• Chargebee offers a number of subscription management features, but their customers are still responsible for handling key tasks like connecting to payment gateways, taxes, payment reconciliation, and chargebacks.
• As your merchant of record (MoR), FastSpring takes on the responsibility for these tasks, including payment processing, remitting taxes across jurisdictions, and more.
• Other Chargebee alternatives include Stripe, Maxio, Zoho Billing, Stax Bill, Zuora, Sticky.io, PayPal Enterprise Payments, Recurly, and Paddle.

Chargebee is a robust subscription management platform —  and if you’re looking for Chargebee alternatives, you’re likely already aware of many of its key features.

However, there are certain aspects of collecting recurring payments that you would still be responsible for when using Chargebee, such as:

• Connecting to payment gateways manually. While Chargebee supports several different payment gateways, you have to set up and configure each one.
• Remitting taxes at the end of the year. They will collect taxes for you, but you are ultimately held responsible for filing and paying taxes correctly within each jurisdiction you do business.
• Reconciling payments, fulfillment, refunds, etc. While Chargebee lets you automate many mundane accounting tasks and integrate with account software, you still have to track and record every transaction, refund, etc.
• Responding to and processing chargebacks. Chargebee only offers full chargeback support for limited vendors, so other vendors will need to manage chargebacks for themselves.

In this guide, we present 10 alternatives to Chargebee that help relieve some of these burdens for users, starting with an in-depth review of our solution, FastSpring. 

FastSpring handles the entire payment process from checkout to remitting end-of-year taxes for SaaS companies. To learn more about how FastSpring can help you scale quickly, sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

10 Chargebee Alternatives

1. FastSpring.
2. Stripe.
3. Maxio.
4. Zoho Billing.
5. Stax Bill.
6. Zuora.
7. Sticky.io.
8. PayPal Enterprise Payments.
9. Recurly.
10. Paddle.

1. FastSpring

As your merchant of record (MoR), FastSpring takes on the responsibility for payment processing, remitting taxes, and more for your software or SaaS business.

To compare, most Chargebee alternatives are either subscription billing platforms or payment gateways. 

Some of these providers may be able to help you connect to international payment gateways, alert you to chargebacks, and help you collect VAT and sales taxes. However, you’ll still be responsible for paying taxes, processing chargebacks, and for things like legal compliance, dunning, and more. 

FastSpring, on the other hand, handles everything from optimizing your checkout flow to remitting end-of-year taxes by acting as your merchant of record (MoR).

Next, we explain how an MoR is different from other payment service providers. 

What It Means to Have FastSpring as Your Merchant of Record

A merchant of record, or MoR, is the business entity that sells goods or services to the buyer. You can act as your own MoR, or you can outsource the entire process to FastSpring. Companies that haven’t thought about who their MoR is are probably acting as their own MoR.

When you outsource your transactions to FastSpring, your customers still visit your website to choose their software and/or subscription, but FastSpring takes over when the customer gets to the checkout. They’ll receive a receipt from FastSpring, and FastSpring will be listed on their bank or credit card statement.

The profits are yours, but FastSpring is the liable party for the sale.

That’s why FastSpring can do more than other types of service payment providers can:

• Collect and remit VAT, sales taxes, and other consumption taxes.
• Comply with local laws and regulations.
• Monitor chargebacks in real time.
• Reconcile transactions, payments, refunds, etc.
• And more, all on your behalf.

If something goes wrong with local or tax compliance, chargebacks, accounts not balancing, etc., FastSpring takes the lead to solve the issue on your behalf.

Instead of juggling multiple platforms and providers for a complete payment solution, you can work with just one provider: FastSpring. 

Plus, you can start selling in 200+ jurisdictions almost instantly — because we’ve already established the necessary processes in each region. You can learn more about how FastSpring helps you with international recurring payments here.

In summary, FastSpring focuses on the selling, so you can focus on making a great product.

In the next sections, we’ll dive deeper into how FastSpring helps you: 

• Create flexible free trials and recurring billing logic without code.
• Minimize payment failures with advanced payment routing and smart dunning.
• Increase conversions with branded, localized checkout.

We’ll also cover how FastSpring provides all features for one flat-rate price designed to fit your budget. 

Flexible No-Code Free Trials and Recurring Billing Logic

Not every business can use the same free trial model. Some businesses will see more success if they let customers sign up without payment details, while others will see more success if they require a payment method to sign up but don’t automatically charge the customer at the end of the trial.

Additionally, what worked for your small business to start may not be the right solution for you long term as you grow and adopt more complex billing. That’s why many software, gaming, digital product, mobile app, and SaaS companies need payment software that can support many different types of trial models, subscriptions, etc. 

However, most payment processors (sometimes interchangeably referred to as “payment gateways,” while technically being slightly different) only offer limited recurring billing and basic trial options — e.g., a free trial that automatically turns into monthly billing. This makes it difficult to optimize your trials and subscription plans for high conversions and what works best for your customers. It also makes it difficult to adapt as a business in the long run. 

FastSpring, on the other hand, delivers advanced features and a wide variety of flexible options for how you can set up trials, subscriptions, and more. Below, we provide an overview of FastSpring’s subscription management tools. 

Trial subscription options:

• Free or paid trial periods of any length.
• Set up free, paid, or usage-based trials.
• Choose whether or not to require a payment method when signing up for a trial.
• Choose to automatically bill the user after the trial has ended or let them manually start a paid subscription.
• Allow subscribers to reactivate expired trial accounts.
• Choose when FastSpring will send reminders of ending trials (e.g., three days before the trial ends).
• Offer a discounted trial period.
• Automatically detect when a single user tries to sign up for multiple trials, and only allow one trial account.
• And more.

Recurring billing options:

• Choose subscription frequency (weekly, monthly, yearly, or custom) and billing date (or let your customers choose).
• Set subscriptions to auto renewal, manual renewal (i.e., customers have to re-enter payment information each time they’re billed), or managed renewal (i.e., your team initiates the charge via the API, which is great for usage-based billing).
• Offer discounts and coupons.
• Allow prorated billing if a customer wants to upgrade, downgrade, or pause the service part-way through the billing cycle.
• Add one time purchases to the initial bill but not recurring billings.
• Manage upsell and cross-sell products at checkout.
• Give customers the option of whether or not to store payment information (or make the decision for all customers).
• Auto-renew to a different subscription.
• Offer subscription add-ons.
• And more.

Fulfillment options:

• Choose whether to share products and resources via a license key, product download, signed PDF, or email.
• Configure multiple fulfillment actions for one subscription (e.g., send a license key and product manual PDF via email).

FastSpring also provides your customers with an easy-to-access self-serve Customer Account Portal, where they can view their entire order history; upgrade, downgrade, or pause their subscriptions; and add or edit payment methods.

This self-serve portal is entirely managed by FastSpring but reflects the visual branding of your checkout for a cohesive and user-friendly interface and customer experience. 

Finally, some subscription management tools require a lot of technical skills to set up and use. 

But with ease of use in mind, FastSpring lets you set up many of the options mentioned above without code. If you have unique subscription management needs, you can also use our API and webhooks library for more control — our experienced developers are readily available to help you create the best solution for your subscription business model.

Don’t forget: Rules around recurring billing vary across the globe. Without a global MoR like FastSpring, it’s your responsibility to keep track of current and evolving local transaction laws and regulations and ensure your recurring billing model complies.

FastSpring handles this — and the liability for recurring transactions — for you.

Note: If you already have multiple subscriptions set up in another platform, we can help you easily migrate over to FastSpring. For subscription data migration with payment information included, click here for more info. For subscription data migration without payment information, click here for more info.

Advanced Payment Routing and Smart Dunning to Minimize Payment Failures

From the initial purchase to each subsequent rebill, failed payment is one of the main reasons for lost revenue.

Many payment service providers will automatically retry failed payments once or notify customers of failed payments. This is a good place to start, but there are more ways to meaningfully reduce involuntary churn due to failed payments. 

FastSpring helps you proactively minimize payment failures and reduce churn with flexible dunning management, which includes:

• Proactive reminders to update payment information (e.g., “Your subscription is due soon”).
• Multiple follow-up notifications (e.g., two, five, seven, 14, and 21 days after their payment method fails).
• A pre-made email template for reminders — or the ability to customize your own messages.
• Multiple payment retries before each follow-up notification is sent out.
• Automatic payment gateway rerouting (this solves many payment failures due to network or system errors.
• An intuitive self-serve portal (customers can easily update payment information from the same portal where they manage their subscription plan).

Plus, you can choose whether to pause or continue the service when a payment fails. If you keep the service going after a failed payment and give your customers a chance to update their payment information, you’ll have less churn and increase retention.

You can also choose to apply a pause rather than a full cancellation of their service after all reminders have been sent out. Pausing makes it easier for your customer to restart their subscription without the hassle of onboarding again.

You can read more about how one of our customers reduced churn by 50% in this case study. 

Branded, Localized Checkout to Increase Conversions

Friction at the purchase step can cause customers to fall off before completing a purchase. For example:

• If the price at checkout is different than it was on the website (e.g., different currency or different amount because additional fees have been added without a clear label), customers may decide not to buy.
• If the checkout is visually very different from the website, or if the checkout is on an entirely different website, the customer is less likely to believe the checkout is authentic and secure.
• If they have to create an account in order to purchase but don’t want to.
• If checkout translation and localization is incorrect, inconsistent, or missing, so the customer questions the store’s legitimacy.

These are just a few examples, but there are many reasons why a customer may decide against completing a purchase at the last minute.

FastSpring helps you anticipate objections and reduce friction at checkout in the following ways:

• Customizable checkout UI.
• The most popular payment methods.
• Local currency conversions and language translations.
• Conversion-optimized embedded, pop-up, or web storefront checkout experiences.
• Personalized developer support.

Read on for more details about each.

Customizable Checkout UI

Many subscription management platforms or payment processors only provide checkout templates where you can add your logo and choose basic color schemes. These solutions usually fail to match your visual branding and may not be optimized for increasing conversions. 

To create the best experience for your customers and get the highest conversion rates, you need more custom abilities.

FastSpring lets you customize the look and feel of your checkout with pre-built branding tools and CSS overrides. You have complete visual customization with our Store Builder Library (SBL), a JavaScript library that lets you customize, brand, and streamline your entire checkout workflow to build trust and eliminate friction throughout the buyer’s journey. This allows you to create the checkout experience that most aligns with your brand and highlights your product. 

The Most Popular Payment Methods

One of the biggest reasons customers fail to complete a purchase is because they can’t use their preferred payment method. 

However, offering different payment methods isn’t as simple as adding their logo to your checkout screen. 

You have to agree to certain terms and conditions before a payment network or issuing bank will approve transactions with your business. Each payment provider will have different regulations regarding fraud, chargebacks, privacy protection, etc. It can be a huge task to stay in good standing with many different payment providers on your own. 

