Since the early part of the decade, we have witnessed a drastic shift in the way businesses function. Products and services that were once sold for a one-time flat fee are now being sold on a subscription basis with a recurring fee. Increasingly, businesses in all sorts of industries are transforming themselves to fit the subscription model.
While the subscription model certainly proves to be an efficient model for businesses because of its lower customer acquisition costs and predictable revenue streams, running multiple subscriptions, managing payment failures, handling changes in billing can still be a challenge. Businesses now need to look at a new set of metrics – monthly recurring revenue (MRR), average revenue per user (ARPU), activation rate, cancellation rate, and churn rate – to measure growth and to plan the future.
While subscription management software provides those metrics, businesses still have to depend on the accounting software to get visibility on the cash flow, profitability, and tax liability. As a result, these businesses have incomplete, delayed views of their performance because the strategic and tactical data is spread across multiple systems.
Zoho's Integrated Approach
Being in the subscription business ourselves, we understand the pain and frustrations of running one. That is why we decided to build Zoho Subscriptions, our recurring billing software that helps manage customer subscriptions and subscription-related finances. It comes pre-integrated at the data level with Zoho's accounting software, Zoho Books. This means all transactions related to new subscriptions, renewals, customer credits, and refunds gets captured instantly in Zoho Books. There is no re-entering of data in different services and no additional integration effort involved. The data synchronizes itself “automagically” across services!
In addition, Zoho Subscriptions comes fully armed with features that subscription businesses simply cannot do without. Here are a few of the many highlights:
Simplified subscription management
Multiple customer subscriptions can be managed and tracked easily. Zoho Subscriptions automatically bills each customer based on the customer's subscription frequency. The software is versatile enough to handle multi-currency invoicing, consolidated billing, changes in subscription, and proration.
Automated payment failure handling
Customer churn can be reduced with the help of dunning management in Zoho Subscriptions. It automatically informs customers of any payment failures and retries charging their cards based on a configured schedule.
Flexible pricing and packaging
Zoho Subscriptions offers complete flexibility to optimize pricing and packaging of your products and services. Prices can be set on a per unit, volume, tier, or bundle basis, and discounts can be offered through coupons.
Simply affordable
Zoho Subscriptions and Zoho Books come together for a single price of $49 per month, per organization. This includes 50 card transactions and unlimited access to Zoho Books. Additional card transactions are available as an add-on. For every 50 card transactions, we charge $5. Users who sign up during our launch offer are not charged for the card transactions. They get unlimited card transactions in Zoho Subscriptions for $49 for six months.
Be it a small business or a startup, Zoho Subscriptions is a one-stop solution for all the needs of a subscription-based business.
Start with your free test account today. Give it a try and let us know what you think!
Can we integrate two payment gateways at once. I have Dollar pricing for Global customers & Rupee pricing for Indian customers. Price is also different so I want to Razorpay for Indian customers & 2checkout for International. Is this possible?
Hi Bhaskar, Yes, it is possible to configure two payment gateways in your organization at once. The gateway will be selected automatically based on the currency of your transactions. If you require any further clarifications, please feel free to drop us a mail at support[at]zohosubscriptions[dot]com.
Hello Krupa, We have implemented Zoho subscriptions, but my challenge is multi-level billing. For Example: My customers can purchase one or multiple subscriptions of my software. How do i manage the client being charged for multiple licenses/subscriptions? Also, how will the invoice be? will it be multiple invoices(one for each license) or a combined invoice?
Hi Preet! Zoho Subscriptions by default supports multi-level billing, i.e. a single customer can have multiple subscriptions. You can also achieve the same through API. If the renewal is on the same date, you can send consolidated invoices for multiple subscriptions for a customer by enabling invoice consolidation option in the Settings. Please feel free to contact us at support[at]zohosubscriptions[dot]com, if you need any further assistance.
