What is the Best Subscription Billing Software?
The answer depends on your company’s specific requirements and factors such as your product catalog, pricing model, invoicing volume, and payment options. There are over 50 subscription billing software applications on the market. Most offer a similar set of features and capabilities. The real difference is the type of customers and use cases each vendor caters to.
High-Volume B2C or High-Complexity B2B
Some subscription billing software is designed to generate high volumes of standardized B2C invoices. For example, a streaming media company might need 10M monthly bills, each with a single line item and fixed pricing that doesn’t change month-to-month. Other billing applications are designed to handle lower volumes of more complex B2B invoices. For example, an IT services company might need to generate only 500 invoices each month, but on each bill there are dozens of usage-based charges that vary from month to month.
When considering what the best subscription billing software for your business, consider whether you are looking for a solution that supports:
- B2B or B2C (or both)
- Industry-specific functionality (SaaS, telecom, publishing) or not
- Subscription or usage-based pricing (or both)
- Developer-friendly or finance-centric
Top 10 Subscription Billing Software Applications
In this article, we’ll list 10 of the top subscription billing vendors for both SMBs and enterprises. We’ll share a summary of the feedback for each vendor from real-world customer reviews. We’ll also summarize the critical capabilities you should look for in a recurring billing solution. Finally, we’ll share who the independent analyst firms such as Gartner, IDC, and Forrester rank as the best subscription billing software applications.
Best Subscription Billing Software for Startups & SMBs
Several of the best subscription billing software solutions cater primarily to startups and SMBs. Even though small businesses may have a relatively small amount of revenue, they often have considerable complexity in their order-to-cash processes. Most have two or three products and a mix of both usage and subscription pricing models. Most operate in more than one country, which means multiple tax jurisdictions, multiple currencies, and multiple legal entities that need to be supported. Small businesses need tight integrations between their subscription billing applications and CRM, general ledger, tax automation, and payment gateways.
Startups and small businesses are more likely to buy a full revenue suite of products from a single vendor. The suite usually includes subscription billing, revenue recognition, metrics reporting, and, in some cases, a configure, price, and quote (CPQ) application. Some of the best subscription billing software applications for SMBs include:
Ordway
Ordway is one of the fastest-growing subscription billing platforms. The company sells primarily to tech companies with business models focused on SaaS, cloud, fintech, marketplaces, and AI. Ordway is a favorite of finance leaders at current/future unicorns like Modern Treasury, Alloy, Ocrolus, and Grin. The company offers a full platform for the revenue-facing side of finance, which includes revenue recognition, accounts receivable, and SaaS metrics reporting. Customers can start with subscription billing and then expand into using the other modules.
Ordway offers a flexible product catalog that supports a wide variety of pricing models, including good-better-best tiers, per-user models, and usage-based pricing. The rating engine supports multi-product bundling, volume discounting, overage fees, and prepaid credits. Customers can embed Ordway in their own websites to enable a self-service buying experience to lower acquisition costs. Invoices can be personalized to include custom line items, rating tables, links to tax documentation, and FAQs.
Ordway’s billing engine can be connected to the popular CRM, ERP, and accounting systems, including Salesforce, Hubspot, Netsuite, Quickbooks, Avalara, and Stripe. Pricing is based on the dollar value of transactions processed. However, the price is not a percentage model. It is fixed with a predictable annual fee.
Stripe Billing
Stripe’s billing solution is a favorite of developers. Big tech providers such as Atlassian, Figma, OpenAI, Ring, and Cloudflare use it to support recurring billing of SaaS and cloud offerings.
Stripe’s subscription billing software supports a variety of pricing models, including per-seat, good-better-best, and usage-based pricing. It is designed to work with Stripe’s payments platform, which can process credit cards in 135 different currencies and supports a wide variety of bank debit transactions in different countries. Advanced dunning features are available, including a machine-learning-based algorithm for retrying failed card transactions. In addition to the billing and payment features, Stripe also offers subscription management. Customers can use the self-service portal to download invoices, make payments, cancel, upgrade, and downgrade subscriptions
End customer reviews give Stripe Billing high scores for its ease of use and payment processing. Pricing for Stripe Billing is published on its website. A free trial is available to test out the capabilities before making a commitment.
