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Zuora

Score8.1 out of 10

284 Reviews and Ratings

What is Zuora?

Zuora is one of the best-known subscription billing platforms. Zuora is an enterprise-level product and, as such, provides comprehensive metrics, tax automation, and support for multiple currencies. It also offers Salesforce and NetSuite integration out-of the-box. It often replaces cumbersome ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems that does not focus exclusively on billing.

Zuora review - Solid billing platform and rev rec function.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Zuora as our billing platform for our subscription membership products. That entails customer invoice generation, initiating payments, and applying successful payments to customer accounts. We also use Zuora for revenue recognition and accounts receivable reporting and reconciliation as part of our monthly accounting close process. A number of our primary business metrics are reported from Zuora.

Pros

  • Customer billing.
  • Payment application.
  • Revenue recognition.

Cons

  • Reporting environment.
  • Data/row limits too small for exports.
  • Ability to customize analytics dashboards.

Return on Investment

  • Shortened month-end accounting process by days.
  • Source of truth for the Company's key performance metrics.
  • Challenges with incorporating new digital wallet payment options.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

BillingPlatform

Other Software Used

NetSuite ERP, Adyen, Tableau Cloud

Invest in Zuora

Pros

  • Subscription Management
  • Revenue Recognition
  • Invoicing

Cons

  • Multi-year deals
  • Very custom payment plans
  • Hosted payment pages

Alternatives Considered

SaaSOptics, Recurly, NetSuite ERP and FinancialForce Accounting

Review of Zuora

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Zuora for billing (invoicing), creation and tracking of subscriptions, cancellations and sync of data over to our CRM (Salesforce) as well as to Netsuite for our financials.

Pros

  • Invoice creation
  • Amendment tracking

Cons

  • Salesforce sync
  • Reporting
  • Product catalog management (e.g. bundling)
  • Permission/role management

Most Important Features

  • Salesforce Sync
  • Invoice Generation

Return on Investment

  • 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

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce CPQ

Other Software Used

Zendesk Explore, Zapier

Zuora Review

Pros

  • Invoices.
  • Reports.

Cons

  • For the capacity that I use Zuora in, I have no complaints.

Great Subscription Management Software

Pros

  • Flexibility with the product catalog. Once you understand the product catalog and its capabilities, the possibilities are endless. You are able to spin up new products quickly and test new ideas with minimal development time.
  • API focus. Zuora API focus allows us to step away from the Zuora UI and build our own platform over the top of Zuora reducing ambiguity for our customers and team
  • Constant upgrades - Zuora is continually adding to its product and listening to its customers to build a product that is leading the way in the subscription economy

Cons

  • 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.