If you want to transact internationally, there will be even more to manage.

While Visa and Mastercard may be popular payment methods in the U.S., buyers in other countries prefer different payment methods. To convert international customers, you need to provide many different types of preferred payment methods — which means more payment providers to maintain. 

For instance, Pix is a preferred payment method in Brazil, while AliPay is a preferred payment method in China.

FastSpring takes care of all of this — from staying in good standing with payment networks, to managing fraud and chargebacks — for you.

FastSpring already has good relationships with many different payment networks and issuing banks around the world, which means you can accept your customers’ preferred payment methods right away. 

Local Currency Conversions and Language Translations

Customers are more likely to trust a checkout experience that uses the same language and currency as what’s shown on your website. That’s why FastSpring lets you translate checkout into the local language and convert prices to the local currency. 

You can let each buyer select their preferred language from a dropdown menu featuring 21+ supported languages. Or, you can lock the language and FastSpring will automatically select the appropriate language based on the buyer’s location. 

You also have the option to set custom pricing strategies in each currency or let FastSpring automatically convert prices to the local currency (FastSpring supports 23+ currencies).

If you choose to let FastSpring convert product prices for you, we match the format of the original price. For example, if the original price is $12.99 and the conversion to Euros is €14.29, FastSpring would change it to €14.99.

Learn how Nelio increased growth by 50% with localized checkout in this case study.

Embedded, Pop-Up, or Web Storefront Checkout

With FastSpring, you can embed checkout directly on your website, insert a pop-up checkout, or send customers to a secure web storefront managed by FastSpring. This gives you the flexibility to choose the solution that’s best for your team and customers.

To compare, embedding checkout directly on your webpage ensures less disruption and typically decreases the likelihood of your buyers abandoning. Pop-up checkout requires less setup — simply insert a few lines of pre-written HTML and Javascript in your webpage.

Learn how DaisyDisk was able to spend less time managing their checkout while significantly increasing conversions by using FastSpring’s pop-up checkout, in this case study. 

To outsource the entire checkout process to FastSpring, you can choose the web storefront option.

With the web storefront option, customers will be redirected to a webpage entirely managed by FastSpring — but customized to match your visual brand identity — where they can view their cart and complete the purchase.

Personalized Developer Support

Many payment service providers only help with the initial setup and when something goes wrong with the software. Some companies only provide personalized support to their largest clients. This leaves you on your own to manage ongoing payment operations.

FastSpring is dedicated to providing you with the best experience throughout the entire engagement.

Our team is always available to help — regardless of how big or small your operation is. Whether that’s helping you build the best checkout experience for your business or expanding into a new region, our friendly customer support team will help you find and build out the best solutions for your business.

Robust Analytics and Reporting Dashboards

FastSpring’s Reporting and Analytics is a robust suite of reports and visualizations to keep you informed of important stats such as MRR, churn rate, new customers by product type, and more. 

For example, our Subscription Overview dashboard shows key subscription analytics including subscription churn, subscriber loss, MRR churn rate, active customers, and more. 

Use our Subscription Overview dashboard, Revenue dashboard, data export reporting and data API features, and more to better understand:

• How each product contributes to your bottom line. 
• When customers are most likely to drop off.
• What coupons or promotions are working.
• How individual trials are performing.
• Which subscription models generate the most revenue.
• Where your customers are located.
• What currencies and payment methods customers prefer.
• Chargeback rates by customer segment.
• Chargeback rates by product line.
• The status of your active webhooks.
• And much more.

All-in-One Pricing Without the Need for Additional Software

Chargebee separates its Billing features into three pricing plans, so you may eventually need the most expensive plan to get the features you need. For example, chargeback automation is not offered in Chargebee’s Starter plan. 

Plus, you’ll still have to pay for additional software solutions like payment gateways (sometimes interchangeably referred to as “payment processors,” although they are technically different) or tax software for a complete payment management system. Even with seamless integrations, it’s a hassle, an additional cost, and may even require additional headcount to manage it all. 

FastSpring, on the other hand, offers one flat-rate price that includes the entire platform — every feature and all services. Our team works with you to find an affordable price based on the volume of transactions you move through FastSpring (you’ll only be charged when successful transactions take place).

If you think FastSpring could be the right payment solution for your subscription-based business, sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

2. Stripe

Stripe’s main service is payment processing; however, they do offer a few other services, such as: 

• Checkout.
• Fraud and risk management.
• Automated invoicing.
• In-person payments.
• Subscription management.
• Virtual and physical card issuing.
• Business spend management.

Stripe billing has fewer options than Chargebee for recurring billing, but you can easily integrate the two software solutions if you want to use (and pay for) both. Stripe works with companies of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises. 

3. Maxio

Maxio (formerly Chargify and SaasOptics) is another cloud-based financial operations platform for B2B SaaS. They offer solutions to automate financial systems on the back end, and features to help improve the order-to-revenue process. Their main services include: 

• Subscription management.
• Usage-based and global billing.
• Revenue recognition and revenue management tools.
• Billing system dashboard and metrics.
• Built-in integrations with various other software (e.g., accounting software such as QuickBooks and Xero).
• International payment gateways.

Maxio advertises their ability to accommodate any go-to-market strategy (such as product-led or sales-led approaches).

4. Zoho Billing

Zoho offers a large suite of software to run your business, from a CRM and ERPs to a video meeting platform. Zoho Billing (formerly Zoho Subscriptions) is their payment processing and recurring billing solution. Some of their key features include: 

• Invoicing and invoice templates.
• Multi-currency support.
• 50+ pre-built analytic reports.
• Automatic online payment retries.
• Out-of-the-box integrations with other billing platforms (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, etc.).

Zoho Billing offers more pre-made solutions than other options on this list, which some companies may find limiting. However, Zoho Billing may be a good choice if you’re already embedded in the Zoho ecosystem.

5. Stax Bill 

Stax Bill (formerly Fusebill) provides subscription management software and a payment gateway in one platform. Other than offering a payment gateway with each plan, Fusebill offers many of the same features as Chargebee, including: 

• Dunning management.
• Flexible recurring billing options.
• Recurring revenue recognition features.
• Billing analytics.

Fusebill also offers flexible catalog pricing and inventory tracking tools. 

6. Zuora

Zuora is a monetization platform for B2C and B2B companies. Zuora’s key functionalities include: 

• Customer subscription management.
• Revenue reconciliation tools.
• Revenue analytics.
• Built-in integrations with lots of business software.
• Low-code SDKs and APIs to build your own integrations.
• Quoting software.

Zuora provides a lot of flexibility for building out your own solution on top of their platform; however, non-developers may find it difficult to manage.

7. Sticky.io

Sticky.io (formerly Limelight) is a subscription management platform that integrates with popular ecommerce platforms such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce, and Shopify. They advertise the ability to: 

• Support nearly any subscription or pricing model.
• Create coupons, discounts, and special promotions.
• Offer add-ons, upsells, etc.
• Fight fraud and chargebacks.
• Manage automated dunning.

Like Chargebee, Sticky.io doesn’t provide a payment gateway; however, they do offer pre-built integrations with several payment gateways. 

8. PayPal Enterprise Payments

PayPal Enterprise Payments (formerly Braintree by PayPal) is a payment gateway provider that also provides merchant accounts. Other features include: 

• Subscription billing management.
• Optimized checkout flow.
• Flexible risk mitigation options.
• Reporting and analytics.
• Third-party integrations for recurring billing, accounting, and more.

PayPal Enterprise Payments supports payment from PayPal, Venmo (in the U.S.), Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

9. Recurly

Recurly is a subscription management software and recurring billing platform. Recurly offers features such as:

• Multiple pricing models.
• Item catalog.
• Recurring billing.
• Payments orchestration.
• Subscriber management.
• Churn management.
• Reporting dashboards and analytics.

Like Chargebee, Recurly doesn’t include a native payment gateway, but the platform does offer pre-built integrations with popular gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and more. Recurly also allows you to connect multiple gateways.

10. Paddle

Paddle is another Chargebee alternative that’s an MoR with a subscription billing platform, appropriate for use by SaaS and software companies. Paddle has features including: 

• Multiple payment gateways.
• Secure checkout.
• Recurring billing management.
• A robust payments toolkit.
• Fraud protection.
• Transaction and subscription reporting.
• Invoicing. 
• And more.

Learn more about Paddle alternatives.

Frequently Asked Questions About Chargebee Alternatives

What’s the Difference Between Chargebee and FastSpring?

In short: Chargebee is a subscription management platform for SaaS companies, while FastSpring is an all-in-one payments and digital commerce platform (and merchant of record) built for digital-first businesses.

Who Are the Top Competitors to Chargebee in 2025?

Top Chargebee competitors include:

• FastSpring.
• Stripe.
• Maxio.
• Zoho Billing.
• Stax Bill.
• Zuora.
• Sticky.io.
• PayPal Enterprise Payments.
• Recurly.
• Paddle.

What Should I Consider When Choosing a Subscription Management Platform to Replace Chargebee?

The most important considerations include:

• Your business size, industry, and transaction volume.
• Support for localization and preferred payment methods in the jurisdictions where your customers live.
• Integrations with other tools in your payments and tech stack.
• Security and compliance.
• Budget, costs, and scalability.
• Customer support.

How Difficult Is It to Migrate From Chargebee to Another Platform?

In short, the complexity of migrating from Chargebee to another platform depends heavily on factors including:

• Your current Chargebee setup.
• The complexity of your subscription model.
• The platform you’re migrating to.

If you’re looking to migrate from Chargebee to FastSpring, FastSpring can import your subscriptions with payment details or without payment details. Either way, our team is always available to help — regardless of how big or small your operation is.

Need a Chargebee Alternative for Your SaaS, Software, Video Games, or Other Digital Products Business?

FastSpring can help!

Instead of managing a large software stack for just the subscription lifecycle, let FastSpring handle all of payment lifecycle management for you. FastSpring is more than a subscription management platform — we’re the merchant of record for global SaaS companies and many other digital businesses. 

Sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

This post was originally published in December 2022 and has been updated.

The post Chargebee Alternatives in 2025: 10 Competitors and How They Differ appeared first on FastSpring.

This year, Audio Developer Conference is also bringing back ADC Workshops as part of the main schedule, available to both in-person and online participants. Taking place on the first day of the event (Nov. 10), workshops will run alongside a full program of 18-minute talks. Spots for workshops are limited and require registration, so participation will be on a first-come, first-served basis. It’s the perfect opportunity for developers, educators, and students around the world to learn, connect, and exchange ideas in real time.

Where to Get Tickets

Still need tickets? Head over to the registration page to grab your ticket today.

