What is the Best Recurring Payment Systems?

1. Chargebee

Chargebee is the subscription billing and revenue management platform that lets you start small and scale with ease as your business grows.

You can automate the lead-to-ledger workflow across your entire revenue stack and track your performance at every step, giving you full visibility into your revenue stream.

Chargebee helps you manage every aspect of your customers' subscription journey so you can make data driven decisions to develop your business.

From comprehensive reporting and analytics to seamless integrations with key services like CRM and payment processing, Chargebee makes managing every aspect of your subscription billing and revenue management straight forward.

Example of Chargebee Recurring Billing Report

Chargebee's Main Benefits

• Supports recurring payments across 150+ countries
  
• Zero-code and completely customizable checkout experience
  
• Reduces payment gateway fees by smart routing recurring payments
  
• Gives customers a second chance to pay
  

Now Some Drawbacks...

• Payment gateway integration could be a little bit more seamless
  
• Can be hard for beginners to do the initial setup
  

Latest Improvements

• Enhanced Chargebee/Salesforce integration user interface allows for seamless subscription creation from Salesforce accounts
  
• When creating subscriptions in Chargebee, any changes to customer contact information triggers automatic updates in HubSpot
  

Pricing

Chargebee has a free entry-level plan plus two paid plans:

• Launch Plan: Covers up to $100,000 in revenue with no transaction fees — 3 users
• Rise Plan: $249/month includes up to $600,000 of revenue with no transaction fees and 0.6% per transaction above $600,000, plus multi-language support, sales tax automation, advanced analytics and CRM integration — 10 users
• Scale Plan: $549/month includes up to $1.2M of revenue with no transaction fees and 0.75% per transaction above $1.2M, all features in Rise plus multiple payment methods, user role management and priority phone support — 25 users
  

2. Stripe

Stripe is one of the leading providers of online payment products for businesses in the world, and their services include subscription billing.

With a suite of integrated products that cover everything from merchant accounts to fraud prevention and chargeback management, Stripe may feel like be a bit of overkill as a simple recurring payments solution.

However, you may find their global recognition a bonus, especially if recurring payments are a key revenue model in your business.

Example of Stripe Subscription Integration

Stripe's Main Benefits

• Design your own payments form on your site using Stripe Elements
  
• Multiple ways to implement, including shareable payment links, flexible invoicing, mobile app support, In-person payment options, etc.
• Fraud prevention using sophisticated machine learning trained daily on data from millions of global businesses to protect you from fraudsters
  
• Supports over 135 currencies and offers a unified API for cards, wallets, bank debits, etc.
  
• Accepts credit cards, debit cards and popular payment methods around the world. Also supports international cards, currency conversion, 3D secure authentication and instant payouts
  

Now Some Drawbacks...

• Requires developer resources for some integrations
  

Latest Improvements

• Stripe point-to-point encryption (P2PE) is now available to help simplify PCI compliance
  
• Stripe invoices can now be revised in the Dashboard, even after they're finalized
  
• Customers can now schedule payments on a Stripe-hosted invoice
  

Pricing

Stripe has two recurring billing plans:

• Starter Plan: Charges 0.5% on all recurring payments. Includes recurring billing, automatic reminders and a customer portal
• Scale Plan: Charges 0.8% on all recurring payments and one-time invoice payments. Includes all features in the Starter plan plus one-time invoicing, invoice auto-reconciliation, customer estimates, failed-payment retry optimization using AI, and automated revenue reporting
  

3. HoneyBook

HoneyBook is a simple, secure recurring payment solution that allows businesses to accept all major credit/debit cards and bank transfers, while providing a seamless client experience.

It can work with businesses of all sizes, it's easy to use, PCI compliant and can be fully customized to match your brand.

Example of Recurring Payment Implementation

HoneyBook's Main Benefits

• Automatic payment reminders take the job of asking for money off your plate
• Create invoices customized for your business to charge recurring and scheduled payments
• Accept all major credit/debit cards and bank transfers plus accept cash and checks at no charge
• Mobile invoicing through Android and iOS apps to let you send professional invoices on the go and track payments in real time
• Clients can make payments from their phone, tablet or laptop
• Get payment notifications via HoneyBook's Android/iOS app, plus, see outstanding and upcoming payments in the bookkeeping tool
• Access to fraud protection concierge team that monitors all transactions to help prevent any unauthorized payments
  

Now Some Drawbacks...

