriptions] is a great system, for most of my personal clients logging into different systems for different needs. [In] addition to subscriptions, [this] is the downfall, but it [is] still a great option for many businesses.
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.