How to Choose the Best Subscription Billing Software

The best subscription billing software should be specific to your technology, fulfillment, and customer engagement needs. While there are hundreds of options, the right platform can enable you to grow into new regions with relative ease, even as you navigate payment gateways, revenue recognition, and compliance regulations. 

• Choosing to buy software is a strategic decision about focus. While building a custom tool in-house offers control, it also turns your company into a billing software business, creating a permanent cost center and diverting talent from your core product. Buying a solution from a strategic partner allows you to launch faster, outsource security and compliance risks, and free up your team to focus on customers.
• Your platform should be a growth engine, not just a billing tool. The right software helps you grow faster by letting you adapt quickly without draining engineering resources. It enables you to grow smarter by providing a single source of truth for data-driven insights.

• Prioritize features that protect and grow your revenue. Look for a platform with proven tools to fight involuntary churn, such as automatic payment updates and intelligent retries. Your business strategy should drive your billing, not the other way around, so ensure the software supports flexible billing models and promotional tools.

Subscription billing software is an application that companies use to automate and implement subscription changes across their business. Whether you’re just launching a new subscription service or have been an established player for years, subscription billing software can provide numerous benefits that directly impact acquisition, retention, and churn. Subscription billing software can help tackle things like: 

• Automating invoicing and card payment processing
• Helping you scale into new regions with local payment and currency support
• Giving you the flexibility to offer different pricing plans across your product lines
• Fighting involuntary churn to keep more revenue
• Giving you actionable playbooks to fight churn and maintain retention through pricing, promotions, and win-back campaigns 
• Automating finance and accounting compliance and recognized revenue
• Following compliance and regulations across regions without manual interference 

When it comes to launching a subscription platform or managing a high performing subscription company, building vs buying a software solution is on every exec’s mind. In short, both have their advantages and disadvantages:

Build In-house: You own a custom tool

• Upside: Ultimate control. It’s a proprietary asset built exactly for your current processes.

• Downside: You’re now in the billing software business. This means a permanent cost center, diverted engineering talent from your core product, slow adaptation to market changes, and owning 100% of the security and compliance risk.

Buy software: You gain a strategic partner

• Upside: Unmatched speed and focus. You launch faster, outsource risk, and free your team to focus on customers. You benefit from continuous innovation from experts and access to innovative tools.
• Downside: It’s an ongoing operational expense (OpEx) and you are dependent on your vendor’s roadmap for major new capabilities.

The right choice isn't about features; it's a strategic decision that will define your company's agility, global reach, and ability to outmaneuver competitors for the next decade. It can determine your strategies for retention, churn, and so much more. You’ll be able to react to subscription industry trends and ensure you’re ready for market shifts. If you’re looking for a solution that will enable you to scale quickly and help guide your subscription platform to make the most informed decisions, using a subscription billing platform is the way to go. 
If you’d like to read more on this topic, check out our checklist on building vs buying. 

So you have decided that you want to invest in subscription software, now what? The best subscription billing software should meet at least three core requirements for your business: