11 May 2020
Recurring Billing Software
Recurring billing is on the rise, and we all know they’re an added value, which is exceptionally crucial for any small business. That’s probably why you’re here to learn more about recurring billing and how to choose recurring billing software for your small business to manage recurring payments.
One of the most common mistakes small business owners make is not collecting recurring payments systematically. Often, the recurring billing software is at fault behind every failed amount, making your customers angry and may disassociate themselves from using your recurring product or service.
If you’ve faced a similar issue and trying to find the right recurring billing software that suits your small business and can help you grow gradually over time, then you are at the place. In this article, we will show you how to choose recurring billing software and the top 5 recurring billing platforms for small businesses.
What is Recurring Billing?
Recurring billing is a type of payment agreement between a customer and a vendor to pay for a product or service on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. There are probably subscriptions for everything in 2020: music, internet, streaming, storage, apps, cloud service, dating, gaming, cooking, you name anything, and possibly a subscription for it.
What is Recurring Billing Software?
Recurring billing software or a subscription billing system is a payment processor that deducts a certain amount of payment from a customer’s credit or debit card on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis as agreed between a customer and the company.Recurring billing software can help you create branded invoices and user-friendly payment page, integrate multiple payment gateways, set auto-reminders for payments, and create estimates, quotes, and much more.
How to Choose Recurring Billing Software?
Recurring or Subscription Management Software has become necessary for any business, whether it’s a small one or a big corporation. You could have hundreds of customers that are willing to subscribe to your product or service, but without proper recurring billing software, it’s not possible.
Your billing software should make recurring transactions easy for you and your customer. Also, your recurring billing software needs to fit your product or service needs. There are many other essential things that your billing system needs to manage, such as:
1. Recurring Billing Automation: Automation is crucial for any business involved in recurring payments. It enables you to send automatic invoices to customers and remind them of failed or missed payments. This can help you save time and resources instead of calling every customer to make them aware of the failed transactions. A right recurring billing system can leverage the technology and determine what is wrong with the card or the whole transaction.
2. Recurring Lifecycle Management: To handle recurring transactions, you need to use a billing service that supports a variety of subscription plans with different pricing and contract length, including benefits, discounts, or add-ons.
3. Dunning Management: Dunning is the process of notifying a customer that their payment has failed. Dunning management is also known as a failed payment recovery system that makes persistent demands to a customer, especially for an amount that got declined earlier. Recurring billing software must send an automated notification to your customer, stating that their payment has failed or encountered issues.
4. Payment Gateway Options: A small business succeeds by offering an excellent customer experience, and a crucial part of that customer experience is accepting online transactions. An inability to accept payments can lead to bad customer experience, so make sure your subscription or recurring billing platform supports several payments gateways.
5. Revenue Retention: Recurring billing systems must have data on failed payments and lost customers, which can help you optimize your strategy to decline customer churn.
6. Robust API: Through APIs, customers can update the hosted payment page to make them more efficient and quicker.
7. Trials, Promotions, and Discounts: A recurring billing system must be fully customizable to offer trials, promotions, and discounts. It can be challenging for a small business to track all the volume manually and tiered discounts. An excellent recurring billing platform can easily incorporate and monitor all the coupons, trials, and discounts.
Top 5 Recurring Billing Software for Small Business
An excellent recurring billing system can automatically renew subscriptions without the inconvenience of making customers fill up all the details over and over again, every time they renew their subscriptions. Having reliable recurring payment systems means you don’t have to focus on payment issues anymore, you can use that time and resources to improve your product or service.
Before you choose a subscription or recurring billing management software, make sure it offers a comprehensive range of payment options. We’ve curated a list of top 5 recurring billing software that you could use in your small business for smoothly taking recurring payments on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis.
1. Payvoice
Payvoice is a Stripe recurring management software that helps small businesses integrate with Stripe in minutes without any coding requirements. Create an unlimited number of subscription plans and unleash new revenue opportunities.
Increase productivity and improve customer satisfaction by streamlining your Stripe Recurring Billing and Subscription Management with the help of Payvoice. An excellent solution for companies that want to set up their subscriptions with Stripe, Payvoice, will sync your Stripe subscriptions automatically and without any additional code.
