Maxio

Solid App for Recurring Revenue Businesses

Comments: We use Chargify as the transactional backbone of our recurring revenue businesses. It is solid in its capabilities, adequately flexible for our needs, and has a very good set of API's that have allowed us to incorporate Chargify's system into our software platform. Chargify's reporting and email functions are very basic and don't give us the detailed SaaS metrics we need in order to keep a good handle on the business. However, a robust ecosystem of complementary tools such as, for example, ChartMogul, have evolved to add much more precision to Chargify's reporting.

Pros:

- Wide flexibility to create different recurring revenue offers (trial/no-trial, credit card/no credit card, monthly/quarterly/annual, coupon and discount codes, etc.) - Integration with a large number of payment gateways - Robust API's - Broad flexibility (via CSS) for styling public-facing pages - Takes care of all the messy details of maintaining credit cards - Referral codes and links - Good, comprehensive documentation

Cons:

- Reporting is weak, especially on metrics for managing recurring revenue businesses, such as MRR (monthly recurring revenue), churn rates, ARPA (average revenue per account), etc; must use 3rd party applications to get these, using imported Chargify data - Email notifications are primitive - Coupons cannot be assigned to individual products

Amazing billing flexibility

Comments: Overall very good. The software is quite complex to fully understand and the sales process could be a bit more transparent.

Pros:

The ability to flexibly manage our subscription products. Our previous management system for direct debits did not offer the flexibility other than to set up and cancel a direct debit subscription. Chargify now allows us to administer multiple things including placing accounts on hold, changing billing date, changing amounts etc.

Cons:

We started using the software, integrating with GoCardless. We were one of the first to use this new integration and there were and still are a few limitations. However, the customer support has been excellent and they are very receptive to accommodating our enhancements and feature requests.

Alternatives Considered: Chargebee

Reasons for Choosing Maxio: Lack of flexibility to manage subscriptions via GoCardless, plus this system was not able to manage communications to customers. We still use GoCardless as our payment merchant, but use Chargify to make the management of our direct debit subscriptions more elastic!

Switched From: GoCardless

Reasons for Switching to Maxio: Better sales and customer service from Chargify, and they clearly demonstrated the product and how it would fit our needs. Chargebee system seemed too complex.

Relationship invoicing has constant bugs, can't rely on Chargify

Comments: There has been a LOT of ongoing frustration on as they slowly fix bugs. We signed up and used some very new features of Chargify that weren't ready for prime-time. They didn't tell us we'd be guinea pigs when signing us up for a service with a $$$$ premium price tag. Hopefully anyone that follows will benefit from our testing of the software. Obviously Chargify isn't doing sufficient testing internally. I regret choosing Chargify, but don't have the time to drop them yet.

Pros:

Good fit for monthly SaaS, if not using the buggy relationship invoicing/customer hierarchies

Cons:

Relationship invoicing and customer hierarchies have been continuously buggy. Basic features like partial refunds were missing at first, or partially functional. Support response is quick, but unhelpful. Escalation takes a while for a permanent fix. We're having to add a secondary system for managing our customer subscriptions to work around all of the errors in Chargify. We have ongoing retraining of our employees for bug work-arounds.

Very good for specific use cases, with other functionality not adequate

Comments: We wanted to manage subscriptions, feed quickbooks with info for revenue reporting, and track churn/MRR/ARR. But, we can only manage subscriptions with it and can' achieve the other goals.

Pros:

Good APIs Easy setup Simple UI Lots of analytics Good at monthly subscriptions with credit card billing

Cons:

Non-monthly subscriptions are not handled well and not incorporated into MRR/ARR properly when there are mid-cycle change Revenue recognition severely lacking for anything but monthly, credit card subscriptions Invoice handling severely lacking Integration capabilities for quickbooks are inadequate for anything but monthly credit card subscriptions Webhooks almost there but key data points are missing from key webhooks, like a customer ID on an invoice generated or invoice payment

Alternatives Considered: Recurly, Zuora and Chargebee

Reasons for Choosing Maxio: Grow out of the old product

Switched From: CBSubs

Reasons for Switching to Maxio: Blend of features and simplicity, unfortunately some of the features I hoped we would have did not pan out

Solid product, good support, stable

Comments: Good solid stable software that simply works. Never have to worry that my recurring rev is going to be charged correctly and on time. Integrates with my other tools well. The dunning feature is critical for any recurring business and yours works well.

Pros:

Good solid program, works well for Saas companies. Integrates well with payment processors. Good support. Manages products well.

Cons:

Needs a clone feature for products. Needs upsell/downsell feature. Was suprised when you initiated a percentage fee on sales when it was inititally a monthly set cost.

