Recurly vs. Stripe Billing

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Recurly
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Recurly is a subscription billing platform and manages customer communications via email, business performance monitoring, and account changes. A merchant bank account is required to work with Recurly. A payment gateway is part of the product but it integrates with other gateways, such as PayPal, to give shoppers a more comprehensive suite of payment options.
$249
per month
Stripe Billing
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Stripe Billing subscription management software is used to bill and manage customers in various ways, from simple recurring billing to usage-based billing and sales-negotiated contracts. It is used to automate revenue management workflows, and accept payments globally.
$620
per month 1 year contract
Pricing
RecurlyStripe Billing
Editions & Modules
Starter
$249
per month
Professional
Get a custom quote
per month
Elite
Get a custom quote
per month
Pay As You Go
0.7%
of Billing Volume
Pay Monthly
$620
per month 1 year contract
Custom Pricing
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
RecurlyStripe Billing
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFor startups and SMBs looking to launch today and grow their subscription business fast, the Starter plan (formerly Core) is available with no monthly platform fee plus no payment volume fee for first $40,000 USD per month in first 3 months for new customers only.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
RecurlyStripe Billing
Considered Both Products
Recurly
Chose Recurly
It's more of a SaaS oriented solution than just payment processing and billing software. The advanced analytics is a huge advantage over the competition.
Stripe Billing

No answer on this topic

Best Alternatives
RecurlyStripe Billing
Small Businesses
WooCommerce Subscriptions
WooCommerce Subscriptions
Score 7.9 out of 10
WooCommerce Subscriptions
WooCommerce Subscriptions
Score 7.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct
Score 8.6 out of 10
Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Salesforce Revenue Cloud
Salesforce Revenue Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
Salesforce Revenue Cloud
Salesforce Revenue Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
RecurlyStripe Billing
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
RecurlyStripe Billing
Likelihood to Recommend
Recurly is great for tracking transactions and reviewing payment method declines. The platform is extremely helpful when dealing with scenarios where someone believes they have been fraudulently charged for the product. Recurly allows for transaction filtering, which is very helpful when trying to find possibly fraudulent charges very easy. If expecting precise, detailed information about a card decline, Recurly would not be very helpful.
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If you have a small to medium sized business Stripe is most likely the perfect solution for you. It will automate almost all of your billing, freeing up your time to be used elsewhere. If you have a large business I would recommend getting in touch with the Stripe customer support team first to ensure it will be a good fit for you.
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Pros
  • Recurly is very easy to use. Their UI is very clean and intuitive, so my staff has no problem understanding how to handle payments in Recurly. They just released a new UI, which is currently in Beta, but does an even better job making the user experience great.
  • Recurly really helps reduce the time involved in collecting payment from a client. They have a dunning process which detects when a transaction has failed, and automatically re-tries running the payment several times before giving up. Recurly gives you full flexibility on how the dunning process works, including the ability to send your client payment declined notifications every few days to inspire them to update their payment info.
  • Recurly just added a new feature which can automatically update credit card information from clients whose card has expired. They ping the credit card company (visa, MC, AMEX, Discover) to retrieve new card information for cards who have just gone past their expiration dates. This is extremely handy, and has reduced the number of times we've had to contact our client to get updated billing information.
  • Recurly has excellent customer service. You can chat with an agent and receive an instant reply to your questions. I love this.
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  • Laravel integration. Our product is written in Laravel, which supports Stripe out of the box.
  • Customer service. When I had questions during my integration, customer support was easily accessible, friendly and helpful.
  • Modern UI creates a quick, seamless purchase process for the customer.
  • The ability to generate one-off custom invoices (not associated with a specific product) allows us to bill for custom development services through the same payment processor.
  • The backend dashboard is well laid out and provides lots of great information.
  • Test mode makes testing purchases quick and painless.
  • Great looking customer-facing invoices.
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Cons
  • I would like it if an agent accessed Recurly for any reason that it tracks it using the agent's name or login information.
  • The time stamp on refunds processed can be confusing as it sometimes shows midnight when we don't, as such, I would like to see a change in that.
  • Would like if the report for transitioned showed who completed the transition.
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  • It's pretty code-intensive to set up. You have to be a developer to get it on your site -- I feel like it should be more turnkey.
  • Better reporting and analytics -- why should i have to subscribe to yet another sass platform like Baremetrics to get better metrics -- feel like these should be onboard at Stripe. If a competitor came along with better metrics, we would switch.
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Likelihood to Renew
I believe we would continue to use Recurly because they have shown that they are continually improving their software, and they listen to their customers
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No answers on this topic
Usability
Apart from a lot of scope, which it has for improvement, like analytics, api's, customer service, downtimes. It still provides a lot of value, it is helpful for us in Business crtical areas, managing subscriptions and creating and launching coupons, ease of usability, camparatively lower maintainence are some valid reasons to prefer Recurly.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
They have always been quick to respond and help. I love their chat feature at the bottom right-hand corner of the platform.
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I have had no problems with Stripe support, they are prompt and it does not crash like other platforms or software. They are also great about notifying if maintenance is needed. Since the interface is so easy to use, I haven’t had to contact support that much, versus other platforms, it can be hard to be aware of certain features.
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Implementation Rating
We implemented Recurly ourself both for client, backend and bi in a weeks time
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
We did try to custom build a recurring option in these tools that we've tried, but Recurly offers a different level of support on our ever growing customers who either fit into our normal subscription business/billing model and those who do not. It allows us to see what's going on in our side of the business without digging through a lot of codes and reports.
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Our firm switched to Stripe because it came highly recommended by our developer. Apparently Stripe APIs are easily integrated into websites to provide all sorts of billing technology. And we are fond of their ability to attempt to collect payments from individual subscribers multiple times. However, Chase Paymentech did offer personal customer service that was quite stellar. As our company grows there is simply no way we can function without the ability to talk to someone in the case of an emergency
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Return on Investment
  • If you have considered spending a little and saving a lot of time, then Recurly is a great fit. We are a small team and we handle a lot of subscriptions and also get good insights into how our business is doing. So in a way Recurly is helping us a lot.
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  • Positive - integrates with WordPress, the platform we use at our company.
  • Positive - everything is all in one place with customers.
  • Positive - easy to navigate.
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ScreenShots

Recurly Screenshots

Screenshot of payments with smart routing to improve transaction success rates and conversions by offering a variety of payment methods, such as credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and ACH.Screenshot of the flexible ways to configure subscription billings workflows, and automate recurring invoicing based on the subscription parameters.Screenshot of automated dunning communications to increase collection effectiveness. Configurable across period and timing, if the payment is past due or declined, selected and personalized dunning campaign launch.Screenshot of the features to set up and test different products, plans, and pricing options, plus promotional tools like free trials, coupons, and gift subscriptions and cards to attract more customers.Screenshot of Recurly analytics, which provides a 360° view into the health of a subscription business's plan performance, churn trends, campaigns results, financial metrics. These inform decisions for business growth.