Payvoice Features
1. Subscription Pages: Create embeddable multi-plan subscription pages that you can customize quickly.
2. Self-Service Subscription Management: Allow your users to manage their subscriptions without any coding.
3. Customer Portal: Allow your users to access their Stripe customer profiles and manage their subscriptions themselves.
4. Get a Unified View: Allow your team to manage all your subscriptions and customer data in one place.
5. Scale Easily with Larger Teams: Add as many users as your team needs to help you manage your subscription plans.
6. Experiment with Different Pricing Options: Create different pricing pages easily to see what works best for your business.
Why Choose Payvoice as your Recurring Billing Software: -
✔ Create embeddable multi-plan subscription pages
✔ Manage Subscription without any Coding
✔ Allow your team to manage all subscriptions and customers’ data at one place
✔ Create different pricing pages
✔ Create as many pricing pages you need
✔ Protect your Stripe data by giving limited access to your team
✔ Run Stripe sync
2. Stripe
While most people around the globe are familiar with PayPal, many small businesses use it as their primary recurring payment platform. Stripe, on the other hand, operates within 30 countries and has powered millions of small businesses that are often less discussed.
Stripe, like PayPal, allows you to accept recurring transactions online for goods or services, and it is considered one of the best recurring payment processors at the moment. Stripe made their payment process and merchant accounts very user-friendly. Even those with little to no development knowledge can set up a new Stripe account and start receiving subscription payments using a plugin like Payvoice.
Stripe Features
1. Globally Used: With operations in over 32 countries, Stripe supports many businesses and allows you to accept payments from the customers in their local currencies and receive it in yours.
2. Account Integration: You can integrate Stripe with your existing account or the core supply chains and recurring payments with ease.
3. Embeddable Checkout: Create an embeddable page or a payment form for desktop, laptop, tablet, or a mobile phone that works within your website. We highly recommend using the Payvoice plugin to create unlimited custom embeddable pages.
4. PCI-DSS Compliant: Any business dealing with customer’s credit or debit card information must be PCI-DSS compliant. It’s a minimum standard for data security by Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). You may be required to meet more than 300+ security controls to get a PCI-DSS compliant certificate. Stripe does this for you and provides hassle-free security for every transaction that meets the PCI-DSS requirements.
5. Invoicing: With Stripe billing, you can create recurring, usage-based, promotional, tiered, and feature-based payments. You can send custom white label invoices and request payments from your clients or customers, including ACH payments.
Why Choose Stripe?
✔ Integrate Faster
✔ Flexible Billing & Payments
✔ Global Payment built-in
✔ PSD2 Compliance
✔ Flexible tax modeling
3. PayPal
PayPal is one of the most popular online payment processors; it’s an American online financial service company allowing users to transfer money or payment for items using a PayPal account. It is free to create an individual or business PayPal account and start sending or receiving payments to anywhere in the world.
A small business needs an essential billing system that lets them accept credit card payments without the expense of a merchant account. But the downside is that the whole process is a bit tedious. There are many possibilities of errors, delays, or even lost payment. PayPal makes this all a lot easier and less stressful.
PayPal recurring payments are known as PayPal Subscriptions. It takes out money from your account after a month just like any other recurring billing platform except in PayPal; you need to login to your account and authorizes the payment. Also, you won’t be able to use the PayPal subscription in many situations, such as using it for collecting rents from your tenants/customers.
PayPal Features
1. Quick Payment Processing: You can create and send an invoice to your customers and receive payments from them in minutes; this makes PayPal as one of the quickest payment processers. Having a PayPal Subscriptions account can help you tremendously when you need to take out fasts payment that you need for your small business to function correctly.
2. Free Transactions: You can send money to your friends or families without any payment processing fee from PayPal. One can select friends or family options while sending funds to someone they know personally and the payment processing fee will be none.
3. Good Encryption and Security: Each transaction on PayPal is highly encrypted that keeps your payment and personal information secure. PayPal also offers purchase protection in case of purchase issues or for a product or service that doesn't match its description as advertised.
4. Custom Express Checkout: PayPal offers express checkout for your customers to review their primary billing address, phone number, email, credit card details, etc. "The PayPal Express Checkout button gives your buyers another way to pay, and it complements your existing Payflow payment solution."
5. PCI-DSS Compliant: PayPal has been listed as a PCI compliant merchant account provider and accepts most types of electronic funds. The list includes such credit cards as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Diners Club, and JCB. PayPal holds certification from the Visa Cardholder Information Security Program, Mastercard Site Data Protection Program, and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant's Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements.
Why Choose PayPal?
✔ Accept Payment Online
✔ Online Invoicing
✔ PCI-DSS Compliant
✔ Express Checkout
✔ Inventory Tracking
✔ Rest API
✔ Virtual Terminal
4. Authorize.net
The Authorize.net is a fully secure, encrypted payment processing platform that makes it easy for your small business to conduct any one time or recurring transaction. You can authorize money transfers, credit card processing, order payments, electronic checks, and utility payments. You can even allow an automated transfer from your Authorize.net account to another account.
Authorize.net Features
1. Setup Cost: Authorize.net accounts are free to setup and use. You can activate your account by submitting your business details and start receiving recurring payments within 24 hours.
2. Region Availability: Authorize.net is available in the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and many Asian countries, unlike PayPal Pro or Stripe that is limited to certain countries.
3. Recurring Payments: Authorize.net recurring billing tools improve transaction efficiency by eliminating the hassle of submitting credit card and personal information manually every time you want to upgrade your subscription.
4. Advanced Fraud Detection: Authorize.net advance fraud detection includes 13 configurable fraud filters that help you recognize, handle, and stop costly fraudulent transactions.
5. Invoicing: Autorize.net custom invoices are user-friendly and mobile-friendly, making it easier for customers to pay you instantly and securely.
Why Choose Authorize.net?
✔ Easy Recurring Billing Setup
✔ Advanced Fraud Detection
✔ Hosted and Integrated Payments Option
✔ Less Transaction Fee
✔ Various Payment Methods
✔ Region Availability
✔ Security Compliance
5. 2Checkout
2Checkout is an excellent option for small businesses to use as their preferred recurring billing software to receive recurring payments from the customers. It allows small businesses to accept payments from anywhere in the world without paying a high payment processing fee.
With 2checkout as your payment processor, you can market worldwide and also accept payments from 200+ nations. With tools and integrations, the system additionally functions to enhance your clients’ experience and also increase conversion rates.
2Checkout Features
1. Global Payment Processing: With 2Checkout, you can sell subscriptions not only locally but also globally. 2Checkout provides buyers a secure localized buying experience by offering them to shop in their local language, local currencies, and preferred payment methods.
2. Recurring Billing: A user can quickly set up and optimize recurring billing solutions across multiple channels from a straightforward user interface. You can use the 2Checkout Authorization and Revenue Recovery Dashboard to monitor the impact of your recovery strategies.
3. Advanced Reporting System: You can monitor renewal forecasts, cohort analysis, and manage your subscription-based business monthly or annual recurring revenue reports. You can also get data on other essential metrics, such as active subscriptions and customer churn rates.
4. Risk Management: 2Checkout offers a multi-tier defense strategy and goes above and beyond to identify fraudulent transactions to protect you and your customers from any fraudulent activities. They use AI and a combination of the manual review processes to minimize fraud transactions.
5. Optimize Revenue Streams: 2Checout offers Digital Partner Sales, which is a niche affiliate system. It allows you to reach in front of your target audience worldwide and use their channel manager solution to boost your sales online.
Why Choose 2Checkout?
✔ Multi-Language & Currency Support
✔ Low Payment Processing Fees
✔ Order Processing
✔ Marketing and Sales Tools
✔ Fixed Pricing Rate
✔ Mobile Payments
Final Words
If you understand your business needs, then selecting a recurring billing software isn't that hard or costly. It is vital to choose the right recurring billing platform to impact your customer's experience and profitability positively.
We recommend you to ask the recurring billing providers a demo to review the purchasing funnel and select the one that fits your small business needs. All you need to do is do proper research and test every recurring billing software you think is best for your business.