Billsby
Billsby offers subscription billing for companies in the SaaS, financial services, healthcare, e-commerce, IoT, media, and entertainment industries. Features include product and plan management, custom invoice templates, payment retries, and tax compliance. In addition to subscription billing, Billsby also offers revenue recognition, usage billing, and metric reporting. You can connect Billsby to a wide variety of third-party applications. Integrations are available with Zapier, WebEx, FreeAgent, Quickbooks, Stripe, TaxJar, and the most popular website content management systems. You can register for a free trial to test out Billsby. The price list is published on the website.
End-user reviews on independent rating websites give Billsby high marks for customer support, ease of use, and integrations. Learn more about Billsby.
OneBill
OneBill offers subscription billing applications for companies in the telecom, SaaS, IoT, logistics, utilities, energy, and automotive industries. It supports one-time and recurring billing with discounts, coupons, packages, and add-ons. OneBill provides subscription lifecycle management capabilities to activate free trials and new subscriptions, pause and resume subscriptions, and grow customers with cross-sell and upsell workflows.
OneBill integrates with dozens of applications, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, DocuSign, Quickbooks, WebEx, and ShipStation. In addition to its subscription billing product, OneBill also offers applications for configure, price, and quote (CPQ), customer relationship management (CRM) and usage-based billing.
Customer reviews rate OneBill highly for its ease of use, customer support, and invoicing capabilities.
Stax Bill
Stax Bill, formerly known as Fusebill, offers a suite of products that includes subscription billing, revenue recognition, and analytics. Its customers, which include Uberflip, JustLogin, and Envue Telematics, give Stax Bill high ratings for the platform’s ease of use and invoicing management.
Stax Bill supports subscription management with a self-service portal that enables end-users to manage their own products, plans, and payment methods. In addition to the billing features, Stax also offers dunning emails, automated payment retries, and AR aging reports. Payments can be collected through hosted pages or auto-pay and processed via one or more payment gateways. Stax Bill can be connected to CRM applications like Hubspot and Salesforce and accounting systems like Quickbooks and Netsuite.
The pricing model is simple. Customers pay a flat monthly fee for the platform with no overages or percentage charges. Learn more about Stax Bill (Fusebill).
NetSuite SuiteBilling
NetSuite ERP suite is a favorite of middle-market CFOs across various industries. In addition to the core general ledger, fixed asset, accounts payable, and financial reporting modules offered by NetSuite, the company also has a recurring billing application. SuiteBilling, as it is called, includes subscription management features to support new customer acquisition and upgrades, downgrades, renewals, and cancelations. NetSuite’s rating engine supports various pricing models, including one-time charges, recurring subscription fees, and variable fee usage-based pricing.
SuiteBilling was not initially developed by NetSuite. In 2015, the company acquired Monexa’s subscription billing software platform and rebranded it as SuiteBilling. However, it does not have the solid native integration that other financial applications have with the NetSuite core ERP system.
NetSuite does not publish pricing for SuiteBilling on its website, but many users report that the company is often willing to bundle it for free with the other modules in its ERP suite.
Subscription Billing
Ordway’s Online Guide
Learn how it works for subscriptions, SaaS, and other recurring billing models:
- Subscription management, upgrades & renewals
- Discounts, coupons, and prorations
- Auto-pay, pay now, ACH debits, and bank transfers
Best Subscription Billing Software for Enterprises
Some subscription billing applications are better suited for large enterprises with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. Larger enterprises typically have more complexity than SMBs. For example, a large enterprise may need its subscription billing application to connect to multiple general ledgers and multiple CRM applications. Larger organizations are more likely to have a multinational footprint and will need support for more local currencies, more local accounting standards, more local payment gateways, and more local tax policies. Additionally, enterprise companies are more likely to purchase multiple applications from multiple vendors to fulfill their order-to-cash needs. They might buy one solution just to perform rating and billing and use other solutions from other vendors to perform the associated revenue recognition and accounts receivable functions.