Alternatives Considered: PayKickstart

Reasons for Choosing Maxio: Stability and security

Reasons for Switching to Maxio: I didnt I own both because I need the upsell feature.

We rely heavily on Chargify for Platform

Comments: Customizing payment options and plans within one account for multiple different enterprises.

Pros:

Our software is primarily a subscription based service with various enterprise clients that all have different needs for their representatives. This means we have to tailor the pricing models based on the services these clients are using. Chargify makes it easy to quickly ascertain our revenues and churn rates and also identify key areas of improvement. Chargify is a robust platform we have chosen to implement and will continue to support.

Cons:

Due to the extensive features Chargify has, it can be quite daunting at first glance for someone not experienced with running different kinds of reports. However, once they get up and running, the process gets smoother, but it is an initially steep learning curve in my opinion.

Alternatives Considered: authorize.net

Reasons for Switching to Maxio: Ease of use and the amount of features available.

Chargify for a SAAS service

Comments: Very professional and responsive.

Pros:

Ability to cope with complex billing scheduled and multiple price points. invoices look professional integration with xero and payment gateways sign up page capability responsive support

Cons:

nothing really. what i need they are looking to provide shortly (ie multiple gateways in the one site)

Alternatives Considered: Chargebee

Reasons for Switching to Maxio: power and flexibility in pricing models. mutiple site capability.

Support & CS are vital

Pros:

I am so happy that a customer success team has been added. This has been so important as we build our dashboards and reports that we use on a weekly/monthly basis.

Cons:

The implementation and training was good but there was a lot I didn't learn that I didn't realize until after implementation was complete. There are a lot of features but I often have trouble figuring out where to go or what reports I need.

Alternatives Considered: NetSuite

Reasons for Switching to Maxio: SaaSOptics had all the capabilities we were looking for at a better price.

Great solution to start a Subscription based solution

Pros:

Easy to implement basic subscriptions, APIs, and product offering.

Cons:

Cannot manage multiple sales channels and lack of CPQ.

Alternatives Considered: Zuora and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Switching to Maxio: It was easier to implement and get our feet wet.

Comprehensive product and well designed

Pros:

It has an amazing level of features and functionality.

Cons:

It is a bit clunky in some areas that I’ve used.

Great Product, Don't Give a Hoot About Customers

Comments: We've been (sadly) a long-time user of Chargify. Eventually, we will switch to just using native Stripe. Chargify is just a GUI on top of native Stripe and native Stripe has come a long way over the last few years. Anyway, Chargify got new leadership a few years ago. Their CEO told me via email and on the phone that they would not raise our prices without an adequate heads-up. Well, they did. And they raised them by 10x (TEN!!!) with one month's notice. As a consolation, they gave me $20/month off. Thanks for being so damn generous with your long-time users. They justified it by saying their development costs have soared as they've worked to develop new and rather poorly rolled out new features that aren't as good as other tools. For example, their analytics is absolute garbage. To make matters worse: Just recently, there was a BIG bug as they switched their API calls to Stripe where Chargify was calling the ORIGINAL card a user signed up with as opposed to the default one in Chargify. We notified them about this in late August and they passed the buck to Stripe. Well, it was NOT Stripe's fault. After a lot more back and forth emails, they finally admitted that this was on their end and fixed the bug. But that's after we've had to process thousands of dollars in refunds. STAY AWAY. Use Native Stripe. Chargify is a rip off.

Pros:

- Ease of Use - Dunning management - Filtering of data

Cons:

- Raise Prices 10x on Customers - Buggy - Analytics - Support - They don't care about their customers - As you grow, their logic of how they handle Products/Coupons is really, really poorly designed.

Chargify is great if you need to customize

Pros:

We are grandfathered into older pricing which is amazing. It's less expensive than many other rebilling platforms. It is easy for a developer to customize to your businesses needs. It's a simple program and not a one size fits all approach.

Cons:

The dashboard isn't accurate and there's a discrepancy between the main dashboard KPIs and the insights. The data isn't populating correctly and it throws off the numbers. Doesn't take into account certain things like when someone pauses, cancels and is reactivated, etc. No paypal option if you choose Stripe bc they only allow for one payment gateway.

Chargify is simple and easy to use, but also a very robust tool

Comments: We are a company with thousands of active and inactive customers and Chargify gives us the ability to easily manage all of our accounts without hassle. It takes seconds to process new charges, generate billing statements, and apply refunds. We are much more efficient as a team thanks to Chargify!

