Lucid Software’s journey: From freemium to global monetization success
A 14-year partnership
Since its founding in 2010, Lucid Software has been on a mission to “help teams see and build the future from idea to reality.” A leader in end-to-end visual collaboration and work acceleration, Lucid serves more than 100 million users across over 180 countries and is the most used visual collaboration platform by the Fortune 500. The company’s innovative suite of products — Lucidspark and Lucidchart — empowers teams by enabling real-time collaboration to streamline work, foster alignment, and drive business transformation at scale.
At the heart of Lucid's rapid expansion and success lies its partnership with Recurly. Since the beginning, Recurly has managed Lucid's subscription billing and payments, supporting the company's rapid global growth.
Building a path to monetization
From day one, Lucid offered a freemium version of its products, allowing users to access its tools at no cost. But at the outset, Lucid faced a notable challenge: transforming a free product into a monetizable subscription model. With a growing user base came the need for a more robust system to track users, manage subscription plans, and process payments, all while maintaining PCI compliance.
"We built a product, but it didn't have a tool for tracking subscriptions or billing or collecting payments," recalled Steve Wellman, Senior Director of Business Systems at Lucid. “So, the challenge was really about ensuring we had a solid foundation for subscription and payment management to provide a seamless experience for our customers.”
The challenge was really about ensuring we had a solid foundation for subscription and payment management to provide a seamless experience for our customers.
Searching for an all-in-one solution
As the business grew, so did its requirements. Initially focused in the DTC (direct-to-consumer) space, Lucid needed real-time payment processing and payment method validation to support its subscriber experience. Without immediate validation, Lucid risked leaving customers waiting on a page for verification or, worse, starting them in a delinquent or at-risk state.
“As we looked around the market, most of the solutions available were B2B-focused and couldn't do real-time payment authorizations,” Wellman explained. “If you have a DTC motion like we do, then when a customer signs up, you need to collect their payment method and validate it in real time.”
But Lucid needed more than just a subscription management tool — it needed a trusted partner with an all-in-one platform that could scale alongside the company. Evolving from a startup to a global leader, Lucid sought a solution that could directly integrate into its product, providing a seamless subscriber experience while freeing its team from the complexity of managing multiple vendors and compliance risks. Most importantly, this solution needed to be a single source of truth for all subscription operations, empowering Lucid to streamline its growth and focus on what matters most: delivering value to its subscribers.
A unified platform for subscription management
Ultimately, Lucid found its answer in Recurly. With a comprehensive suite of tools to handle subscription management, payment processing, renewals, and compliance, Recurly provided a single, unified platform to support Lucid’s growth.
One of the biggest advantages of Recurly is that it brings everything together in a single solution
“One of the biggest advantages of Recurly is that it brings everything together in a single solution,” said Wellman. “Through one partner, I can collect payment methods and store that information in a PCI-compliant way. You can manage subscriptions, invoicing, renewals, dunning emails, payment retries, payment gateways, etc.”
This all-in-one-approach empowered Lucid to streamline its subscription operations, without needing to develop multiple solutions in-house or manage multiple vendors. With Recurly, Lucid could securely collect payment methods, manage billing across global gateways, and maintain PCI compliance — all from one dashboard.
This streamlined experience also extended to Recurly’s integration capabilities. With Recurly’s robust, customizable API, Lucid was able to embed subscription functions directly into its product. This meant Lucid could display essential account details — like subscription plans and billing history — within its customer portal, creating a frictionless experience for subscribers.
Solving for complex B2B and DTC subscription needs
In addition to its DTC focus, Lucid's expanding B2B operations required subscription capabilities that could integrate with Salesforce. Recurly’s enhanced proration feature has been instrumental in meeting these needs by providing the flexibility to customize proration settings for each subscription. With this functionality, Lucid can ensure accurate billing adjustments for mid-cycle changes, whether customers are adding seats, upgrading plans, or modifying their contracts.
“The proration tool is huge for us,” Wellman said. “It allows us to accurately manage customer purchases across both B2B and DTC channels, ensuring correct billing for both use cases.”
Furthermore, Lucid’s DTC model benefits from Recurly’s real-time payment validation, which helps streamline customer onboarding and reduce churn at signup. By confirming valid payment credentials from the start, Recurly helps Lucid reduce high-risk accounts and optimize the customer journey right from day one.
Recurly’s integration with Avalara, a leading tax compliance solution, also supports Lucid’s international customer base by calculating tax rates in many of the 180+ countries where Lucid operates. This functionality is especially critical in regions where showing a full price, including tax, is legally required. With Recurly’s tax preview feature, Lucid can provide customers with accurate, region-specific pricing and stay compliant as it expands into new markets.
Streamlined dunning processes
When asked what other Recurly features have been especially impactful, Wellman explained, “Honestly, it works so smoothly that I don’t think about it much. It just does what it’s supposed to, which is a great thing.”
Honestly, it works so smoothly that I don’t think about it much. It just does what it’s supposed to, which is a great thing
However, he pointed out that Recurly has played a vital role in managing Lucid’s automated dunning processes. The payment retry system, in particular, has been hugely effective in recovering revenue and efficiently managing payment collections.
“We use Recurly for all of our payment retries,” Wellman said. “Recurly uses its AI to determine when and how many [times to perform payment retries] — and honestly, that's something that we don't think twice about.”
Fueling global expansion
Over the last 15 years, Lucid has quickly scaled from a startup to a global leader. Through Recurly’s international compliance support and reliable automation, Lucid has seamlessly expanded its global footprint, accommodating complex global regulations and tax requirements with ease.
“Just the fact that we can [operate on this scale] speaks loads to our growth as a company — and to Recurly’s,” Wellman explains. “We couldn’t have grown if Recurly couldn't support us.”
With Recurly as a partner since day one, Lucid’s global reach and financial success continues to flourish, allowing the company to focus on delivering value to its subscribers worldwide.
For Wellman, the impact is clear: “Lucid went from nothing to running its business in 180+ countries, with over 100 million users worldwide and 99% of the Fortune 500 as customers — all powered by Recurly.”
Lucid went from nothing to running its business in 180+ countries, with over 100 million users worldwide and 99% of the Fortune 500 as customers — all powered by Recurly.
A future built on partnership
Reflecting on Lucid’s experience with Recurly, one word came to mind for Wellman: consistency.
“Recurly is stable — it’s consistent. That's incredibly beneficial for us,” he said. “The product is consistently there and does what we need it to do.”
Looking ahead, this partnership with Recurly remains integral to Lucid’s continued success. Subscriptions will stay at the core of Lucid’s business model, fueling growth across a wide customer spectrum, from freemium users to enterprise contracts. And Recurly will continue to power key subscription functions such as invoicing, tax management, and payments — areas where Recurly excels and Lucid can rely on our consistent support.
“Our businesses have grown up together. We've been with each other since the start and we’ve both grown quite a bit,” explained Wellman. “Throughout the years, Recurly has been a fantastic partner.”
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