Some of the best subscription billing software applications for large enterprises are:
Zuora
Zuora is consistently rated one of the best subscription billing software vendors by leading analyst firms. For example, the company ranks prominently in both the Forrester Wave and the IDC Marketscape for Enterprise-Focused Subscription and Usage-Management Applications. Zuora Billing is used by companies in the software, high-tech, manufacturing, media, and entertainment sectors. Examples of customers include Zoom, Docusign, Box, GitLab, GoPro, and the Guardian.
In addition to billing, the company also offers applications for Configure, Price, and Quote, revenue recognition, and usage-based billing. Zuora billing integrates with Salesforce and Hubspot CRMs, the Google Play and Apple App Store, and a wide variety of payment gateways and tax applications. You can request a price quote and demo of Zuora’s software from the company’s website.
User reviews on independent websites such as G2 rate Zuora highly for its ease of use and billing management.
Aria Systems
Aria is one of the larger subscription billing providers. The company ranks as a leader in the most recent IDC Marketscape and Gartner Magic Quadrant for Recurring Billing Applications. Customers of Aria billing include Experian, Comcast, First Energy, Hootsuite, and Oxford University.
Aria’s billing platform includes an open product catalog that can model different bundles, discounts, and promotions to support a wide variety of monetization models. In addition to the core billing and invoicing features Aria’s platform provides a customer self-service portal, collections, dunning, payments, and taxation functionality.
Aria connects with dozens of payment gateways, data platforms, and tax automation systems. They have also built out extensive integrations with the ServiceNow and Salesforce platforms. Learn more about Aria Systems.
Salesforce Billing
As part of its Revenue Cloud offering, Salesforce has recently introduced a new automated recurring billing application. The Salesforce solution is popular amongst companies that use the CRM platform for its salesforce automation and its configure, price, and quote (CPQ) applications. Customers adopting the full suite can manage the entire revenue lifecycle on a single platform from the initial lead generation and sales quote through upsell motions and invoice generation. Salesforce billing functionality can be extended through integrations via the company’s MuleSoft iPaaS and third-party applications offered via the AppExchange marketplace. Salesforce Revenue Cloud is priced on a per user, per month subscription basis with costs ranging from $25/user/month for the starter suite to $500/user/month for the AI-powered Einstein suite.
SAP Subscription Billing
SAP’s subscription billing application is used by companies like Roche, Schueco, Kuka, and Leadsquared.
The billing app is designed to integrate with SAP’s core ERP and financial applications including the general ledger, accounts receivable, and revenue recognition. SAP supports the subscription lifecycle management to automate contract changes such as updates and auto-renewals. Supports tailored bundling of products, modeling of complex pricing logic, and creation of customer-specific promotions. In addition to subscription billing, SAP offers applications for Configure, Price, and Quote, entitlement management, as well as contract accounting and invoicing.
Subscription Billing Software
from Ordway
Bill monthly, quarterly, or annually. Adjust billing when customers add users, change tiers, or add new products. Collect payments using auto-pay with credit cards or send invoices for payment through ACH/wire.
What to Look for in a Subscription Billing Application?
Features of the Best Subscription Billing Software
There are several dozen subscription billing software vendors in the market. Some focus on large enterprise accounts, while others cater to startups and small businesses. Some focus on specific industries such as SaaS, telecom, or publishing, while others focus across sectors. Some focus on automating high volumes of simple bills and automated credit card payments, while others focus on generating more complex, customized invoices that are processed through accounts payable workflows. Learn more about how the recurring billing process works.
Although there are many different shapes and sizes of subscription billing software, they all have a common set of functionality. Common features include rating, invoice generation, payment collections, and accounts receivable.
Product & Price Catalog
The product catalog in the billing application can be the system of record or it can be a copy of master data housed in a CPQ application. In either case, the catalog is used to model the different products, plans, prices, and discount models that will be used in the billing process. Examples include multi-product bundles, free trials, monthly (pay-as-you-go) plans, annual contracts, volume discounts, tiered discounts, short-term promotions, and one-time incentives for new customers.
