Looking for the best subscription management software for your SaaS business?
You’re at the right place.
This article will cover our top 7 picks for the best subscription management software that’ll change the way you manage your subscriptions.
It’s true that subscription management isn’t a very straightforward process, especially when you have a huge clientele and manage subscriptions on spreadsheets.
Even the thought of managing subscriptions manually is a nightmare.
And that’s where the best subscription management software comes into the picture.
The best subscription management software can help you understand the current state of your subscriptions and help you manage your subscribers well.
What’s more?
The best subscription management software come with powerful analytics that can help you understand if your business is growing or falling in terms of subscriber count.
And that’s why it’s crucial to leverage the best subscription management software solutions to manage your subscriber base.
That said, before we list the best subscription management software, let’s take a look at what a subscription-based business model is and how it works.
What is a subscription-based business model?
A subscription-based business model is a recurring billing/revenue model where customers pay fees for using the services on a yearly, quarterly, monthly, or weekly basis.
Subscription-based business models are a boon for organizations that want to retain customers for a longer period to ensure a recurring stream of income. This is because the customers would regularly pay your business to keep leveraging your product or service.
Not only the company, but the customers also benefit from a subscription-based revenue model.
Customers get the flexibility of trying the product for a shorter period of time without having to commit.
Additionally, opting for weekly or monthly plans would also mean that the capital outflow for customers would be fairly low as compared to a product or service where they’d need to shell out a big amount to make the purchase.
For example, take a look at how Grammarly offers monthly plans at $30/month and annual plans at $12/month (but with a one-time payment of $144).
Image via Grammarly
How the subscription business model works
In a subscription-based business model, customers are charged on a recurring basis for availing of your products or services. Customers can choose for how long and often they want to avail the products or services and their fee would be based on that.
A subscription is like a contract between the business and its customers where the customer agrees to pay and the business agrees to provide products/services for a given period.
It works out well for businesses as it’s not a one-time transaction where the customer pays you and you’ve got to provide them the services for a long time to come.
Instead, you get recurring billing/payments from the customers and only provide your products or services for that particular period. This helps you drive better revenues and ROI.
Although it does sound very simple, managing subscriptions on a greater scale and creating marketing campaigns based on the existing subscriptions can be tricky.
This is where you’ll need the help of subscription management software.
However, not all subscription management software is suitable for every business. This is why you need to pick the one that is right for you.
If you’re looking for the best subscription management software for your specific use case, consider the following.
7 best subscription management software
In this section, we’ve listed 7 of the best subscription management software for different needs and different types of clients. Some of these are enterprise-level, whereas others are more suitable for small-mid scale businesses.
We’ve reviewed these best subscription management software for their particular use cases. So read each one thoroughly and try to relate them to your business. You’ll be able to figure out the best subscription management software solution for you.
So without further ado, let’s get started with our list of the best subscription management software.
1. ChartMogul
ChartMogul is a subscription management software solution for SaaS businesses. In addition to the focus on analytics, this software system delivers much more than just subscription management.
ChartMogul is the best subscription management software for businesses that use PayPal, Braintree, Stripe, or Recurly as payment gateways.
The key highlights of ChartMogul are the built-in metrics that include management and investor metrics, finance metrics, and marketing and customer success metrics.
In addition to these metrics, with ChartMogul, businesses can track:
- Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Average sales price (ASP)
- Average run rate (ARR)
- Average revenue per account (ARPA)
- Quantity churn rates, and many more things that allow them to make the most out of their subscription-based business.
Users can even customize metrics for their specific use cases such as geographic locations, customer cohorts, different subscription plan types, etc.
Recently, ChartMogul upgraded its solution with 7 new payment integrations, making it one of the best subscription management software.
Key features
- Automates the reporting of key subscription metrics.
- Lots of data on your subscriptions in the form of charts.
- Data cleaning tools to manage your subscriber list.
- MRR editing is possible.
- Native integrations with Zendesk, Zapier, and other software.
Pros
- Ability to drill down into the analytics to derive insights.
- Webhooks and API make it easy to add ChartMogul to your tech stack.
- Helps track most subscription business metrics at a glance.
- Numerous charts to visualize your data in an interactive manner.
Cons
- Loads of reports mean that you might take some time to get used to it.
- Integrations would require some development experience.
Usability
This subscription management software solution is moderately easy to use.
Tool level
Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced
Pricing
As one of the best subscription management software, it offers multiple plans. Here they are:
- Launch: Free for up to $10K MRR
- Scale: $100/month for up to $10K MRR + $25/ additional 10K MRR
- Volume: Starts at $15K/year for businesses with over $6 million ARR.