• Third-party app integrations are limited
• High transaction cost when collecting online payments from clients
  

Latest Improvements

• Added Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo, AOL, Apple Mail and Hotmail email integrations
  
• Added the ability to preview steps in a workflow automation before applying it to a project
  

Pricing

HoneyBook has two plans:

• Unlimited Monthly: Priced at $39/month, it includes all features
• Unlimited Annual: Priced at $390/year, it includes all features at a 17% annual discount (you only pay for 10 months)
  

4. Square

Best With No Monthly Fees

Square is a payment processing company that offers point-of-sale solutions to help businesses of all sizes manage their subscription billing requirements.

Its recurring payments platform is simple to use and can be customized to fit the needs of your business. It also offers invoicing and inventory management to help streamline your business operations.

Square Features that Stand Out

• Manage your entire business from one place, selling through Instagram and Facebook with just a tap
• Send renewal reminders to your recurring customers on the anniversary of your subscription
  
• Accept payments remotely, take payments over the phone right in your computer. Sell at the counter, on the go or online
• Track your customer’s preferences and purchases with every card swipe. From there, you can create more personalized marketing and loyalty programs to keep them coming back more often
  

5. Chargify

Best for B2B SaaS Companies

Chargify is a subscription billing software that allows businesses to bill their customers on a recurring basis.

Whether you have simple subscriptions or complex usage and events-based models, Chargify makes it easy to start, stop, or change subscriptions at any time.

It's also integrated with Stripe, so you can accept credit card payments from over 150 countries around the world in a secure and reliable way.

Chargify Features that Stand Out

• Customize the sign up experience to remove friction and make it easy for visitors to become customers
  
• Access plan changes, billing history, current balances, renewal dates, active coupons, notes, and much more
  
• Edit customer details and billing information, change plans, and modify component quantities or price points
  
• Adjust balances, apply discounts, process refunds, and record external payments
  
• Create one-time charges that can be processed either immediately or on the next scheduled billing cycle
  
• Proactively monitor subscription changes and revenue movements
  
• Preview a snapshot of your customer’s next invoice to review costs and correct mistakes before their next billing date
  

6. Zoho Subscriptions

Best for Home Businesses

Zoho Subscriptions is a comprehensive subscription billing software that automates recurring billing, helping you create consistent cash flow.

Zoho Subscriptions can manage your subscription life cycle from start to finish and as a bonus it integrates with Zoho CRM to give you a 360-degree view of your customers.

Whether it's building new subscription offerings, creating accurate invoices, or managing customer support inquiries, Zoho Subscriptions is a great solution for businesses of all sizes.

Zoho Subscriptions Features that Stand Out

• Add flexibility to your signup process by providing multiple plans, add-ons, and coupons. Give customers the freedom to test out your offering with free trials
  
• Collect online and offline payments via leading payment gateways
  
• Set your invoicing on autopilot but make sure that it still reflects your brand
  
• Don't lose customers to involuntary failed payments. Automate card retries to maximize your revenue
  
• Empower customers by providing a self-service portal, and strengthen your relationship with them by communicating proactively about payment failures and card expirations
  

7. PaySimple

Best for Small Business

Paysimple is a payment processing company that offers a suite of tools to help businesses streamline the payment acceptance process, including automated recurring billing by credit card or bank account debit.

Paysimple also offers customer marketing solutions to help businesses target and retain customers.

You can set up recurring billing schedules online, in-person, or on mobile devices to generate predictable revenue.

PaySimple Features that Stand Out

• Collect payments faster by setting up payment information once and using a recurring payment system to make it easy for customers to pay on time
  
• Customers can self-manage their account information (email address, password, bank accounts, credit card accounts, etc.)
  
• Customers can view and pay their invoices and view their complete payment history, including invoice payments, one-time payments, and recurring payments
  

8. Recurly

Best for Subscription Analytics

Recurly is a subscription management and billing platform that helps businesses automate their subscription payment process. This can help you increase trial conversions and improve customer acquisition.

It also offers features such as fraud protection and subscription analytics to help you get the most out of your subscribers.

You can add new plans, launch new services globally with configurable pricing options and retain more subscribers boosting their lifetime value with Recurly's intelligent revenue optimization engine.