How to Connect With FastSpring

You can connect with FastSpring at our virtual booth during Audio Developer Conference through the Gather platform. Simply navigate to the exhibitor area, find the FastSpring booth, and drop in to chat with our team. We’ll be online to answer questions, share insights, and help you explore how FastSpring can help you grow and monetize your audio software.

Already know that you want to meet with a FastSpring expert during the event? Schedule a demo today.

FastSpring is the leading merchant of record for global SaaS and software companies — powering over a billion dollars in worldwide transactions every year. We’ll manage your checkout, VAT and sales taxes, compliance, and more, freeing you to focus on what you do best: building great audio software. Founded in 2005, FastSpring is a privately owned company headquartered in the U.S., with offices in the Netherlands, Singapore, Canada, the U.K., and Ireland. For more information, please visit https://www.fastspring.com.

The post FastSpring Sponsoring ADC Bristol 2025 appeared first on FastSpring.

And as our annual SaaS and software benchmarking data report has shown across the last few years, the shopping spike doesn’t just apply to physical goods like clothing, jewelry, toys, or electronics. 

End-of-year budget spending certainly contributes to this effect too.

Is your SaaS or software business ready to take advantage of the B2B and B2C spending sprees? 

FastSpring is a merchant of record for over 3500 companies that use our platform daily. By analyzing years’ worth of aggregate sales data, we have helpful insights to share about Q4 sales spikes for software and SaaS businesses.

Below, we share this year’s insights into:

• The latest U.S. trends in year-end SaaS and software sales data.
• The latest global trends in year-end SaaS and software sales data.
• How FastSpring can help you best capitalize on Q4 sales spikes.

FastSpring is a merchant of record that can help you easily grow your business internationally. We provide an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital product businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and award-winning consumer support. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Our Data Sources and Analysis Methodology

Where the Data Are From

FastSpring helps companies sell digital products in over 200 countries, but to help us keep this study consistent and repeatable, we’ve pulled sales data from eight countries around the world. 

Each year, we include the U.S., Canada, Germany, Great Britain, India, Brazil, Australia, and China.

This data are specific to where the sales took place, not where the companies are located.

To show a glimpse into one specific country that’s also a large, often-targeted SaaS and software market, we also show the same trends for just the United States.

When the Data Are From

To highlight useful trend data while avoiding any major outliers skewing the data, we use aggregated data for the most current five calendar years. The data below represent sales across 2020-2024.

We also use a seasonal index to show quarterly or monthly sales against a year’s monthly or quarterly average (read more about that in the How section below).

What We Measured

FastSpring supports the sales of a vast array of digital products, including SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, AI, and eLearning. 

To narrow this report to a specific type of industry, we’ve excluded everything but software and SaaS.

We also used U.S. dollars as the currency for all figures to make comparison easy and clear. 

How We Measured It

To establish a baseline, we calculated monthly and quarterly averages for each year. 

For a very simplified example, if four quarterly totals were $200, $200, $100, and $300, the quarterly average for the year would be $200. 

Then once we had the period average for the year, we compared each period’s actuals to that period average to get a percentage.

So for example, if Q3 shows a percentage of 90%, it means the sales total that quarter was 10% lower than the year’s quarterly average. If Q4 shows a percentage of 111%, that means Q4 sales totals were 11% higher than the year’s quarterly average. 

We then combined that data across five years to get the five year averages and avoid any outliers causing a sharp spike that might have skewed the results too much. 

US Year-End Trends for SaaS and Software Purchases

The following data show the monthly and yearly averages for U.S. software and SaaS sales across the last five years.

5YR Average US SaaS and Software Sales by Month

In the U.S., the three highest monthly spikes of SaaS and software sales are in March (104%), December (105%), and as expected, November (112%).

5YR Average US SaaS and Software Sales by Quarter

Similarly, Q4 is the highest-performing quarter for software and SaaS sales at 106%, with Q1 at 99%, Q2 at 97%, and Q3 at 98%.

Global Year-End Trends for SaaS and Software Purchases

Global trends show even stronger spikes in November and Q4, thanks to particularly strong sales in China and Germany (more on that below). 

5YR Average Global SaaS and Software Sales by Month

Just like in the U.S., global sales of software and SaaS spiked slightly to 104% in March and 105% in December. 

But as expected, the spike in November was higher than just in the U.S., at 118% globally.

While Black Friday and Cyber Week have traditionally been anchored to the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., seasonal sales surges have caught on worldwide, perhaps thanks to other countries such as Germany observing Black Friday and Cyber Monday (or even an entire Cyber Week), and China observing Singles Day on November 11 (11.11). 

5YR Average Global SaaS and Software Sales by Quarter

Quarterly sales reflect a slightly smaller spike over the shopping holiday season when Oct.-Nov.-Dec. are averaged together, but the spike is still significant at 8%.

Because the quarterly spike isn’t as high as the single spike in November, it reinforces that software and SaaS companies should focus their marketing and sales efforts specifically in November to get the best return and see the most growth. 

5YR Average SaaS and Software Sales by Month per Country

To illustrate the changes in various countries (and give you an idea of which countries may be most worth targeting), we’ve also broken out the monthly data by country for the eight countries we included in this survey. 

Here’s what monthly software and SaaS sales fluctuations look like with five years of data for the United States (US), Canada (CA), Germany (DE), Great Britain (GB), India (IN), Brazil (BR), Australia (AU), and China (CN).

We mentioned the China and Germany shopping holidays in November above, but China also sees spikes in April and June, likely due to the 418 (April 18) and 618 (June 18) shopping holidays.

Regardless of other monthly spikes throughout the year, November is still the single highest spike for any of the eight countries we included — ranging from 112% in the U.S. and 117% in India on the low end, to 148% in Germany and 149% in China on the high end.

SaaS and software companies can capitalize on this trend with:

• Email promotions.
• Custom partner coupon codes (which they can help you promote).
• Social media campaigns.
• Upsell or bundle offers.
• Localized promotions that would especially appeal to customers in each of your targeted regions.
• A merchant of record partner for online payments that can help you easily sell your software or SaaS worldwide.

How FastSpring Can Help

Software companies that already use FastSpring know why we’re a trusted partner in the global payments space. (Check out what Avid and Stardock have to say about the great experiences they’ve had with FastSpring, or find more FastSpring customer stories here.)

But if you’re new to FastSpring (or to the merchant of record model), here are some of the reasons our customers love using FastSpring to sell their software around the world.

FastSpring Makes Global Payments Easy for You and Your Customers

Payments Localization

Making your product available for purchase in more countries is only part of taking a software business global. 

You also have to make it very easy for users to make the purchase, with the least hesitation possible.

That requires presenting a localized checkout experience — including automatic conversions to local languages and currencies, offering dozens of the most popular payment methods (which vary by region), intelligent payment routing to regional payment gateways (to help reduce failed payments), and more.

To support improved payment localization, we work closely with our customers and payment partners to understand which payment methods are the most valuable in different regions and industries across the globe. 

This has materialized in the release of UPI in India and Pix in Brazil throughout 2025. 

By the end of October 2025, we plan to improve our Pix capabilities with support for recurring payments on subscription purchases. We’re also excited to add Toss payments in South Korea, providing additional support beyond Kakao Pay in the region.

Custom Discounts, Offers, and Coupons

When you’re running campaigns for Cyber Weekend or other regional holidays, you’ll need a partner who can support customizable offers and coupons. 

This includes the ability to:

• Offer percentage discounts on individual items.
• Preapply coupons via custom links.
• Stack multiple coupons.

FastSpring already supports all of those today, but now, we’re adding the ability to apply discounts at the order level to add even more flexibility on promotional planning. Instead of offering discounts on a per-item basis, you can now apply the discount to the entire order — which translates into clearer promotions for your customers, and ultimately, more completed orders. This feature is set to launch by the end of October, with plenty of time for Cyber Weekend prep.

Robust At-a-Glance Reporting

Once you’ve launched your Cyber Weekend campaigns, you’ll need to monitor their success throughout the course of the promotional holidays. 

With FastSpring, you get access to our Welcome Dashboard, which provides an instant view of the health of your business and campaigns. This dashboard shows key metrics such as net sales, orders, subscriptions, and chargebacks — without the need for extra navigation. That makes it easy to understand at a glance how your campaigns are performing.

If you need to dig deeper, you can simply click into an individual dashboard to dig into more specifics around individual products, chargeback rates, churn rates, and even revenue recognition for the future.

With the wide variety of reports available, you won’t have to wonder how your campaigns are performing. Instead, you can glean clear insights into your campaign’s successes or make tweaks to your campaigns if something is trending in the wrong direction.

FastSpring has localized payments, flexible discounts, and visual reporting covered. Learn more about FastSpring’s global payments.

FastSpring Calculates, Collects, and Remits Global Taxes so You Don’t Have To

FastSpring doesn’t just facilitate payments — we’re a merchant of record, which means we become the entity actually selling the digital products.

That also means that we’re the ones who handle sales taxes and VAT. 

FastSpring’s team of experts stays current on global tax regulations so we can calculate, collect, and remit those taxes — so you don’t need to worry about it. 

Learn more about FastSpring’s global tax management. 

FastSpring Has World-Class Support for You and Your Users

FastSpring’s award-winning support team is standing by and ready to help both the companies that use FastSpring as their merchant of record, and the customers who purchase software, SaaS, and other digital products.

For consumer support, customers can submit an online request and get personalized assistance. FastSpring also provides a helpful list of support topics for consumers to browse, including Licenses and Downloads, Checkout and Purchasing, and more.

For software companies using FastSpring as their MoR, you can submit a request from within the FastSpring app, or simply visit our support page.

Read more about our Stevie® award for Front-Line Customer Service Team, our Globee® award for Customer Excellence in the “Achievement in Team Customer Success” category, or submit a seller or consumer support request.

Partner With FastSpring

For over 20 years, FastSpring has been a trusted payment provider that can help you easily grow your business internationally. As a merchant of record, we provide an all-in-one payment platform that includes VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, award-winning consumer support, and more — making us an excellent partner for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, AI, eLearning, and other digital goods businesses. 

Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post Cyber Weekend Benchmarking Data: 2025 SaaS and Software Holiday Spend Report appeared first on FastSpring.

For digital-first businesses, the easiest way to manage all aspects of billing is to choose a solution that acts as your merchant of record (MoR). A billing solution that acts as your MoR gives you access to multiple payment processors (which lets you accept more payment methods and is useful when accepting payments globally, as we explain below) while taking on the liability of all transactions for you. An MoR also takes the lead on chargebacks, fraud prevention, tax audits, legal compliance, and more.

When selling physical goods and services (online or in person), various Stripe alternatives built for physical goods payments (such as Amazon Pay, Square, etc.) can provide payment processing, order fulfillment, financing options, and more. (It’s worth noting that most of these solutions can also be used by SaaS, software, video game, and other digital goods companies; however, none of them is a complete payment solution.)