Pros:

-Easy to process charges in a matter of seconds -Reviewing and sending out billing statements is quick and simple -Updating payment information is easy to do over the phone or by sending a "self service link" -Processing refunds takes moments

Cons:

-Not being able to update contact information on billing statements after a charge has been processed

Chargify stopped charging my customers without helping me

Comments: I was a customer for more than 10 years for a now legacy app which didn't generate a big amount of MRR. One day Chargify stopped charging my customers one day and didn't help me solve the problem. It took more than 6+ and a big chunk of churn to move to a competitor. I was a (small) customer for 10+ years and worth nothing in the eyes of Chargify.

Pros:

Chargify was a great app back in 2010 when we first deployed it

Cons:

Chargify keeps on moving existing features to higher paying plans which forces you to upgrade. They do not help with the actual money transaction which puts the business at risk.

Easy to Use, Great Support Team!

Pros:

The ease of use was my favorite feature as billing can always be difficult. Setting up new accounts are a breeze. When I had any questions, or issues, their support team was very responsive and helpful.

Cons:

I did experience an issue where it would log me out quite often when opening a 'self-service page' to send to our customers. This appears to have been fixed and works well now.

TCO issues need fixing

Comments: Good to start with and probably sufficient for companies that do not require multiple currencies, country-specific taxes or payment gateways.

Pros:

Satisfies general needs for a subscription management service, supports long list of payment gateways, plans are highly configurable

Cons:

It’s impossible to handle multiple currencies, tax regions or payment gateways in a single Chargify site. This necessitates to create separate sites for all combinations of the aforementioned settings, which is a huge administrative and integration effort. In fact, we decided to abandon Chargify for our flagship product for this very reason.

Great Service, Competitive price

Comments: Chargify gives us the flexibility to rebill our customers in any way we want. Their platform is easy to use and well documented.

Pros:

Chargify is easy to use and adapt to your business. They constantly improve their service. Better pricing than most of the competition.

Cons:

Some competitors offer more features and are first to offer new technologies, but Chargify is quick to follow.

Customer Success - Success

Comments: Chargify as a software and service has provided us with a good experience.

Pros:

The Customer Success team at Chargify is wonderful. You can go to them with any questions or concerns you have and if they don't know they answer, they will get one for you. They have made working with Chargify a joy and have helped us to adapt and alter the product to help it work best for us and our business needs.

Cons:

There are parts of the software that are hard to figure out how to use without completing additional research. Chargify does have great Help articles, but it would be nice if the software was more user friendly so you don't have to refer to the Help items.

Alternatives Considered: Chargebee

Intuitive

Pros:

Chargify is easy to use straight out of the box and most activities are intuitive. I like that you are able to give users different levels of access and the reporting is very robust. Their customer service is top-notch!

Cons:

Most payment software provides the user id for transactions and Chargify currently doesnt have this feature. We have multiple people across different sites processing transactions and it is hard to keep track of who does what.

Chargify

Comments: Initially I loved it, but I feel that it is getting worse, rather than better! Plus, we now pay a lot more for the service, enough to encourage us to build our own software.

Pros:

Automation and limited intervention which is what we require for an online system

Cons:

Support being offshore often takes a long time to get results when this is critical for our business. Chargify still has manual intervention, raising manual invoices when payments drop off. Less than ideal! Now we have invoices being pushed through with multiple months on them, which we now have to manually fix, otherwise our income would be overstated!!!

Almost perfect

Comments: Chargify handles the charging of credit cards and sends out manual invoices.

Pros:

Flexible product configuration. Good api. Webhooks.

Cons:

Clunky support for multiple currencies. Cannot modify invoice template. Cannot automatically cancel subscription when invoice is not paid on time.

Chargify simplifies your accounts

Comments: Overall, we have had a positive experience with Chargify. It makes our day-to-day operations much easier and quicker.

Pros:

Chargify allows our company to manage subscriptions without any hassle.

Cons:

The ability to edit invoices. It should be easier

Ease beginner Accounting System, needs some work on tier pricing options

Comments: I have found that their support is slower than some. But they are consistent and will get things resolved.

Pros:

Ease of use, very simple and easy to utilize coupons.

Cons:

Harder to customize for tier pricing options.

Customer service is great

Comments: We started with Chargify 5 years ago and it has managed our subscriptions very well.

Pros:

The software fits the bill for what our business needs. Easy to use and navigate. Customer service is superior!

Cons:

The only ad on I would like is to get notified when a customer updates their payment portal without having to call on my IT to create a webhook to do the job.

Chargify

Pros:

The ease of looking up customers. Checking out the history on accounts.

Cons:

It can be a little bit confusing when it comes to the coupon feature.