Hi, 1.Is it possible to integrate Zoho Subscription as a module in Zoho CRM? 2. I can see that, when I integrate Zoho Subscription and Zoho CRM, i will only be able to sync Accounts and Contacts. Is it possible to sync Potentials (ie: when someone renews or is subscribed for the first time in Zoho Subscription, will that be taken up as a new potential in CRM?) If yes, kindly guide me through the steps.
Hi Vandhiyathevan, Would you mind dropping us an email at support@zohosubscriptions.com with your complete requirements, with specific examples? This will help us understand your business workflow better. Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Cheers, Krupa
please mention all the renewal rate of website hosting after availing first year .in domain?
This question seems to be pertaining to Zoho Sites. Please drop in a line to the support team of Zoho Sites at support@zohosite.com, as they would be in a better position to assist you with your question.
I am in search of crm for my subscription business. Did Zoho Subscriptions integrated with Zoho CRM?
Hi Jeff, Zoho Subscriptions is integrated with Zoho CRM. With this integration, you will able to easily sync all your Zoho CRM contacts in Zoho Subscriptions. Please refer to our forums for more details. Hope this helps.
We are a UK Zoho Reseller partner. We currently use Zoho Books ourselves, integrated with our Zoho CRM. My questions are: 1) How do I upgrade from an existing Zoho Books, such that the existing set-up and data carries through seamlessly? 2) Does the system support any payment gateways in common usage in the UK for GBP and EUR currencies? 3) Can we have a reseller version of Zoho Subscriptions? Thanks, John Haigh Ascent Business - UK Zoho Partner.
Hi John, Please find the answers to your questions below. 1) I've sent you details on the integration process. 2) Currently, we are integrated with WorldPay, Stripe, Authorize.Net, Payments Pro. These gateways support GBP and EUR currencies. 3) We would be happy to give you a reseller version.
great, good to know!
Thanks Chub! Please stay tuned for more such announcements.
Hi, we as the German resellers for Zoho will promote this tool as this is exactly what we needed. Hope we get a license soon to try this one out. Thanks for this amazing tool.
Thanks Natalie! :)
Hi Krupa, I have two questions. One, is ZOHO subscriptions for Indian set-ups? Otherwise people here use 2checkout etc. Two, how do I merge it with my existing website? I am looking to integrate it so that I can charge my Indian as well as US customers. Abhishek
Hi Abhishek! You can definitely invoice customers in INR and USD. Accepting payments in INR may not be possible at the moment. Currently, we are integrated with PayPal Payflow Pro, PayPal Payments Pro, Stripe and Authorize.Net. With regards to merging Zoho Subscriptions with your website, you can do it through our hosted page using our API. Please refer to our API documentation here for more information.
Nice! Any plans to integrate it with Zoho Invoice?
Thanks Vitor! :) Currently, we do not have plans to integrate with Zoho Invoice. However Zoho Subscriptions is seamlessly integrated with Zoho Books, our accounting software. Zoho Books has all the features of Zoho Invoice. In addition, it also has accounting centric features like banking and many more. With this seamless integration, your invoices, payments and customer credits will be instantly available in Zoho Books.
So, how does this integrate with web sites? Is this for virtual or real products? You've described what it does, but how does it CONNECT with my customers, and my deliverables and my marketing? Please update this article!!
Hi Matt, You can offer both offline and online products through Zoho Subscriptions. We provide a hosted page which offers a smooth check out experience for customers. By connecting to the hosted page, your customers‘ payment details will automatically fall into Zoho Subscriptions. We also provide RESTful APIs to connect with our app and Webhooks to notify your application about every event that takes place in Zoho Subscriptions. Hope this helps! If you have any further questions, please feel free to drop us a line at support@zohosubscriptions.com.
I am only given the option to use the Online payment mode by default. I have some products where I need to ask the customer banking details and NOT use the online payment gateways. How do I set the Product to be used as offline mode for my Hosted page to display the banking details NOT the credit card information.
Hi Johannes, You will be unable to collect offline payments through hosted pages. Sorry about that. But, we have API hosted pages, using which you can provide an option for your customers to pay you through bank transfers. Even this involves configuring payment gateways. You can find more details in this link.