In this guide, we compare eight of the best Stripe alternatives in each of these categories. Since our expertise is in providing MoR services to digital-first companies, we’ll start with an in-depth review of our solution, FastSpring.

Table of Contents

• MoRs for digital goods companies:
  • FastSpring: International payment solution for SaaS, software, video game, mobile app, AI, eLearning, and other digital product businesses.
  • Paddle: Payment infrastructure platform.
  • Verifone: Formerly 2Checkout.
• Billing software for selling physical goods and services:
  • Square: Popular payment platform for startups.
  • PayPal for Business: Available on major ecommerce platforms.
  • Authorize.net: For merchants and small businesses.
  • Adyen: Robust financial technology platform.
  • Amazon: Payment service and order fulfillment.

Note: Information in this article was validated at time of publishing and is subject to change.

If you’re looking for a Stripe alternative to help you grow your business internationally, we can help. FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, and other digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

All-In-One Payment Solutions (MoRs) for Digital-First Businesses

Most companies using Stripe (or something similar to Stripe) know it’s more than just a payment processing platform — but that there are challenges to making the system work for a global SaaS company. It can require tons of add-ons, a complicated pricing structure, and additional fees — and still lack or limit some key features.

For example, Stripe advertises subscription management features as part of the Stripe Billing package; however, many companies end up integrating with another service like Chargebee or Recurly to get the subscription management features and ease of use they need.

Often, digital goods businesses end up with a payment tech stack of over a dozen tools for:

• Calculating and remitting international taxes.
• Accessing additional subscription management features.
• Covering fraud protection.
• Handling chargebacks.
• Implementing a checkout.
• Getting higher authorization rates in other countries.
• And more.

Making it all work together puts a massive strain on the development team.

Plus, you’ll need to maintain a large team of tax and legal experts to stay up to date on regional regulations and maintain global compliance (because solutions like Stripe don’t usually help with legalities). For example, while it’s true that historically, SaaS and ecommerce companies haven’t always needed to pay VAT or sales tax, that’s no longer the case. If you don’t collect and remit the right amount of tax in each jurisdiction where you sell, you could face hefty fines — or even be banned from selling in that region in the future.

Choosing a payment processing solution that also acts as your MoR solves all these problems. 

A merchant of record (MoR) takes care of the entire digital goods billing process for you, including collecting and remitting local and international taxes (such as VAT and local sales tax), staying compliant with local laws and regulations, online payment processing, chargebacks, and much more.

FastSpring Is an International Payment Solution

FastSpring has been acting as an MoR for global software and video game companies for over 20 years, so we know what it takes to expand globally almost overnight. Here are some examples of how FastSpring helped other SaaS and software companies expand globally and increase revenue:

• Mailbird achieved over 100% growth by switching to FastSpring. They previously experimented with platforms like Stripe and PayPal. Read the Mailbird case study here.
• Capture One increased their conversion rate by 40% by switching from an in-house solution to FastSpring to help them with global payments. FastSpring offered them localized checkout experiences that automatically display accurate pricing, language, currency, and taxes around the world. Plus, it was clear that FastSpring is an invested partner with the scalability to grow with their business needs as Capture One expanded their global reach. Read the Capture One case study here.
• SocialBee doubled its monthly recurring revenue and managed tax compliance by switching from Braintree to FastSpring. Read the SocialBee case study here.

Next, we’ll take a deep dive into a few of FastSpring’s billing solutions. 

Note: The following solutions are also offered to digital-first businesses selling downloadable software, video games, app subscriptions, and other digital products. 

Leverage Multiple Payment Processors to Increase Revenue

Many digital-first companies and founding teams initially think they just need one payment processor to accept payments. However, most of those companies eventually end up needing more in order to:

• Accept more payment methods: Customers are more likely to complete a purchase if they can use their preferred payment method. However, not every payment processor supports the same list of payment methods. Working with multiple payment processors lets you accept more local payment methods and, therefore, increase revenue.
• Increase authorization rates for international transactions: Card networks are more likely to authorize transactions when the payment processor is in the same country as the buyer. Some payment processors will establish a legal entity in multiple locations; however, most companies still need to work with multiple payment processors in order to process all payments locally. 
• Accept payments from more countries: Some payment processors only support payments from select countries or regions. Working with multiple payment processors lets you reach customers in more locations.
• Minimize failed payments: Working with multiple payment processors can also solve connectivity issues or system failures. If one payment processor is experiencing a network failure, you can reroute the transaction to a payment processor that’s fully operational. 

With FastSpring, you’ll be supported by multiple payment processors that specialize in global transactions and accept the most common payment options around the world — including but not limited to Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH bank transfers, SEPA, Amazon Pay, Pix, AliPay, UPI, and more (with more added all the time).

Click here to see the full list of payment methods accepted by FastSpring.

FastSpring connects with multiple international payment gateways, and our platform uses intelligent payment routing to send each payment to the gateway with the highest authorization rates for that payment method and location. Then, if a transaction fails, we automatically retry the transaction using a secondary payment processor.

Related: Top 10 International Payment Gateways: An In-Depth Guide

Prevent Fraudulent Transactions Without Blocking Valid Transactions 

The right fraud protection can help you increase authorization rates, decrease chargebacks, and protect your company from attacks. However, if legitimate transactions get marked as fraud, you’ll lose revenue.

FastSpring takes the lead on fraud and risk activities by partnering with Sift for advanced risk analysis and fraud protection. Sift uses machine learning and AI to analyze millions of global transactions each month to identify risky transactions with higher accuracy. This means your fraud protection is constantly evolving to provide better security and improve approval rates.

FastSpring can also block transactions from countries and jurisdictions where companies are currently not allowed to do business. 

Note: You also have the option to block transactions from certain regions or limit products in each region.

If one of your customers does initiate a chargeback, or there’s an issue with fraud, FastSpring takes the lead to resolve it for you.

Discover more and read FAQs about FastSpring’s GDPR and PCI compliance, how FastSpring helps protect against high-risk transactions, and more.

Avoid High Fines and Penalties by Letting FastSpring Handle Local Legal Compliance for You

Even if all legitimate transactions go through, you could face hefty fines or be prevented from transacting in that region if the transactions don’t comply with local laws and regulations. (For example, the Reserve Bank of India limits automatic recurring payments to ₹15,000 INR, or approximately US$170; transaction attempts above that amount simply won’t go through.) 

Most companies need a full compliance department of legal professionals to keep up to date with all the laws and regulations of each jurisdiction they do business in. 

You can also face fines or penalties if you don’t file consumption tax. SaaS companies didn’t always have to pay tax, but tax regulations for digital sales are changing and being increasingly enforced.

Companies that use Stripe (or another point solution) must handle tax on their own. While Stripe will help gather sales tax, you’ll need other software to collect VAT, GST, and other forms of consumption tax. Plus, you’ll need a staff of tax experts to remit the tax at the end of each tax period. 

FastSpring handles the whole process of calculating, collecting, and remitting global sales and consumption taxes for you by: 

• Collecting all consumption tax (including GST, VAT, SST, etc.) and remitting it at the appropriate times.
• Taking the lead on legal compliance (including audits).

FastSpring collects and files taxes in more than 55 countries, 13 provinces, and all 45 U.S. states with sales tax (the other five states don’t collect sales tax). We even handle tax-exempt transactions in the U.S. and B2B reverse charges (when and where allowed) internationally.

FastSpring is fully compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Additionally, we renew our level one certification — which is the highest level possible — with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) every year. FastSpring also participates in the Data Privacy Framework (DPF) for international data transfers. Learn more at our Trust Center.

We build and maintain relationships worldwide with tax law specialists who keep us aware and up to date on laws and regulations as they change.

Manage Everything From Checkout to Subscriptions in One Platform

Instead of building and onboarding a payment stack of over a dozen different solutions to help you manage subscriptions, checkout experiences, reporting, analytics, and more, FastSpring lets companies streamline and manage all aspects of digital goods billing directly from their FastSpring dashboard. 

Below is a brief overview of these features. For a complete list of features (including digital invoicing and interactive quotes) visit FastSpring’s product overview page.

Custom, Localized, and Optimized Checkout Experience

FastSpring gives you full control over your checkout process with our Store Builder Library (SBL). You can customize your checkout, and our team will offer personalized customer support along the way.

We also offer three pre-built experiences. With minimal code, you can embed the FastSpring checkout into a web page or insert a pop-up checkout. Or, if you want to outsource the entire checkout process, you can choose the web storefront option to send customers to a secure web storefront managed entirely by FastSpring. You can also customize the storefront to match the visual branding of your website.

Whichever checkout experience you choose, FastSpring can automatically localize your checkout based on the customer’s location, including translation into 21+ languages and price conversion to many local currencies. You can also set your own language, currency, and price for each region or opt to let your customers choose for themselves.

Related: International Recurring Payments (How We Handle It for You)

Subscription Management

FastSpring lets you create a variety of custom trial and recurring billing models without writing a line of code. You can set up:

• Automatic weekly, monthly, yearly, or custom recurring billing.
• Prorated billing to accommodate upgrades — and downgrades — mid cycle.
• Free or paid trials of any length.
• Trials with or without collecting payment details.
• Automatic or manual renewal.
• Upsells, cross-sells, one-time add-ons, and discounts.
• Automatic failure handling, notifications, and retries to reduce churn.
• B2B digital invoicing.
• And much more.

You‘ll also have access to FastSpring’s developer-friendly API and webhooks library to build more complex custom subscription logic and integrations.

If you want to see how FastSpring compares to Chargebee, read this article. 

Dunning Management

FastSpring handles all failed payments and customer notifications for you — simply choose how you want it handled, and we take care of the rest. Our platform offers flexible dunning management options, which include: 

• Proactive reminders when payment information needs updating. Automatically send flexible, custom email reminders to your customers before a debit or credit card expires. We offer a pre-made email template — or you can customize your own email and set it to send two, five, seven, 14, or 21 days after a payment failure.
• Automatically retry failed payments. FastSpring retries the original payment method multiple times, including before sending each reminder email.
• Flexible failed payment logic. Continue (or pause) service until the last notification has been sent out. Pause (or cancel) the service once all notifications have been sent out and the payment is still getting declined.

With FastSpring, your customers will also have an easy-to-access and intuitive self-serve Customer Account Portal where they can view their order history, update payment information, and manage their subscriptions. The portal is managed by FastSpring but matches the branding of your checkout for a cohesive customer experience.

Reporting and Analytics

While Stripe does offer revenue recognition tools for accounting purposes, many SaaS companies using Stripe end up adding a reporting and customer analytics tool to give them more insight into stats such as MRR, churn rate, new customers by product type or geography, and more. 