Recurly Features that Stand Out

• Give your subscribers the flexibility to pay with major credit and debit cards, ACH, digital wallets like Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Venmo, and PayPal, as well as local payment methods including SEPA, UnionPay, Bacs, and BECS
  
• Reach subscribers worldwide by connecting to your choice of 21 gateways and accepting payments in 140 currencies. Optimize for transaction costs and maximize payment success
  
• Reduce involuntary churn and increase subscriber retention with revenue recovery tools, including intelligent retries
  
• Seamlessly connect to your existing workflows and tech stack with pre-built integrations for CRM, ERP, and data systems, as well as gateways, accounting, tax and fraud solutions
  
• Optimize payments and lower transaction costs by integrating with multiple payment gateways
  
• Ensure your invoices meet the needs of your international customers, with the right languages, currencies, and payment methods
  

9. Moon Clerk

Best for Digital Products

MoonClerk allows you to manage your online payments. You can set up recurring payments or charge people one time for a specific service or product.

It also allows you to control when, how much, how often, and for how long you charge your payers, giving you more flexibility and control over your business.

Recapture lost revenue by preemptively preventing cards from being declined and helping update them when they are, all without any work on your part.

Moon Clerk Features that Stand Out

• Start recurring plans at checkout, at a future time or let your customers decide
  
• Mix and match a variety of recurring amounts, one-time upfront charges, recurring fees and frequencies
  
• Collect unlimited information at checkout with MoonClerk forms. Make the custom fields optional or required
  
• Implement installment, evergreen or limited duration plans
  
• Create unlimited custom coupons that your customers enter before they complete their checkouts. Add, change, or remove coupons after checkout
  

10. Braintree

Best for Scalability

Braintree is another popular solution for businesses that need to accept recurring payments from their customers.

Whether you run a software subscription service, offer recurring donations or have any other type of business model that involves regular charges, Braintree offers fast transaction processing automatically handling your monthly customer billing.

For example, if your customers change subscriptions mid-month, Braintree can automatically prorate how much they owe without requiring any input from the user.

Braintree Features that Stand Out

• Create custom pricing plans for your clients. Set up discounts, add-ons, promotional periods and rewards
  
• Give your customers the ability to upgrade or downgrade their subscriptions at any time
  
• Automatically update users’ credit card details and manage failed transaction notifications with custom settings
  
• Search for plans and subscriptions, and filter by pricing plan, subscription ID, billing periods remaining, and price right from your control panel
  
• Configure webhooks to receive the status of a subscription and get instant notifications when significant events occur
  

11. PayPal

Best for International Reach

PayPal allows you to handle all of your monthly online subscription needs. You can manage recurring payments from an easy to use interface so you can always stay on top of your cash flow.

And with automatic notifications when a card expires, you can preempt failed renewals minimizing your customer support and account overdue collection efforts.

PayPal Features that Stand Out

• Offer fixed or quantity pricing. Set billing cycles for the time period you want
  
• Motivate customers to subscribe by offering discounted trial periods
  
• Manage your plans and subscriptions with the subscriptions tool or APIs
  
• Get real-time reports and status updates from your subscriptions overview page
  

12. Recharge

Best for Customization

Chargex is a payment processing platform that allows businesses to process recurring and one-time payments.

This platform offers a wide range of features such as subscription management, automated billing and customer self-service and it supports a large number of payment gateway providers and credit cards.

Recharge Features that Stand Out

• Designed to let you offer subscription products with just a few clicks. You can start selling subscriptions in minutes with no complex customization required
  
• Supports the following payment processors: Stripe, Authorize.net, Braintree by Paypal, and Shopify Payments. Also supports credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, SEPA Direct Debit, and iDEAL as payment methods
  
• Choose from a set of pre-built templates or create a completely customized experience from scratch to fit your brand
  
• Automatically notify your customers about upcoming charges, card declines, and other common scenarios. Set automatic alerts for yourself if customers cancel their subscriptions or if there’s an error processing a payment
  

13. Zuora

Best for Large Businesses

Zuora is a leading subscription monetization platform, but I left it for the bottom of the list because it'll be overkill for most small businesses, plus it's quite expensive (Zuora is used by large multinationals like Microsoft, Ford and Sony.)