Rating Engine
The heart of the billing system that performs the complex computations to determine the individual charges for each account. The rating engine takes the customer’s subscriptions, pricing, discounts, contract terms, and usage patterns as inputs. It determines the unit price and quantity for each product and then calculates the appropriate changes. All subscription billing software applications can rate fixed, recurring fees, known as “subscription pricing.” More advanced rating engines can also calculate charges for usage-based pricing.
Invoice Generation
The line item charges are captured from the rating engine and then added to each customer invoice. VAT and/or sales tax must be computed based on the customer’s local jurisdiction and tax status. The final line items, tax amounts, and totals are then added to the customer-facing invoices rendered in PDF or another format. Most invoices also include the supplier’s tax identification numbers, payment instructions, and contact information for the accounts receivable team.
Payment Collections
Billing systems enable customers to set up auto-pay or pay “on-demand” via a hosted payment page. For larger dollar-value subscriptions, some customers may want to be invoiced and paid via check, ACH, or wire transfer. Few billing systems process payments on their platform. Most connect to an external payment gateway such as Stripe, CardConnect, or Braintree, which facilitates the actual exchange of funds and sends confirmations back to the billing system.
Accounts Receivable
Most billing systems also include the ability to track the status of outstanding invoices and payment transactions. Aging reports help finance teams understand which invoices are 30, 60, or 90 days past due and which are expected to be paid in the coming weeks. Another key feature is automated dunning workflows which are designed to ensure that customers pay on time. Two popular features are sending automated email reminders about upcoming payments and automated retries for failed credit card transactions.
CRM and ERP Integrations
Most billing systems need to connect to upstream systems like a CRM application to get the details about each account, including the products and services, pricing and discounts, payment methods, and contract terms needed for invoice generation. In addition, downstream systems need data from the billing system, such as details about invoices, payments, refunds, credits, and receivables. For SaaS and cloud applications, it is also common for billing systems to connect to the actual product to synchronize financial details about each account and the usage patterns of individual customers. Learn more about billing system integrations.
Rankings of the Best Subscription Billing Software
Some of the larger billing software vendors include Zuora, Aria Systems, and SAP. Although they are best known for enterprise customers, it is important to note that these vendors don’t just work with large companies. They do have middle-market and smaller businesses as well.
Gartner Magic Quadrant
For Recurring Billing Applications
Gartner selected 17 of the best subscription billing software vendors to include in its latest Magic Quadrant. There were over 240 solution providers identified, but only those with more than $10M in annual revenue or $2 billion in invoicing through the system were included. For each of the 17 vendors, Gartner provides a list of strengths and cautions. The report can be obtained directly from Gartner or through a handful of the leading vendors that have licensed it for distribution.
IDC Marketscape
Worldwide Enterprise-Focused Subscription and Usage Management Applications 2022 Vendor Assessment
IDC’s latest MarketScape analysis focused on the best subscription billing software vendors for enterprises. The research firm evaluated 12 vendors based on 44 different critical pieces of functionality. IDC identified 6 vendors of, which were ranked in the leaders section of the MarketScape. You can obtain the report directly from IDC. Alternatively, you can download it from several of the leading vendors that have licensed web distribution rights.
Forrester Wave
SaaS Recurring Billing Solutions, Q1 2023
In its latest SaaS Recurring Billing Solutions Wave report, Forrester analyzed 10 vendors based on 26 criteria. To be included in the short list of the best subscription billing software vendors, companies needed to generate $20M in annual product revenues and have a track record of serving enterprise-size customers with over $1 billion in annual revenues. The vendors were grouped into four categories – 1) leaders, 2) strong performers, 3) contenders, and 4) challengers based on their strategy and current offering. Only one vendor was identified as a leader. The Wave report can be obtained directly from Forrester or from the websites of the vendors included.
MGI
Agile Billing Top 50: A Buyer’s Guide
In its 360 Market Ratings Report, MGI evaluated the 50 best subscription billing software vendors and plotted them on to its four quadrant matrix based on each company’s solution strength and go-to-market strategy. MGI categorizes each vendor into market segments – HyperScale, Enterprise, MidMarket, and SmallBiz and assigns a positive or neutral rating for each. You can obtain the Buyer’s Guide report directly from MGI.