FastSpring’s Reporting and Analytics, on the other hand, is a robust suite built for digital products businesses. You can view key performance indicators (KPI) for your customer base and subscription models to better understand:

• How each product contributes to your bottom line. 
• When customers are most likely to drop off.
• What coupons or promotions are working.
• Which subscription models generate the most revenue.
• Where your customers are located.
• What currencies and payment methods customers prefer.
• Chargeback rates by customer segment.
• Chargeback rates by product line.
• The status of your active webhooks.
• And much more.

Our platform features several dashboards, which include:

• Revenue Overview.
• Subscription Overview.
• Revenue Recognition.
• Chargeback Overview.
• Webhook Status.

If you don’t see exactly what you need, you can create and save your own custom reports. You can also reach out to our team for help finding or building the report you need. Export and share reports as a CSV, PNG, or XLSX file. 

For a complete list of features — including Digital Invoicing and Interactive Quotes — visit our website.

One Simple Pricing Model; All the Benefits

Most payment processors (like Stripe) typically charge a low processing fee; however, they’ll charge extra for features such as subscription management, additional payment method support, tax collection, and more. 

They’ll also usually pass along transaction fees such as network/scheme downgrade fees.

Plus, you’ll have to pay for any additional software needed for a complete billing solution — and the staff to manage the entire process. 

For most companies, what starts as seemingly low, flat-rate pricing ends up being an expensive route to take.

On the other hand, FastSpring manages your entire digital goods billing process for one flat rate. You’ll get access to our whole platform — including every feature and all services — in a single comprehensive package. 

Our team works with you to find an affordable monthly fee based on your transaction volume (and you’ll only be charged for successful transactions). Plus, you won’t need any additional software or headcount since we’re liable for transactions and take the lead on sales tax and VAT.

If you’re looking for a Stripe alternative to help you grow your business internationally, we can help. FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, and other digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Paddle: Payment Infrastructure Platform

Paddle is another Stripe alternative that acts as an MoR for SaaS and software companies. Paddle has features such as: 

• Multiple payment gateways.
• Secure checkout.
• Recurring billing management.
• A robust payments toolkit.
• Fraud protection.
• Transaction and subscription reporting.
• Invoicing. 
• And more.

Learn more about Paddle alternatives.

Verifone: Formerly 2Checkout

Verifone is a Stripe alternative that can act as your MoR or just as a payment service provider. This gives them the flexibility to support small- to medium-sized companies in different industries offering both in-person and online goods or services (e.g., retail and hospitality). 

Verifone functionalities include:

• Integrated point-of-sale (POS).
• Kiosks.
• Subscription management.
• Hosted checkout.
• Partner sales channel management.
• And more.

Some of these features are included with Verifone packages, while others are add-ons with their own additional fees.

With over 20 years of experience serving international software companies, FastSpring is one of the longest-standing MoRs for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, and other digital products companies. Use our expertise to help grow your business quickly. To learn more, sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

Stripe Alternative Billing Software for Selling Physical Goods and Services

While digital product companies can use almost any billing solution to sell their product (although some will be more effective than others), not every solution will be effective for companies selling physical goods or services. Companies selling physical goods and services need solutions that can manage both online and in-person transactions. 

When selling physical goods or services, most companies end up using two or more software solutions to build a complete billing solution. However, there are ways to minimize how many you need and how much it will cost you. The best place to start is to carefully consider your current needs (e.g., are you selling in person and online?) and plan for your future needs (e.g., are you a new business owner who might want to start selling online in the future?). 

Then, you can evaluate each billing solution by asking a few key questions: 

• How many aspects of billing does the software cover? Is each offering truly sufficient for your current needs (e.g., maybe they offer a subscription billing solution but don’t support the business model you need)? Do the features leave room for your company to grow?
• Does their pricing model allow you to get all features for one price, or will you have to pay extra for the features you need? Will the price be sustainably cost effective long term, as your company grows?
• Does the software offer seamless integration with other software you use?
• Is the software user friendly? 

Next, we cover five Stripe competitors for companies selling physical goods and services to help you get started with your search. 

Square: Popular Payment Platform for Startups

Square is a popular point-of-sale solution for companies of all sizes. With Square, you can accept payments from your online store, in-person, or via social media. Beyond payment processing, Square also offers solutions for: 

• Virtual terminals (so you can accept credit card payments using your computer).
• Business management.
• Customer engagement.
• Banking (including merchant accounts, savings accounts, and loans).
• Team management (including payroll, time off, etc.).
• And more.

PayPal for Business: Available on Major Ecommerce Platforms 

PayPal is a well-known digital wallet for personal online payments; however, they also offer payment processing for both online and brick-and-mortar businesses. PayPal supports debit card and credit card processing in store or from your online business.

(Digital-first businesses using FastSpring can also process payments using PayPal.)

PayPal for Business also includes: 

• QR code and POS systems.
• Donation tools.
• Built-in integrations with major ecommerce shopping carts (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce, and more).
• Risk management and chargeback protection.
• Mass payouts.
• And more.

Note: PayPal also has a payments option called PayPal Enterprise Payments (formerly Braintree) that offers your own merchant account.

Authorize.net: For Merchants and Small Businesses

Authorize.net (a Visa solution) is a payment service provider that supports mobile payments, phone payments, and ACH. They also provide a card reader for in-person payments and support online purchases. 

Other features offered by Authorize.net include: 

• Simple checkout button.
• Recurring payments.
• Digital invoicing.
• Advanced fraud detection.
• Optional merchant account bundle.
• And more.

Adyen: Robust Financial Technology Platform

Adyen is an end-to-end solution for payment processing, data, and financial management. In addition to payment processing, Adyen offers features such as: 

• Virtual and physical card creation.
• Tools to optimize traffic in real time.
• Fraud detection.
• Automated dunning.
• Business bank accounts for your users.
• And more.

Amazon Pay: Payment Service and Order Fulfillment

Amazon Pay lets your customers use the payment information already stored in their Amazon account on your website. You can use Amazon Pay as a stand-alone payment solution without becoming an Amazon Marketplaces seller — or you can easily use Amazon Pay on your own website and become an Amazon merchant (which gives you the option for fulfillment by Amazon).

Amazon Pay includes: 

• Optimized checkout flow (modeled after Amazon’s own).
• Co-marketing campaigns.
• Self-service reporting dashboard.
• Fraud protection.
• Easy integration tools.
• And more.

Note: With FastSpring, your customers can pay using Amazon Pay and many other payment methods. 

Need a Stripe Alternative for Your SaaS, Software, Video Game, Mobile App, or Other Digital Product?

Let FastSpring help!

FastSpring lets you manage every aspect of global payments from one platform — without managing tons of different software solutions. We shoulder the liability for online transactions and take the lead on VAT and sales tax management, regulatory compliance across the globe, and much more for you. 

If you’re looking for a Stripe alternative to help you grow your business internationally, we can help. FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, and other digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

This post was originally published in January 2023 and has been updated.

The post Stripe Alternatives for 2025: In-Depth Guide and 8 Options appeared first on FastSpring.

Your potential customers are no longer just Googling “best project management software” or “CRM for small business.” They’re asking ChatGPT to compare your product features, getting personalized recommendations from AI tools, and discovering solutions through conversations rather than traditional search results.

Google still handles more than 5 trillion searches annually, but that dominance is beginning to fray. As highlighted by recent industry research from Pubcon 2025, we’re experiencing a foundational shift: Search is no longer synonymous with search engines. From ChatGPT to social platforms, potential customers are finding software solutions outside of Google — and AI is accelerating this trend.

According to recent survey data, 66% of consumers believe AI will replace traditional search engines within five years, and 82% say AI-powered search is already more helpful than traditional search. 

This shift represents both a challenge and an opportunity for SaaS companies trying to reach customers earlier in their decision-making process.

How AI Search Changes SaaS Discovery

AI search doesn’t behave like traditional search engines, and this has significant implications for how customers discover and evaluate software solutions.

As industry expert Ryan Jones of Razorfish noted, “We used to optimize for humans who use Google. Now we’re optimizing for AI that reads Google for humans.” For SaaS companies, this shift changes everything about customer acquisition.

1. AI Search Provides Direct Answers

Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini synthesize information about your software directly in their interfaces. When someone asks, “What’s the best email marketing platform for ecommerce?,” they often get a comprehensive answer without ever visiting your website. 

Your product pages are no longer the destination — the conversation is the destination.

2. AI Uses ‘Query Fan-Out’ for Software Recommendations

When potential customers ask AI tools about software solutions, these tools don’t just process the exact query. Instead, they generate dozens of related sub-queries to gather comprehensive information about features, pricing, integrations, and use cases. 

This means that your content needs to address not just primary keywords, but the entire ecosystem of questions around your product category.

3. Product Information Is Atomized

AI doesn’t treat your website as a collection of pages. Instead, it ingests and references specific passages about features, pricing, integrations, and benefits. 

Every piece of content on your site — from feature descriptions to help articles — must be self-contained and structured for AI comprehension.

“We used to optimize for humans who use Google. Now we’re optimizing for AI that reads Google for humans.”

Ryan Jones, Razorfish

What This Means for SaaS Marketers

The ground is shifting rapidly, but SaaS companies can take specific actions now to maintain visibility and capture customers in this new landscape:

1. Optimize for AI-Driven Product Discovery

Traditional SEO still matters, but SaaS companies need to think beyond basic optimization. Your technical foundation — site speed, structured data, clean internal linking — remains crucial. But success now requires:

• Structuring product information for AI comprehension: Create clear, self-contained descriptions of features, use cases, and benefits. Avoid marketing speak that obscures actual functionality.
• Eliminating content bloat: Remove or consolidate weak product pages, outdated feature descriptions, and redundant content that confuses AI models about your core offerings.
• Thinking in terms of buyer intent: Structure content around the questions potential customers actually ask, not just the keywords they might search for.

2. Create Content That Answers Software Buyers’ Questions

If your product descriptions are vague, rely on industry jargon, or require context from other pages, they may be ignored by AI tools when customers ask for software recommendations.

Instead, focus on:

• Clear, benefit-focused feature descriptions that stand alone without additional context.
• Comprehensive FAQ sections addressing common software evaluation questions.
• Comparison content that honestly positions your product against alternatives.
• Implementation guides and use case examples that demonstrate real-world value.
• Integration documentation that’s easily discoverable and understandable.

The goal is to ensure AI tools have complete, accurate information about your software when making recommendations to potential customers.

3. Track AI Visibility and Expand Your Presence

Only 22% of B2B marketers currently track their brand visibility in large language models, representing a significant missed opportunity for SaaS companies where word-of-mouth and recommendations drive significant growth.

