Invisible Software: How Subscription Billing Works Behind the Scenes

When considering business software to implement, subscription billing is not protruding in your thoughts. Being honest, subscription billing may not have ever crossed your mind. That’s because subscription billing software is a wall flower. It works silently and powerfully, gathering regular payments, patrolling expired credit cards, and tracking individual plans. It is so quiet and diligent that it is often imperceptible.

Subscription billing appears to require little explanation. It is built for a simple, singular purpose that allows users to pay for a product by online subscription. Subscription Billing software automates the payment process so that, once in place, the software becomes invisible, rotating the cogs that ensure a subscription payment enters the bank at regular intervals. It works so reliably that your business is left to focus on other less reliable tasks.

Subscription Billing is Deceptively Complex

Even though Subscription Billing software is a simple concept, selecting the best subscription billing software for your company is still a process that requires careful consideration of your company’s needs.

Subscription billing software contains a variety of features that, when examined, makes subscription billing more complex than meets the eye. The billing software needs to have customer management, recurring billing, automatic invoicing, pricing plans management, failed transaction management, promotions management, multi-currency support, shopping cart integration, open API, and strong analytics. When selecting a software, you might want to find how long implementation takes or whether it is capable of your desired pricing model. To make this selection process easier, I have included three recommendations for subscription billing software.

Great Subscription Billing Software You Ought to Know

You may not have heard of Vindicia Cashbox. Believe it or not, the global eCommerce business Paypal, which at first seems to be a self-made business, uses this electronic billing software as the force behind its payment needs. This software billing royalty also supports businesses such as Yahoo, NASCAR, NFL, and Bloomberg. It’s the éminence grise of the large industries, looming silently in the background only to serve as the power behind making secure purchases. Vindicia is designed to be global. It deals in multiple currencies, charges tax by region, and sells any form of digital content or services whether it be software, SaaS, or online gaming. It provides multiple billing options from subscription to quantity to hierarchical pricing, and it also masters all the features needed in a complete subscription billing software.

Stripe makes payment simple. This is what the company conveys through its clean logo, its concise website, and its dedicated functionality. Plus, its pricing is hard to beat at 2.9 percent plus 30 cents after every transaction. The software supports thousands of smaller companies, namely those that develop products found in an Android or Apple app store. These customers include Reddit, Cloudapp, Buffer, and SimplyHired. Stripe stores all customer information (cards, subscriptions, direct payouts) on their own cloud server. They provide an API (with many examples), and express pride in catering to developers as their core audience. The software is fitting particularly for smaller or medium-sized businesses seeking a clean and easy solution that is also able to handle one-time transactions in addition to subscriptions.

Finally, Recurly — the middle child in both price and stature. It supports customers such as Adobe, Coupons.com, and LinkedIn. Recurly knows the function of subscription billing well, which is why they state “We make it easy so that your billing system gets out of the way, while you focus on the prize of success.” A self-declared complete subscription billing solution, they include all essential features: automatic invoicing, API support, customer tracking, and pricing plans management. In addition to more advanced features such as speedy deployment, trial periods, add-ons, multi-currency support, tax support, coupons, metered billing, one-time transactions, MailChimp integration and Salesforce integration. It’s a simple catch-all that can serve businesses of all sizes.

These three subscription billing software are diverse but strong, capable of charging anything from a mobile app to an online game at any interval with nearly any card provider. The labor subscription billing provides is clean and pure, opposing other software that requires regular maintenance or even pose a risk for failed implementation. Subscription billing can be the lifeline of managing the entire revenue life-cycle, serving as your ever-reliable cash handler for your products entire lifetime.

Miranda Limonczenko: Miranda Limonczenko is a former member of the Business-Software.com marketing team.