Subscription billing for SaaS: Recurring payments, plan management, and usage-based pricing.
Subscription Management & SaaS Billing
SaaS business models thrive on recurring revenue – the holy grail of the software business. But standard tools like Chargebee, Recurly, or Paddle are expensive: often 0.5-1% of revenue plus fixed fees. At an MRR of 50,000 EUR, that's 6,000-12,000 EUR per year going to the billing provider. Add limitations with complex pricing models and missing integration into your product logic.
A custom subscription management solution adapts to your business model, not the other way around. We develop subscription management systemswith everything SaaS needs: Flexible pricing models (flat, tiered, per-seat, usage-based), dunning for failed payments with intelligent retry strategies, proration for plan changes, andself-service portals for your customers.
We handle the integration with Stripe, PayPal, or SEPA direct debit. You focus on your product – and keep 100% of your revenue (minus payment processing fees, which you pay with any provider).
“Subscriptions are billing machines—without consistent period logic and dunning tiers, every upgrade becomes a correction posting.”
Björn Groenewold, CEO, Groenewold IT Solutions
Automatic billing monthly, annually, or custom – with Stripe, PayPal, SEPA direct debit, credit card.
Plans, add-ons, upgrades, downgrades, trials, grandfathering – flexibly configurable without code.
Automatic dunning for failed payments, card update reminders, cancellation flow.
Billing by usage: API calls, storage, active users, transactions – with metering and aggregation.
Self-service: change plan, update payment method, download invoices, reverse cancellation.
Trial reminders, renewal notices, downgrade warnings, payment reminders – automated and personalized.
Automatic pro-rated calculation for plan changes mid-billing cycle.
Cancellation flow with retention offers, pause option, downgrade alternative.
A good subscription system makes your most important KPIs transparent.
Monthly Recurring Revenue – your monthly recurring revenue, the most important SaaS metric.
Cancellation rate – what percentage of customers cancel per month? Below 2% is good.
Lifetime Value – total value of a customer over their lifetime. LTV > 3x CAC is healthy.
Customer Acquisition Cost – cost per new customer (marketing + sales).
Revenue development of existing customers through up-/downgrades and cancellations.
Average Revenue Per User – average revenue per customer per month.
One price for all – easy to understand, easy to sell. Example: 49 EUR/month.
Different packages (Basic, Pro, Enterprise) with different features and limits.
Price per user – scales with team size. Example: 10 EUR/user/month.
Pay per consumption – ideal for APIs, storage, transactions.
Billing is critical – errors cost revenue and customer trust. We approach it systematically.
Define pricing model, packages, trials, discounts, and metrics together.
Design billing engine, payment integration, customer portal, and reporting.
Build subscription system, integrate Stripe/PayPal, implement dunning.
Migrate existing customers, monitoring, optimization based on data.
Costs depend on the complexity of the pricing model and required integrations.
Chargebee costs 0.75% + 299 EUR/month from the Scale plan. At 50,000 EUR MRR, that's 674 EUR/month or 8,088 EUR/year. A custom solution for 45,000 EUR pays for itself in 5.5 years. At 100,000 EUR MRR, it's already 2.5 years.
From approx. 30,000 EUR MRR, a custom solution becomes economically interesting. Below that, Chargebee, Stripe Billing, or Paddle are often the better choice – faster to start, less upfront investment. We advise you honestly.
Custom solution or SaaS tool?
Compare rising license costs with custom development – interactively over 5 years.
Automatic retry attempts after 1, 3, 7 days (configurable). Emails to the customer with a link to update their payment method. Escalation to sales. Optional: grace period before cancellation.
Yes, we develop migration scripts for Chargebee, Stripe Billing, Recurly, and other systems. Customer data, plans, and payment methods are transferred – without disruption for your customers.
Through a metering system that captures usage (API events, storage, users). At the end of the billing period, data is aggregated and converted into an invoice. Optional: real-time usage display for customers.
Let's talk about your SaaS billing – free and non-binding. We'll show you whether a custom solution makes sense for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
From around €25,000 excl. VAT for plans, recurring billing and dunning; with usage-based pricing and Stripe/PayPal from €40,000 excl. VAT. We scope after a short workshop.
Yes. We integrate Stripe, PayPal and other providers so subscriptions, invoices and dunning run automatically in your application.
Yes. We implement metered billing, tiered plans and hybrid models so you can offer usage-based and flat-rate plans in one system.
We build retry logic, reminder emails and grace periods so failed payments are handled automatically and churn from payment issues is reduced.
Faster Clarity
Let's sort out scope, risks, and quick wins.
Ideal when you need to make decisions fast – without months of groundwork.
30 min strategy call – 100% free & non-binding
The approach described on this page is based on our experience from over 250 projects. We combine clear scoping, pragmatic technology choices, and measurable results. If your situation matches this solution, the next step is usually a short workshop or audit to prioritise measures and estimate effort. Many digitalisation projects are eligible for funding – we can advise you on suitable programmes.
Browse all solutions by use case, industry, and application type. For our service portfolio, see Services; for in-depth topic articles, see Topics. Key terms are explained in our IT Glossary. For a non-binding discussion about Subscription Management or a custom proposal, please contact us.
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