Does anybody use Chargebee as subscription plan payment tool?
I'm looking for a tool which can help me, in this "testing market fit" moment, to manage the subscription of my startup. I see chargebee and looks to be interesting. Does anybody already used it? If yes, how does it works?
If NO, do you have any other subscription payments tools to suggest to me? thanks in advance.
I went through the integration with Chargebee, but ended up not using it because I couldn't get a Braintree account (I have an Estonian company, so Stripe is not an option). I found integration easy enough, and it's a reasonably comprehensive product. The free trial for the first $50 000 of revenue was a big draw for me.
Another option I looked at was billwerk.io. It's less polished than Chargebee, but comprehensive and has a lower price tier. Support is very good and personal. It supports a number of European payment providers, so there are more European payment methods supported (like SEPA transfers).
Any product like this, make sure you can secure a payment provider account as soon as possible. You might get turned down, and European providers seem to have quite long application processes.
I ended up using paddle.com, which acts as a reseller rather than a payment provider. This makes the sign-up process simple, no long application process. Integration was not a problem, though their support was not as good as billwerk. It is not specifically a subscription management system, but it does enough. Because they're a reseller, they handle all the invoicing and VAT, so you just have one customer to deal with. They don't give you the money as quickly as a paymeny gateway, and they charge 5% + 0.50€ per transaction - the 0.50€ can be a stinger if your subscription price is small. But there's no subscription fee, so no cost until you have sales. They're the easiest option to get going.
Did you ever look at Cheddar for subscription/billing management?
We support a wide range of payment processors and several of our European customers use our webhooks and 3rd party API's to automatically calculate and charge for VAT. We don't automate the reporting like Paddle, though, but our customers work around that using our webhooks and 3rd party tools like Avalara's VAT reporting or Quaderno.
For full disclosure, our pricing DOES involve a monthly fee as soon as you want to go live with your product and charge users, but we're looking to cut that down so you don't pay until you have sales.
I'd be curious to hear what you think.
Hi Wes, good to know you. Chedder isn't a product I remember looking at. Looks good, but hard to make a fair comparison without actually going through the integration. Quaderno I know of, so top marks for being able to suggest a solution!
Whether I could have used it... would depend on the payment processors you support. Some of them won't support a company in Estonia, and others are risk-averse when it comes to unfunded B2B SaaS businesses.
Whether I would have used it... Chargebee's "free-for-$50k" offer is a winner, and billwerk.io starts at €5/month. When you're not funded and have no revenue yet, you need a good reason to commit to spending $1000 over the next year, when you could commit to spending nothing and get a similar service.
Thanks for the feedback!
Re: Quaderno, thanks! I'm happy to help.
We support Authorize.net, which supports Estonia, but I see what you're saying--the struggle is first getting them to approve unfunded B2B SaaS businesses.
I agree, that's a good offer.
We've been contemplating our pricing a lot. Our problem right now is finding the sweet spot between making it reasonable for startups of any size to initially sign up.
After a company is making a significant MRR, we don't have a problem. We're a lot more affordable than most billing companies because we charge per transaction we generate, not a % of revenue.
We're thinking about simply waving or lowering our $99/month fee until you hit a certain MRR (you'd only pay $0.30/transaction to use our billing platform), but we do have certain fixed costs associated with supporting those users, regardless of their number of transactions or revenue, so we'd be losing money if we had a lot of people processing very few transactions per month and just waived the fee.
Maybe we charge no monthly fee and a higher per-transaction rate in the beginning, and the balance shifts to a higher monthly fee and lower per-transaction rate as you grow...just thinking out loud here.
Thanks again!
Wes
Chargebee support Authorize.net, who told me "we only connect to EVO Payments for our European based merchants. As they will not facilitate a merchant account for your business industry, we cannot proceed further".
Sure, understand, I have a cost per-account, which stops me offering free accounts. Maybe there's a way to reduce those costs...
Good luck with your product!
Ah, I see.
Thanks Graham!
Hey Alessandro, have you heard of Cheddar? Most of our customers are SaaS, but we also have a few people that use it to manage physical subscription products.
You can get up and running billing and subscription management in as little as a day, and our pricing is based upon how many transactions you need to generate. (We also charge a monthly fee, but we're looking to adjust that for bootstrapped/low-revenue startups)
Hi wes, thanks for your help. I'll take a look for sure, and let you know.
Sounds good! 👍
If I recall correctly one of the guys from Ghost answered in an AMA they used ChargeBee and they said it was very very good, but it was a large engineering effort to integrate it.
Totally agree. The user interface alone is very confusing and overloaded with features. I gave up after 2 hours, it's horrible. It depends on your needs, but If you're looking for something easier, i really can recommend paddle.com.
Alessandro, take a look at servicebot.io
EDIT: I just checked out your website and looks like you are selling physical product. If that's the case, Chargebee is prob the best fit.
Hi Star thanks for the message and for the EDIT advise :). does servicebot.io manage only saas? Or could it be used also for physical product?
It could be used, but I don't recommand using it for physical products. It is tailored for SaaS companies. That's why I edited my original comment. I've researched a lot in the space and I think for a physical product like yours, the most affordable solution is Chargebee.
Hi Shar, thanks again. much appreciated ;)
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Hi Tom, thanks for the message. When will the soft launch be made?
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looking forward ;)