2. ProfitWell
ProfitWell is yet another powerful subscription management software solution that’s trusted by numerous companies.
It helps automate revenue management for your subscriptions by equipping you with the tools that you need to get an idea of the various metrics related to your subscriptions.
But what gives this subscription management software solution an edge over the rest is the fact that it also helps you intelligently price your subscriptions to improve your revenues.
What’s more?
It’s also got a dedicated toolkit through which you can seamlessly reduce your churn and grow your subscriber base over time.
And that’s not all.
By bringing all your reporting into a single place, the software equips you with tons of data related to your business using which you can easily derive insights to drive your business growth.
In addition to that, the platform makes it easy for you to extend its functionality with the various integrations it offers. This helps you turn it into a powerhouse for managing your subscriptions.
And the icing on the cake?
The analytics solution offered by ProfitWell is completely free to use. This makes it one of the best software solutions for your business.
Key features
- Powerful filters to segment your data — 107 pre-built segments.
- Tracking features for the entire customer journey from trials to conversions and cancellations.
- Revenue measurement is divided into various subscription plans.
- Customer retention and engagement statistics dashboard.
- Ability to send targeted offers to retain customers and reduce churn.
- Google Pay and Apple Pay are included to update failed payments.
- Offers integration with numerous platforms like Chargebee, ReCharge, etc.
Pros
- Analytics is completely free to use in this software.
- The Retain function can be integrated into your billing system with ease.
- Churn insurance that guarantees reduced churn rates.
- Automated translations to improve localization.
- Easy to track churn and revenue retention.
Cons
- Tools apart from analytics are paid and can be slightly expensive.
- Ample data means that you might find it challenging to get a hang of it.
Usability
This subscription management system is easy to use, making it one of the best subscription management software for beginners.
Tool level
Beginner/Intermediate
Pricing
Here are the plans offered by this subscription management software solution.
- ProfitWell Metrics: Free to use
- Retain®: Varies based on revenue recovered
- Price Intelligently: Starts at $15k/month
3. Baremetrics
Baremetrics is among the best subscription management software solutions that you can leverage to combat churn and improve your revenues.
This platform helps you cut through the noise and see your business performance in real-time. The insights you get from this data can play a major role in informing your future business decisions.
It offers three main sections — Control Center, Dashboard, and Forecast.
The Control Center gives you a bird’s eye view of your subscription revenue in the form of numbers. Using it, you can see your progress at a glance.
Similarly, the Dashboard helps you dive deep into your business metrics, including revenue, churn, reactivations, and more.
However, the best section of this software solution is the Forecast section. It’s a tool that helps you make well-informed growth projections for your business. This can play a crucial role in helping you make future business decisions about expansion and departmental budgets.
What’s more?
One of the other best tools provided by Baremetrics is the cancellation insights feature. Using it, you can easily figure out why your customers canceled their subscriptions and even send out emails to regain them.
Key features
- Benchmarking to help you understand where you stand in comparison to your competitors.
- Insights into your trial plans, including conversion rates,
- Ability to set business goals and track your progress against them.
- All the subscription-related metrics are displayed in graphical format.
- Forecasting of MRR, customer growth, and cash flow.
- Ability to dive into each customer’s history, including payments, events, and changes.
- Provides Slack tools using which you can easily coordinate with your team about subscription management.
- Automated drip campaigns and in-app reminders that you can leverage to stop losing subscribers due to failed payments.
Pros
- Segmentation features help understand which customer segments are helping your business.
- The forecasting feature helps in making better business decisions.
- The ability to merge external data with internal helps deliver powerful customer profiles.
- Zooming into a customer’s history helps identify the most valuable customers and craft personalized campaigns.
- One-click integrations make this subscription management software easy to use.
- Free trial available.
Cons
- A wide range of features means that there’ll be a slight learning curve.
- Doesn’t offer a mobile app.
Usability
This subscription management tool is easy to use.
Tool level
Beginner
Pricing
This is one of the best subscription management software that offers a free trial
- Metrics Base Features: Starts at $129/month
- Metrics with Recover: Starts at $198/month
- Metrics with Cancellation Insights: Starts at $258/month
- Metrics with Everything: Starts at $327/month
4. Chargebee
Chargebee is a complete subscription management software solution that takes care of everything right from billing and payments to accounting and taxes.
It’s such a comprehensive solution that you can easily manage subscriptions at scale using this platform.