• Monitor AI mentions: Use tools like SERP Recon and BrightEdge to understand how often your product appears in AI-generated responses. Track whether these mentions are accurate and favorable.
• Build authoritative presence beyond search: Strengthen your visibility across channels where software buyers gather information:
  • Develop thought leadership content for industry publications.
  • Participate actively in relevant communities (Reddit, Discord, industry forums).
  • Create educational content for YouTube and podcast platforms.
  • Engage with software review sites and comparison platforms.
• Invest in digital PR and partnerships: Build relationships with industry influencers, participate in software roundups, and collaborate with complementary tools to increase your citation potential.

The New SaaS Marketing Playbook

AI search is no longer emerging — it’s here, and it’s already changing how customers discover software solutions. Organic traffic patterns are shifting, traditional keyword strategies are losing effectiveness, and customers are getting recommendations from AI before they ever reach your website.

This doesn’t mean traditional marketing is dead. It means SaaS marketing is evolving toward a more distributed, conversation-focused approach.

Focus on being discoverable across channels where your customers seek recommendations, not just via search engines.

Focus on content that educates and informs rather than just on converting visitors that are already on your site.

Focus on brand visibility that transcends individual marketing channels and builds authority in AI knowledge bases.

The companies that thrive in this new landscape won’t be those that game the algorithm, but those that consistently provide clear, helpful information about their software solutions wherever customers are looking for answers.

For SaaS, software, and digital product companies, this shift represents an opportunity to build more authentic relationships with potential customers by meeting them where they are — in conversations with AI tools, community discussions, and educational content — rather than waiting for them to find you through traditional search.

The post How AI Search Is Revolutionizing SaaS Marketing, and What You Should Do About It appeared first on FastSpring.

The event is designed “from code to solution” so that developers of many experience levels can “extend the power of Adobe applications to create meaningful innovation and build successful businesses.”

As a 25+ year digital veteran, David’s accolades include acquiring and operating many design plugin and theme businesses including WordPress’ #1 theme framework Genesis, and his teams have built plugins monetizing with marketplaces, direct purchase, and in support of SaaS products for top brands like Cloudflare, AWS, WP Engine, and more. 

David will share how add-on developers can monetize their products using Adobe’s marketplaces powered by FastSpring, including tips to help you grow an enduring and sellable add-on or plugin business on marketplaces and beyond.

Reserve your free ticket and view the schedule here.

Partner With FastSpring to Monetize Your Add-On

Are you looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your business internationally? FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, gaming, and other digital goods businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. To learn more about how FastSpring is Powering the Digital Economy®, set up a demo or try it out for yourself. 

The post Considering Building Adobe Add-Ons? Join Us at Adobe Developers Live! appeared first on FastSpring.

GTC 2025 is recognized as one of China’s largest gatherings in the cross-border and overseas sectors, focusing on key areas such as gaming, apps, DTC brands, and technology. The conference serves as a dynamic platform for connecting with top-tier developers, brand representatives, service providers, and investors from around the world. Attendees can expect in-depth discussions on the latest trends in brand globalization and sustainable growth strategies, making it an invaluable event for companies looking to establish or strengthen their international presence.

Where to Get Tickets

Still need tickets? Head over to the registration page to grab your ticket and get access to insightful speakers, unparalleled networking opportunities, and a wealth of resources designed to maximize your experience.

How to Connect With FastSpring at GTC Shenzhen

Stop by our booth or connect with the team via the event app or through our official WeChat account. Schedule a demo now or at GTC Shenzhen in person. We’re looking forward to meeting you at GTC 2025 and exploring how we can help you achieve your global expansion goals!

FastSpring is how gaming publishers sell in more places around the world. For nearly two decades, FastSpring has been a trusted payment provider you can use to sell games or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your game with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great games! To learn more about how FastSpring supports game developers, visit fastspring.gg/.

The post Navigate Global Markets With FastSpring at GTC Shenzhen 2025 appeared first on FastSpring.

Today, oeksound is a global software company in the audio and video space, with their plugins used by some hugely recognizable names in the music industry.

To learn more about how they did it, listen for the full insights into:

• How oeksound’s pricing and trial options make their products more accessible to more users.
• Why the user experience and user feedback is so important for improving and marketing plugins.
• Why a frictionless purchase process is such a key focus for oeksound to continue expanding their sales.

To hear all this and more about oeksound’s experience with taking their plugin business global, listen or watch now!

Jump to video.  |  Jump to transcript.

Podcast Full Interview: Audio

Listen online or find it on more podcast services.

Podcast Full Interview: Video

The post EP30: How oeksound Took Their Audio Plugins Business Global appeared first on FastSpring.

Once a single Black Friday shopping day, deals expanded to encompass the following Cyber Monday, with the entire weekend now referred to as Cyber Weekend. And between the Cyber Weekend halo effect, major global holidays, and end-of-year budget spends, sales in November and Q4 are stronger than other times of the year.

That creates a lot of opportunity for your SaaS or software business to optimize sales opportunities during this profitable weekend, month, and quarter. 

Because FastSpring is a merchant of record for over 3500 companies that use our platform daily, we can analyze aggregate sales data for benchmarking insights into Q4 for your SaaS or software business.

We’ve updated this annual report with: 

• Up-to-date U.S. trends in year-end SaaS and software sales data.
• Up-to-date global trends in year-end SaaS and software sales data. 
• How FastSpring can help you take advantage of those Q4 sales lifts.

FastSpring is a merchant of record that can help you easily grow your business internationally. We provide an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital product businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and award-winning consumer support. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Our Data Sources and Analysis Methodology

Where: Like last year’s Cyber Weekend data report, even though we help over 3500 companies to sell digital goods in over 200 countries and territories, we’ve pulled sales data from eight countries around the world to help us narrow it down a little. Those countries are the U.S., Canada, Germany, Great Britain, India, Brazil, Australia, and China. 

Note that the data below are specific to where the sales took place, not where the companies are located.

Besides the global data, we also highlight the trends just for the U.S., since it is a large, single market that SaaS and software companies often target. 

When: Using aggregated data from the most current five calendar years helps us show insightful trends while avoiding any major outliers skewing the data unnecessarily. The data below come from 2019-2023, and we use a seasonal index to highlight each month’s or quarter’s sales against the year’s monthly or quarterly average (more on that below).

What: While FastSpring supports the sales of many different digital products including SaaS, software, digital downloads, video games, and mobile games, we’ve limited this data only to SaaS and software sales to keep it applicable to a specific industry and avoid being so broad that it isn’t helpful.

The figures shown were also all calculated in U.S. dollars for simplicity’s sake.

How: First, we calculated a monthly or quarterly average for each year. For example, four quarterly totals of $100, $200, $300, and $200 would average to a quarterly average for that year of $200. So $200 would be our baseline of 100%

Then we compared each month or quarter’s actuals to that year’s average to get a percentage. For example, if Q1 shows a percentage of 90%, that means it is 10% lower in sales compared to the quarterly average. If Q2 shows a percentage of 111%, that means its sales are 11% higher than the quarterly average. 

That data was then combined to get the five-year averages and help smooth out any stark outliers. 

US Year-End Trends for SaaS and Software Purchases

Here are the monthly and quarterly averages for U.S. software and SaaS by month and quarter.

5YR Average US SaaS and Software Sales by Month

Months that stand out as particularly higher than the monthly average include March and October (tied for third place) at 2% higher, December at 7% higher, and November highest at 12% over the monthly average.

5YR Average US SaaS and Software Sales by Quarter

After seeing the monthly averages above, the quarterly averages offer no big surprises — Q4 comes in at 7% higher than the quarterly average.

Global Year-End Trends for SaaS and Software Purchases

Global trends see even stronger rises in seasonal sales of SaaS and software.

Here’s how late-year numbers fluctuated across the globe when including data from the U.S., Canada, Germany, Great Britain, India, Brazil, Australia, and China. 

5YR Average Global SaaS and Software Sales by Month

Compared to U.S. numbers, global October sales at 3% above the monthly average and December sales at 6% above the monthly average are fairly expected. 

However, November saw a much larger bump in global SaaS and software sales against the monthly average, coming in 18% higher. 

Black Friday (and subsequently, Cyber Week) was originally anchored to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and may still seem very U.S.-focused. The SaaS and software sales data, however, show that the November sales surge is even stronger outside the U.S. for the other seven countries included in this study, with that 18% rise over the monthly average growing to 29%  when the U.S. is removed. (More on individual countries below.)

5YR Average Global SaaS and Software Sales by Quarter

Global SaaS and software sales in Q4 were 9% higher than the quarterly average.

So while November global sales were particularly high for that month, the Q4 average doesn’t show as high of a peak, indicating that November is a particularly key month for SaaS and software companies to capitalize on.

5YR Average SaaS and Software Sales by Month per Country

To further show why sales show a much higher peak in November globally than just in the U.S., we’ve broken out the monthly averages across the eight countries we included for our global tallies. 

Here’s what monthly software sales fluctuations look like with five years of data for the United States (US), Canada (CA), Germany (DE), Great Britain (GB), India (IN), Brazil (BR), Australia (AU), and China (CN).

Spikes in China in April and June are likely due to the 418 (April 18) and 618 (June 18) shopping holidays, but as you can see, all countries in our list see a large spike in November — the highest month for all eight countries measured. 

Germany and China especially see high spikes in November, indicating that they may be particularly good geos to target for promotions that month as China observes Singles Day on November 11 and Germany observes Black Friday and Cyber Week.

This reinforces that November and Q4 are SaaS and software sales opportunity windows you can’t afford to miss out on. Take advantage of the selling season with:

• Custom coupon codes for partners to promote.
• Email promotions.
• Upsell or bundle offers.
• Social media campaigns.
• Localized promotions for targeted regions.
• Any other offers that might appeal to your target customers in your target regions.

How FastSpring Can Help

Companies already using FastSpring (such as Stardock and TestDome) recognize FastSpring as a true partner to their SaaS and software businesses.

Here are just a few of the reasons FastSpring makes it easy to sell globally in the right places, in the right ways, and at the right times — such as over Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. 

FastSpring Makes Global Payments for You and Your Customers

It isn’t enough to just make your product available for sale in more countries — customers need to be able to purchase with a localized checkout experience that makes them feel comfortable buying. That includes automatic conversions to local languages and currencies as well as offering dozens of the most popular payment methods, which vary by region.

Learn more about FastSpring’s global payments.

FastSpring Handles Global Taxes, From Calculating to Collecting to Remitting

Because FastSpring is a merchant of record, we don’t just facilitate payments — we actually become the entity selling the product. That means we also become the entity worrying about card brand rules, regulatory rules in many geographies, risk and fraud, and even taxes. 

Our team of tax experts stays up to date on global tax regulations so FastSpring can calculate, collect, and remit taxes without you needing to worry about it. 

Learn more about FastSpring’s global tax management. 

FastSpring Supports You and Your Customers

FastSpring doesn’t just offer award-winning support to companies that use us as their merchant of record — we also handle consumer support for your customers.

