The Ultimate in Billing and Metering Flexibility
SaaSGrid allows billing and metering capabilities to be seamlessly integrated into your SaaS application. Through a simple API, engineers can define what transactions and parts of code are billable, making these features accessible only to those who have subscribed to them. Once the billable features or transactions are defined, pricing can then be managed externally in a zero code fashion. Business teams can manage the pricing and bundling of features through an easy to use web interface, creating any number of combinations and product editions. Your customers can also define a variety of payment methods, including credit card and ACH. SaaSGrid adheres to your pricing definitions, automatically creating invoices and processing payment requests against defined billing gateways using your customer’s preferred payment method.
Key Points
• Create an infinite number of pricing and feature configurations and bundle those configurations into product editions that can be offered and accessible to the market instantly.
• Configure merchant accounts through SaaSGrid and tie those accounts to your various SaaS application offerings. As customers purchase subscriptions to your SaaS offering, SaaSGrid charges their configured payment source, deposits the money into your merchant account, and ensures customers only gain access to the features and functionality they’ve paid for.
• SaaSGrid’s metering and monetization engine provides a convenient, single management portal to get a real-time look at application usage so you can quickly react to indicators of where more money can be made, or where usability improvements can be added. New product management strategies can also be derived from this data for utilizing better pricing structures or defining the right bundling options.
Impact on Cost of Service: MEDIUM
Why?
SaaS gives software companies the ability to take advantage of a powerful concept – recurring, stable revenue streams. SaaS offerings are generally delivered to your customers over the web where access to the SaaS application is granted on a periodic basis in exchange for recurring payment. However, expectations are much more complicated than simple access. Customers expect to be offered flexible pricing options with a variety of contract models. Suppose one customer is interested in paying on a monthly basis but others in the market want to take advantage of discounts coupled to quarterly or yearly contracts. How do you satisfy this? Imagine another realistic but more complicated scenario: your customers each have different needs and if given an opportunity are willing to pay for extra functionality to satisfy those needs. Can your SaaS application be customized with a customer’s à la carte choices for specific optional functionality? Given this proposed flexibility, can you collect payment against those contracts and accurately track those payments?
In addition, having a complete understanding of how customers are using your software is key to success and maintaining competitive edge, but trying to develop this level of real-time, multi-tenant data aggregation is difficult and adds one more layer of burden to internal resources.
