Piano shows you what readers do.
Recurly makes sure you get paid.
Our intelligent dunning has recovered $1.2B+ for subscription businesses, and $82M for publishers in the past year alone.
Trusted by the world's leading publishers
RECURLY FOR PUBLISHERS - BY THE NUMBERS
130+
Publisher Customers
$82M
Recovered Revenue
(Last 12 Months)
20.6%
Avg Recovery as % of Payment Volume
16.6x
Average ROI revenue
$12.3M
Active Subscribers Managed
Why choose Recurly over Piano for subscription billing
Understanding your audience is table stakes. Optimizing their billing is a competitive advantage.
Subscription-first architecture
Every feature is built for recurring revenue, not bolted onto an analytics platform. No iframes, no drag, no "thousands of lines of code" to make a simple change.
Payment flexibility that scales
Support ACH, SEPA, PayPal, Apple Pay, and 15+ global payment methods.
Proven dunning & revenue recovery
Recurly's AI-powered revenue optimization engine recovered $1.2B last year. Static retries leave money on the table.
Deeper subscription analytics
Go beyond pageviews. Track MRR, churn cohorts, and customer lifetime value. Know what's making you money, not just what's getting clicks.
Passive churn prevention
Recurly Engage intercepts failed payments and cancellations with intelligent prompts that reduce involuntary churn before it happens.
Fits your stack, without lock-in
Full API control, no-code ease, and freedom to choose your payment processors.
Piano's biggest gaps: dunning, payment recovery, and passive churn
| Capability | Piano | Recurly |
|---|---|---|
| Core focus | Audience analytics & paywalls | Subscription management and recurring billing |
| Dunning management | Static retry schedules | ML-powered intelligent retries |
| Failed payment recovery | Manual/limited | Automated ($1.2B recovered in 2024) |
| Passive churn prevention | Basic | Built-in cancel-save flows, winbacks |
| Payment method flexibility | Limited | ACH, SEPA, PayPal, Apple Pay, 15+ methods |
| Checkout A/B testing | Limited | Full experimentation support |
| Global currencies | Plan duplication required | Native multi-currency |
| Billing architecture | Severely limited | Vendor-neutral, processor flexibility |
| Revenue Recognition | Manual/spreadsheets | Automated ASC 606 / IFRS 15 |
| Support expertise | Analytics-first | Subscription experts, 97% CSAT |
Can you offer ACH, SEPA, PayPal, and local payment methods around the world?
Recurly supports:
- Credit/debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover)
- Digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, PayPal)
- Bank payments (ACH, SEPA, BACS, BECS)
- Local payment methods across 40+ countries
- 15+ payment gateways with no processor lock-in
On average, Recurly's intelligent dunning recovers revenue worth 20.6% of total payment volume. That's $82M recovered for publishers in the last 12 months alone.
Subscriptions are not our core business so engaging the experts at Recurly has saved us engineering hours, internal resource drain, and delivers a higher quality experience for our customers.
We are very fast to react and also very flexible. Recurly plays a huge part in that.
This is a no-brainer must-have for any digital business. Double-digit improvements to engagement and retention in the first week.
Frequently asked questions
Is Recurly better than Piano for subscription billing?
Recurly is purpose-built for subscription billing, revenue recovery, and churn prevention. Piano is an analytics and paywall platform with basic billing bolted on. If your priority is maximizing subscriber revenue (not just audience behavior), Recurly is the better fit.
What does Piano lack in subscription management and dunning?
Piano offers static retry schedules with minimal insight into recovery performance. Recurly’s dunning management software uses machine learning to optimize retry timing, recover failed payments automatically, and prevent passive churn.
How does Recurly’s failed payment recovery compare to Piano?
Recurly’s intelligent retry engine and Account Updater automatically recover revenue that Piano’s basic dunning misses. For every $100 in payment volume, Recurly’s failed payment recovery tools save publishers an additional $20.60 that would otherwise be lost.
Can I use Recurly if I already use Piano for analytics or paywalls?
A: Yes! Many publishers keep Piano for audience analytics or advanced paywalls while using Recurly for subscription billing, revenue recovery, and RevRec. A global business news publisher uses this exact architecture. Recurly integrates with Piano and lets you decouple billing from content access.
What is a dunning management solution?
Dunning management software automates the process of recovering failed subscription payments. It determines when and how to retry declined transactions, updates expired card details, and communicates with subscribers to prevent involuntary churn. Recurly’s ML-powered dunning recovered $1.2B in 2023.
What subscription billing platform do media and publishing companies use?
Leading publishers including The Washington Post, Fortune, Axios, Yahoo, and Business of Fashion use Recurly. Recurly manages 12.3M+ active publisher subscribers and has recovered $82M in publisher revenue in the last 12 months.
Loved by growth teams around the world
Piano shows you the data. Recurly shows you the money.