It provides a unified view of all your subscriptions and enables you to create new upselling opportunities to generate greater revenue.
One of the most helpful features offered by this software solution is the pricing solution. Using it, you can determine which pricing method works best for your business among the likes of tiered pricing, volume pricing, flat pricing, and more.
What’s more?
It simplifies billing by helping you accept recurring payments through its network of many payment gateways and multi-currency support.
And if that’s not enough, the software solution also offers marketing tools to help you drive your subscriber growth and conversion rates.
This is in the form of discount and coupon management features through which your marketing team can make your products and services more attractive to your customers.
Key features
- Smart dunning feature to help you recover failed payments.
- A dedicated suite for the management of trials.
- Zero-code tools for creating a checkout portal for your customers.
- Subscriber lifecycle management with the power of email automation.
- Accounting solutions to take the manual work out of accounting.
- Simplified tax management and global compliance for revenue management.
- Powerful reporting features to help you derive insights.
Pros
- A comprehensive solution for subscription management, including a range of suites.
- Zero-code builder helps you build pages without technical expertise.
- Trial management works well to help you optimize your sales from trials.
- Custom reports are easy to create without the need to depend on developers.
- Integration with popular payment gateways enables you to access more markets.
- Extremely affordable pricing with a free plan available.
Cons
- Requires a large team to utilize the many features offered.
- Accessing all the features requires you to go for more expensive plans.
Usability
This subscription management tool is moderately easy to use.
Tool level
Intermediate
Pricing
- Launch: Free until the first $100K in revenue
- Rise: $249/month until $600K/year. 0.6% overage beyond that
- Scale: $549/month until $1.2M/year. 0.75% overage beyond that
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
5. Woopra
Woopra is primarily a customer journey and product analysis software solution that you can leverage as a subscription management solution too.
With it, you can easily set up and track your subscriptions and unsubscriptions by creating custom events for each of them. While it’d help you track new and canceled subscriptions, it also does more than that by helping you track upgrades and downgrades.
What’s more?
In addition to the tracking features, it also provides comprehensive reporting features using which you can track a wide range of metrics related to your business.
And if that’s not enough, you can easily study your sales cycle using Woopra and check the performance of each customer segment. That’s what makes it one of the best software solutions out there. This would help you identify which customers are the best suited for your business.
And guess what?
It’s also possible to measure your customer retention and churn using this software solution.
What’s the most unique tool it offers that makes it one of the best subscription management software?
It’s the profiling feature that helps you get a detailed understanding of each of your customers. This way, you’d be able to craft customized strategies to retain them and drive your customer lifetime value (CLV).
Key features
- One-click integrations with 34+ other applications.
- Ability to map your entire customer journey as they become subscribers.
- Built-in triggers and real-time automation to increase your sales and retention.
- Powerful analytics features to measure your business growth.
- Ability to measure retention and churn.
Pros
- One-click integration simplifies the way you can add more features to this software.
- The complete look of the funnel gives you better control over your marketing and revenue.
- Detailed insights using the charts to track your growth.
Cons
- While it offers a free plan, the starting price of the paid plans is quite high.
- It’s not very easy to use, you need developers to help you out.
- Unlike the other software solutions, this is mainly an analytics tool that leaves a lot to be desired.
Usability
Moderately difficult to use.
Tool level
Intermediate/Expert
Pricing
Here are the plans offered by this subscription management software solution.
- Core: Free
- Startup: $349/month
- Pro: $999/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
6. SaaSOptics
One of the most important tasks of the best subscription management software is to get revenue in faster and that’s what SaaSOptics claims to do.
SaaSOptics is one the best subscription management software for B2B businesses. It provides quick and easy invoicing options for varying agreement terms, making it easier for B2B businesses to charge their clients.
Another important function that this subscription management platform performs is automating complex revenue recognition. It is designed specifically for growing B2B businesses that face varying revenue recognition scenarios.
As one of the best subscription management software, it can analyze all your subscription business metrics and provide detailed reports.
Key features
- Automated order processing
- Order-to-cash seamless integrations
- Advanced A/R management feature
- Ability to automate the renewal process
- Option to defer revenue
- GAAP/IFRS compliant
- Option to automate revenue recognition schedules
- Advanced SaaS metrics and analytics
- Cohort analysis, customer analytics, and reporting
- Detailed business performance reports
- Multiple integrations
Pros
- Advanced analytics and reporting capabilities
- Ability to automate complex revenue recognition and invoicing scenarios
- Additional financial reporting capabilities other than subscription management
- Advanced automation workflows
Cons
- Given its myriad advanced features, it may take new users some time to get used to it.