Zuora Features that Stand Out

• Price and package your products and services with over 50 pricing models, including recurring, one time fees, and usage charges
  
• Apply different discounts, enable code redemption, and set billing triggers and time limits with effective dates
• Update pricing across all sales channels including e-commerce and CPQ with a single user interface via a central product catalogue
  
• Provide unified subscriber experiences by accepting orders from multiple channels such as quoting, website, apps, service partners, and more
  
• Orchestrate the order to revenue processes kicked off by any subscription change such as an upgrade, downgrade, renewal, suspend, and more
  
• Combine subscriptions, physical goods, and other one-time fees in a single order and drive traffic of all order line items and changes through Zuora
  

14. Stax

Best All-in-One Platform

Stax is a payment processing company that offers subscription-based merchant services. It helps you save money by providing an all-in-one platform that streamlines your payment process.

You can also get paid faster with Stax's payment processing technology, which allows your customers to pay with credit cards, debit cards, and bank accounts directly into the platform, without the need for a third-party gateway like Stripe or PayPal.

Stax Features that Stand Out

• Customize invoices and statements, generate fully editable invoice drafts, and set up recurring invoices for future billings
  
• Provide easy access for customers to adjust subscription plans, review invoices and statements, view outstanding balances, add services, and manage payment methods
  
• Make it easy for new customers to sign up for a subscription plan, select the payment frequency, and add their preferred form of payment through an online registration site
  
• Personalize communications and invoices that reflect your business and brand to drive faster cash collection, including automated emails or texts for failed payments, expired credit card notices, or past due invoices
  

15. Wave

Best for Bookkeeping

Wave is another option to automate your subscription payments.

You can use Wave to set up recurring payments, customize your invoices for any day of the week, month, or timezone, and with any frequency and switch between automatic and manual billing with the push of a button.

Wave Features that Stand Out

• Simple fee structure with low rates and no hidden fees
• All major cards accepted: Visa, 
Visa Debit, MasterCard, MasterCard Debit, and American Express
• Get paid in one business day for credit card payments and 1-6 business days for 
bank payments
• Accept credit card payments over the phone, online, or in person
• Set up recurring billing with automatic payments for your repeat customers
  
• Automate bookkeeping: payments can connect seamlessly with your Wave account
  

What are the benefits of using a recurring payment system?

A recurring payment system can provide a number of benefits for both businesses and consumers.

For businesses, a recurring payment system can help increase customer loyalty and reduce churn rates.

It can also help improve cash flow and make it easier to budget for future expenses (make sure to follow some best practices when collecting recurring payments.)

For consumers, a recurring payment system can make it easier to budget for monthly expenses and it can also provide a level of convenience and peace of mind compared to locked in contracts.

How to choose the right recurring payment system for your business?

There's no easy answer when it comes to choosing the right recurring payment system. Every business is different, and each one has unique needs that must be taken into account.

That said, there are a few key factors you should keep in mind as you evaluate recurring payment systems for your company.

Make sure the system is customizable

As your business grows and changes, you'll need a subscription billing system that can change with you.

Look for platforms that offer a variety of customization options, such as the ability to brand all communications to match your look and voice.

Consider ease of use

You'll want a system that's easy to use and understand, especially if you have employees who aren't particularly tech savvy.

Look for systems with user-friendly interfaces and straightforward features that don't require any coding on your part.

Determine whether the system can scale

As your business grows, you'll need a recurring payment system that can handle an increasing number of transactions.

Make sure the system you choose can accommodate all your planned needs for the future.

Consider the cost

Obviously, you'll want to find a system that fits within your budget. But don't sacrifice quality for price — look for a system that offers good value for the money.

More often than not, you'll get what you pay for. For example, an inexpensive payment platform may not perform well at high volumes or charge you exorbitant hidden fees.

Compare features

Not all payment systems are created equal, so it's important to compare features apples-to-apples before making a final decision.

Make sure the subscription billing platform you choose offers all the features you need, including support for multiple payment types, international payments in multiple currencies, and so on.

What to Do Next

No matter what type of business you own, there's a recurring payment system that will fit your needs.

The best way to find the right system for your company is to consider the specific needs of your business and that of your customers.

The above list of the best recurring payment systems in the market will point you in the right direction.

Most of the these tools offer either free trials or a money back guarantee.