- The Stripe integration can be made simpler for easy payments.
- No free trial option is available.
Usability
Takes an initial learning curve, but this subscription software solution is moderately easy to use afterward.
Tool level
Intermediate/Expert
Pricing
SaaSOptics provides custom pricing based on each client’s unique needs. Get in touch with their team to discuss your requirements and get a custom pricing plan for your business.
7. RevenueCat
RevenueCat is one of the best subscription management software for subscription businesses that have a mobile app. It makes in-app subscription management and analytics seem like a breeze.
Does this mean it works only on mobile apps?
No. RevenueCat works for iOS, Android, and web, so you can use this subscription management software solution on any device.
It can manage subscription status and purchases, track customer transaction histories, and analyze important subscription business metrics.
What makes it one of the best subscription management software for experts?
The fact that its API allows you to customize every aspect of how you want to use this solution and its features. However, that also means that it’s difficult to use for people with no development experience.
Key features
- Webhooks and open API
- Ability to build your own customized toolkit
- Advanced reporting and analytics capabilities
- Numerous dashboards and charts
- Multiple subscription business analytics metrics
- Real-time data availability
- Option to form customer lists or cohorts
- Multiple third-party integrations
Pros
- Advanced subscription management features and reporting capabilities
- Complete flexibility and high level of customization
- No-code integrations
Cons
- Requires development skills to set up and start using this subscription management platform
Usability
The tool requires a developer to set it up, but once it’s done the dashboards and user interface can be used by anyone.
Tool level
Expert
Pricing
Here are the pricing plans offered by RevenueCat.
- Free – Free up to $10,000 MTR (monthly tracked revenue)
- Starter – $8 per $1,000 of MTR
- Pro – $12 per $1,000 of MTR
- Enterprise – Custom pricing based on volume
Pro Tip: Make sure to calculate the estimated price based on your monthly volume as the price can rise significantly if left unchecked.
FAQs
1. What is subscription management software?
Subscription management software automates tasks like invoicing, payment processing, etc. to help SaaS businesses manage their customer subscriptions. Some of the best subscription management software can even create advanced automated workflows and provide advanced analytics.
2. How can I manage all subscriptions?
You can use one of the best subscription management software mentioned in this post to manage your subscriptions. You can do it manually as well, but that would leave scope for error and may cost you more in the long run.
Here are some of the best subscription management software available in the market today:
- ChartMogul
- ProfitWell
- Baremetrics
- Chargebee
- Woopra
- SaaSOptics
- RevenueCat
Take your pick and start managing your subscriptions like a pro.
3. What is a SaaS subscription business model?
It is a recurring billing business model where customers don’t buy a product one time, but pay monthly, quarterly, or annual revenue to use a software solution, instead.
These kinds of businesses have predictable revenue streams (due to recurring billing) and work on retaining customers for a long time. Using a SaaS model is a good way to turn one-time shoppers into subscription customers.
4. What are some of the best subscription management software for beginners?
Baremetrics and ProfitWell are two of the most beginner-friendly options on our list of the best subscription management software. Both of these have user-friendly interfaces and easy-to-use features.
5. How can I choose the best subscription management software?
Here are some parameters you should consider for choosing the best subscription management software:
- Automation capabilities
- Invoicing, subscription billing, etc.
- Easy payment processing features
- Revenue recognition options
- Analytics and reporting capabilities
- Subscription metrics that it can track
- Other subscription management features
Alternatively, you can look at our list of the best subscription management software and take your pick from there. We’ve already done the leg work for you and selected some of the best subscription management software for different needs.
6. What are some of the best subscription management software?
Here are our top picks for the best subscription management software:
- ChartMogul
- ProfitWell
- Baremetrics
- Chargebee
- Woopra
- SaaSOptics
- RevenueCat
This list of the best subscription management software is not in any particular order. So, you can review their features, pros, and cons to find the best subscription management software for your needs.
Conclusion
Using a SaaS subscription model is one of the best customer retention strategies that provide a recurring revenue stream.
However, running a SaaS business is no easy task, and managing subscriptions is even more difficult. That’s why you need the best subscription management software to ensure that you don’t make any grave mistakes.
In this post, we’ve listed some of the best subscription management software that can cater to different needs. From beginner-friendly software like Baremetrics to expert-level tools like RevenueCat, we’ve included all types of software.
Study the features, pros, and cons of these, and then choose the best subscription management software for your business. All the best!