Consumers can submit an online request to get personalized assistance, or they can reference our helpful support topics such as Checkout and Purchasing, Licenses and Downloads, and more.

Need assistance with your FastSpring store? You can submit a request from within the FastSpring app, or visit our support page. 

Read more about our Stevie® award, our Globee® award, or submit a seller or consumer support request.

Get Started With FastSpring

FastSpring is the leading full-stack merchant of record service for growth-stage SaaS and software businesses. Our platform serves as an all-in-one payment platform that handles everything from payment and checkout localization, to sales and VAT tax management, to customer support for end consumers, and so much more.

Learn more about how FastSpring can help you grow your business globally: Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post Cyber Weekend Benchmarking Data: 2024 SaaS and Software Holiday Spend Report appeared first on FastSpring.

Are you a Digital River customer in emergency need of a new payment and subscription provider ASAP? Click here — our team of specialists is standing by, and requests are prioritized and routed by geo to ensure you have a fast, smooth experience.

There are a lot of Digital River alternatives on the market, and you may not know what makes any of them stand out in particular. 

It’s especially important to note that Digital River is a merchant of record (MoR), which means that many payment service providers may not include the kind of comprehensive services you’re used to with an MoR. 

In this post, we cover: 

• What a merchant of record is, and why it’s so important to make sure your MoR-level service isn’t disrupted if you’re thinking of switching providers.
• Why FastSpring is an excellent Digital River alternative.
• Three other payments options in 2024.

FastSpring handles the entire payment process from checkout to remitting end-of-year taxes for SaaS companies. To learn more about how FastSpring can help you scale quickly, sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

Why the Best Digital River Alternative Is a Merchant of Record

If you’re familiar with Digital River but aren’t familiar with the term “merchant of record,”  you might not be familiar with exactly how many benefits come with using one. 

Here’s a refresher on what an MoR is and why — if your business is currently using one to monetize your SaaS, software, or other digital product — you probably want to ensure you keep using one.

What Is a Merchant of Record?

A merchant of record (MoR) is the entity that actually sells the goods and services to the customer. Companies can serve as their own MoR, but many opt to outsource that responsibility to a company like Digital River or FastSpring to sell goods and services on their behalf.

The MoR takes on the liability of SaaS transactions for you, meaning they handle everything from payment processing, to chargeback management, to collection and remittance of taxes, and even compliance with local laws and regulations. And because the MoR is liable for issues in those areas, they handle resolving those issues so you don’t have to. 

Digital-commerce-reliant businesses that utilize an MoR can focus less on ecommerce and more on making great software, SaaS, video games, mobile games, or other digital goods. 

What Makes a Merchant of Record Different From Payment Service Providers?

Payment service providers (PSPs), like MoRs, serve as a bridge between businesses that want to sell a product, and the specialized networks and services that are needed on the back end to make those transactions happen. Those specialized networks and services may include payment gateways, payment processing, a merchant account to accept debit and credit card payments, and others.

PSPs usually also include some sort of ecommerce platform and/or integration functionality (such as APIs, plugins, special integrations, etc.) to integrate their payments platform or checkout with your online store or website, but options will vary.

However, payment service providers usually stop short of managing risk, handling taxes, and assisting with chargebacks. If rules and regulations change in any of the regions or countries where you sell your product, you’d be responsible for keeping track of those changes and updating your PSP processes and checkout accordingly. 

Some PSPs may offer upgradeable payment solutions to get their services closer to those that an MoR includes automatically, but they are often bolt-on features, and they will come with upgrade fees. For example, Stripe has a fraud prevention upgrade called Radar, but it comes with additional costs per transaction fees.

Grow With FastSpring, an Experienced Merchant of Record

FastSpring is the leading merchant of record for global software companies, powering over a billion dollars in worldwide transactions every year.

Here are just a few of the reasons we’ve earned that reputation.

We Have Decades of Experience

Founded in 2005, FastSpring has two decades of experience with enabling global payments, and we’ve been a part of the SaaS landscape as it has grown. 

Because of this, our team deeply understands the complexities of selling digital goods and software, including subscription management and all of the nuanced needs that come with it.

We’re Backed by Great Investors

You don’t need to worry about FastSpring being profitable or reliable. Along with our experience, we also offer the peace of mind that comes with being backed by a top-performing, highly reputable investment firm. 

Thanks to Accel-KKR, FastSpring has the resources and proceeds needed to help scale your business with online payments, while providing excellent corporate, privacy, and security governance.

We Grow When You Grow

Our many years in the global payments platform industry has also enabled FastSpring to grow over time — but that growth has only happened because of our great customers. 

That’s for two reasons: because we work on a revenue-sharing model, and because we’re a partner who wants to help you continue growing.

1. FastSpring Makes Money When You Make Money

Thanks to FastSpring’s revenue sharing model, we make money when you do. When your buyer makes a purchase, we charge a small commission fee on that transaction.

That means that if you’re not transacting, we’re not charging that commission.

Our team will work with you to determine simple, flat-rate pricing based on your volume of business and transaction time, and that pricing includes all of our platform’s features and tools. 

Learn more about FastSpring’s pricing here, or request a meeting to discuss more details. 

2. FastSpring Wants to Be Your Partner, Not Just Your Payments Solution

Stardock was able to make the transition to SaaS subscriptions thanks to FastSpring’s ready-to-use existing subscription infrastructure, but they saw the mutual investments that we were putting back into our own platform to continue developing new features and products. 

This made Brad Sams of Stardock feel secure in Stardock’s partnership with FastSpring, because he could see we were in it for the long haul. “Because the better we do, the better FastSpring is going to do. We’ve got to make sure that everybody’s winning, and things with FastSpring just felt aligned.”

“FastSpring was on that path of continued investment and wasn’t just collecting the paycheck every month and doing nothing.”

– Brad Sams, Stardock

Read more about Stardock’s experience with FastSpring here.

TestDome has also been very happy with FastSpring’s support, noting that it goes from assistance with buyer issues and chargebacks all the way up to the top of the company and our CEO. 

TestDome CEO and co-founder Mario Zivic is happy to have been using FastSpring for a decade, saying that FastSpring has been the clear and easy choice for their merchant of record needs. 

Besides more common support for buyer issues like chargebacks, credit card issues, and refund requests, Mario even received an offer of advice from FastSpring’s CEO. That resulted in a personal phone call and “an extremely valuable piece of advice,” noting that he has seen firsthand that “the willingness to help and support was not limited to Support — it went all the way up to the CEO.”

Read more of TestDome’s story about our partnership.

Award-Winning Customer Support and Customer Success

The high level of support and service has not only been recognized by our customers — it has also been recognized in our industry. 

In April of this year, FastSpring’s support team won a Silver Stevie® award for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year in the “Technology Industries – Computer Software” category.

Then in June, FastSpring’s customer success team won a gold Globee® award for Customer Excellence in the “Achievement in Team Customer Success” category.

We don’t just say we want to be a partner — we set out to prove it. 

Our Hands-On Migration Team Strives for Your Success

FastSpring support isn’t only there for you after you’ve onboarded — we want to ensure you get up and running on our payments platform as quickly and easily as possible.

Our implementation team of hands-on, highly efficient sales engineers are experts in FastSpring’s pre-built web storefront solution, the flexible and extensive FastSpring API, webhook features, and more. They’re there to help you make a seamless transition through migration and integration. 

FastSpring has powerful integrations with best-in-class third-party solutions, including WordPress, Zapier, and multiple Google services. Learn more about FastSpring integrations here. 

Other Great FastSpring Features

Here are a few more great reasons to use FastSpring: 

• You’ll automatically be compliant with sales tax, VAT, and privacy regulations around the world.
• FastSpring accepts the top payment methods in 200+ regions across the globe with 23+ currencies and in 21+ languages.
• You can customize seamless embedded or modal popup checkout experiences on your website.
• We make it easy to offer coupons, discounts, and dynamic price points for promotions.
• Checkout can be streamlined to a single click with 1ClickPay.
• Strong documentation that includes AI-powered search for precise, relevant responses in real time.
• And so much more!

To learn more, check out our product overview, or sign up to check out our platform yourself. Want personalized answers? Request a demo with one of our experts.

3 More Digital River Alternatives

The following options are common alternatives you might look at if you’re assessing Digital River competitors. Keep in mind that none of the below options are merchants of record, so you may need to supplement their services, either internally or with additional vendors and services.

Stripe

Stripe is a well-known payment processor that allows businesses to accept debit cards, credit cards, and mobile payments, with features such as:

• Payment processing.
• A customizable UI and pre-built checkout flows.
• Simple subscription management.
• Online invoicing.

You may be wondering if it’s an option for your business simply because it’s so ubiquitous, and it may appear at first to have lower pricing than the merchant of record you’re currently using. But that’s because Stripe isn’t a merchant of record. 

If you’re looking to lower your transaction costs and you have the scale, expertise, time, and teams to support the many services you’ll be losing by switching from an MoR to Stripe, this may be a good option for your business. But you’ll need to make up the difference in services lost, including tax compliance, fraud management, and more. Stripe does offer products to cover some of those needs, but they are add-ons that will increase your overall cost — so any initial cost savings might quickly disappear.

However, if you want to switch from Digital River to a business in the same category with the features and peace of mind an MoR provides, Stripe probably isn’t the right Digital River competitor for you.

Adyen

Adyen bills itself as an “end-to-end payments, data, and financial management in a single solution.” Its payment solutions and financial services include features and products such as:

• In-person and online payments in one system.
• Revenue optimization with intelligent payment routing to improve conversion rates.
• Subscription management features like dunning automation.
• Risk management with fraud detection and prevention.

While Adyen has some of the features a merchant of record offers, you will still need to manage your own company accounts and merchant accounts.

PayPal for Business

PayPal is a well-known digital wallet for personal online payments, but they also offer a payment processing option for small business. PayPal for Business is both an in-person and ecommerce solution.

(SaaS companies using FastSpring can also process payments using PayPal.)

Other features of PayPal for Business include but are not limited to: 

• Built-in integrations with major online shopping carts (such as Shopify). 
• QR code and POS systems.
• Invoicing.
• Chargeback protection (only available for business accounts with Advanced Credit and Debit Card checkout).

Besides PayPal for Business, PayPal also has a payment processor specifically for SaaS called Braintree.

How FastSpring Can Help

Need a merchant of record to help you grow your business internationally? FastSpring is a full-stack, all-in-one payment solution for SaaS, software, video games, and other digital product businesses. 

Our services include VAT and sales tax calculation, collection, and remittance; payment localization; regulation compliance; award winning consumer support; and so much more! 

Sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

Other Articles You Might Be Interested In

• 2Checkout vs. Stripe vs. FastSpring: Comparing Payments, Taxes, and Platform Features (+ Pricing)
• Stripe Alternatives for 2024: In-Depth Guide and 8 Options
• International Payment Gateways: An In-Depth Guide and 10 Payments Options

The post Digital River Alternatives for 2024 appeared first on FastSpring.

Join us at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland on July 9 and 10 for an extraordinary event dedicated to all things technology and innovation.

Immerse yourself in a diverse array of programs, workshops, and presentations, where industry experts will share their wisdom and cutting-edge trends will be unveiled. Embrace the spirit of collaboration and giving back during the event, where you can contribute to discussions on the latest developments in software, product management, and marketing, and make a lasting impact. Also, don’t miss the opportunity to engage with thought leaders during keynote sessions and network with like-minded professionals.

You must also explore the beauty of Edinburgh. Experience the rich culture, tantalizing cuisine, and awe-inspiring sights that this dynamic city offers. Edinburgh, a city rooted in history with its stunning medieval architecture and vibrant arts scene, is renowned for its cultural festivals and historical landmarks. In recent times, Edinburgh has become a thriving hub for tech startups and innovation, attracting talent from all over the world. Connect, learn, and be inspired in this captivating city, where technology meets tradition and innovation thrives amidst cultural splendor.

Where to Get Tickets 

Still need tickets? Head over to the registration page to grab your ticket to get access to incredible speakers, unparalleled networking opportunities, and proprietary software that will maximize your experience even more! Tickets include entry to the conference days (July 9-10), including lunch, snacks, and coffee, as well as an invite to the official Turing Fest After Party. As a ticket holder, you’ll also get the opportunity to register for various workshops and networking events.

How to Connect With FastSpring at Turing Fest 2024 

Stop by the FastSpring Meeting Space or connect with the team via the Turing Fest 2024 app to learn more about subscription management, international taxes, and how using a merchant of record can enable you to collect payments faster for your business. Schedule a demo now or at Turing Fest 2024 in person!

FastSpring is how plugin, theme, and SaaS companies sell online in more places around the world. We handle every payment need from subscription management to tax collection, remittance, and more so your business can go farther, faster. We’re also the leading merchant of record for global software companies — powering over a billion dollars in worldwide transactions every year. We’ll manage your checkout, VAT and sales taxes, compliance, and more, freeing you to focus on what you do best: building great software. Sign up for a free account or request a demo today to learn more.

The post FastSpring at Turing Fest 2024! appeared first on FastSpring.

As the VP and General Manager of the Stardock Software division, Brad led his team through this process and has learned some valuable lessons about doing it as strategically and easily as possible. 

FastSpring is proud to have been a big part of supporting that process for Stardock, and Brad had some great things to say about how easy we made it for them. We asked him to share his process tips for anyone who might be considering or actively planning the same transition themselves.

Here are Brad’s top recommendations: 

• Have a committed partner like FastSpring to handle the subscription infrastructure so you don’t have to, including:
  • Choosing a partner that’s making the same investments in subscription management that you are.
  • Letting FastSpring handle the subscription infrastructure.
  • Integrating customer-facing subscription management tools on your own site.
• Start small with an incremental approach.
• Communicate frequently and clearly with customers about the transition.
• Prepare for renewals with value adds to reduce churn.
• Design the transition plan that’s right for your company.

Are you looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your SaaS business? FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital goods businesses, including subscription management, payment localization, VAT and sales tax management, consumer support, and more. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

5 Tips for Making the SaaS Transition Easier

1. Choose FastSpring for Subscription Infrastructure and Long-Term Partnership

Stardock Software first started using FastSpring in 2018 to help them sell their software products, and they’d always had a relatively good experience with how FastSpring handles sales of one-time software purchases. 

Luckily, FastSpring was able to make the transition to subscriptions very positive, too — about as simple as replacing a few SKUs on their site (more on that below).

This was a relief, since the technology behind subscription management for software purchases can get very complex very quickly, with many scenarios that need to be accounted for and multiple technological components that need to be covered. 

“Most people would not think about all the intricacies that have to happen” when switching from a single transaction to a subscription, Brad explains. “As an example, you have a product that was previously purchased once, and it worked forever. Now you suddenly purchase a product, and it has a time box on it that is tied to a subscription — which means that product now has to stop working if a user stops paying for it. So that gets complex. And then, what do you do if they’re offline? What do you do in all these different scenarios? There’s a real dividing line here, which is where FastSpring came in.” 

When Brad and his team started planning to test the SaaS business model in spring of 2023, knowing that FastSpring already had the infrastructure to support subscription sales meant that Stardock Software didn’t need to build their own, search for a specialty tool or service, or worry about that part at all, really. 

“The worst thing that can happen is, you make the switch to subscription, and then your technology fails to make the switch effectively. And we were only able to do this because we had confidence that FastSpring’s subscription model would support our endeavors.”

“We were only able to do this because we had confidence that FastSpring’s subscription model would support our endeavors.”

FastSpring is proud to have been a key part of Stardock’s business ecosystem as they tackled an initiative that’s driving major growth for their business. 

Choose a Partner Making the Same Investments In Subscription Management

Brad admits that Stardock will always be in a position that keeps them from being “married to any single vendor,” and they know FastSpring isn’t the only merchant of record or subscription management tool on the market. 

“But at the same time,” he explains, “we knew that with moving to a subscription model, we had to bet on a partner who was making the same level of investments that we were making. And the conclusion was that FastSpring was on that path of continued investment and wasn’t just collecting the paycheck every month and doing nothing.” 

“We had to bet on a partner who was making the same level of investments that we were making.”

Brad was able to see where FastSpring was making those investments, as product updates rolled out and as future timelines and roadmaps were shared with Stardock by their Customer Success Manager, Danica. He says that helps, because “it’s like, ‘Okay, if we’re going to go subscription (which again, ratchets up the stickiness factor for FastSpring), then we’ve got to make sure FastSpring is going to be here for the long run, too.’” 

Brad went on to describe Stardock’s relationship with FastSpring as “symbiotic.” “Because the better we do, the better FastSpring is going to do. We’ve got to make sure that everybody’s winning, and things with FastSpring just felt aligned.”

Let FastSpring Handle the Subscription Infrastructure

“You have two technical components to this,” Brad clarifies. “You have the subscription side (the actual financial transaction that must occur), and the mechanism that keeps that information updated. And then you also have the actual app itself. So this is where we really started getting deep into FastSpring, because FastSpring already had the subscription components.” 

Because Stardock and FastSpring were growing together through this subscription technology journey, Brad saw FastSpring’s earlier iterations of the subscription management tools. That was already enough to make switching on subscriptions a much simpler process than it would have been without FastSpring. 

“At the time, it was a little more bare bones, but it had the infrastructure in place to actually allow us to do this. Because at the end of the day, you can’t just turn on a subscription — the whole plumbing pipeline has to be there,” he reiterates. “And so we connected with FastSpring, explained our scenario, they helped us with the documentation and helped us work through some edge cases, and then we were able to wire it up through already deployed FastSpring infrastructure on our end.” 

This turned out to be about as simple as setting up a new product SKU on their site that was marked as a subscription, outlining the attributes of the subscription (in their case, annual as opposed to monthly), and setting the price on the product. “There are a few other options in there,” Brad says, “like, ‘How do you want to communicate to the customer that things are about to renew?,’” but it was overall a simple process.

“Nothing in life at this magnitude is painless, but it was able to be done relatively quickly to pivot our business from a modeling perspective,” he assures us. “And that was the biggest value unlock: that we didn’t have to go through and reinvent the wheel on subscriptions for our flexible storefront at the end of the day.”

“That was the biggest value unlock: that we didn’t have to go through and reinvent the wheel on subscriptions for our flexible storefront at the end of the day.”

FastSpring’s subscription management features include:

• Trial management (with or without payment method, and free or paid trials).
• Recurring payment processing.
• Plan management tools for businesses or their customers to manage the details of their subscriptions.
• A subscription overview dashboard with insightful metrics.
• Correspondence automation.
• Churn reduction and dunning management (automatic retrying of failed renewal payments and related email communications). 

All of this was in addition to the standard features and tools FastSpring already provides, including:

• Global payments for easily transacting across borders.
• Tax compliance, include calculation, collection, and remittance of VAT and sales taxes.
• Customizable checkouts that are localized to customers and branded with your company branding, plus they’re available as embedded, popup, or a hosted FastSpring web storefront to accommodate your business needs.
• Fraud prevention with intelligent alerts and fewer chargebacks.
• Reporting and analytics, including subscription, revenue, and chargeback dashboards to help you track recurring revenue from your new subs.
• Developer tools like a JavaScript library; FastSpring’s REST API; webhooks; and integrations and connections with third-party systems including marketing analytics tools, CRMs, DRMs, BI tools, and more.
• And much more.

Are you looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your SaaS business? FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital goods businesses, including subscription management, payment localization, VAT and sales tax management, consumer support, and more. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Integrate Customer-Facing Subscription Management on Your Own Site

Besides handling subscription sales and management on the back end, FastSpring also provides account management tools for Stardock’s customers to manage their own subscriptions on the front end. 

Brad recommends taking advantage of an embedded subscription management portal to provide a totally seamless experience to your users. 

FastSpring’s Embedded Payment Management Components are an embedded same-page subscription payment management experience (including adding, updating, and deleting payment methods) that enables your customers to manage their subscription payment methods without leaving your account management portal. 

You can create, customize (and brand), embed, and test the payment management component on your own site to give your customers the best experience possible while managing payments for their new subscriptions. 

FastSpring can act as an end-to-end subscription solution via our subscription API, ranging from getting subscription data, updating account information, and showing proration previews of estimated proposed plan changes to customers — all within your portal.

2. Start Small With an Incremental Approach

FastSpring having the subscription management technology handled meant that — besides being able to focus on software development instead of on the tech needed to sell their software — Brad and his team were able to focus on other nuanced facets of making the switch beyond the technical specs, such as which products they wanted to switch over to the subscription model first.

He recommends that you start small and cascade any learnings to additional products as you add to your subscription offerings. 

“Our model was ‘Start small, risk small,’ and then ‘Move big, risk big.’ And by that time, it was no longer ‘Risk big,’ it was ‘Manage big.’”

“Our model was ‘Start small, risk small,’ and then ‘Move big, risk big.’ And by that time, it was no longer ‘Risk big,’ it was ‘Manage big.’”

While Stardock had multiple products with multiple support add-ons already, Brad outlined that they started the subscription experiment with one support add-on for one product, and for one specific subtype of their customer base. “What we started with was actually support and maintenance of a specific product. As an example, we sell Fences®. Fences® sells a lot to enterprise customers. Where we started trialing it was, Fences® the product remained a single point of transaction, but we introduced an option that would allow you to purchase annualized subscription maintenance and support for a reduced cost.” 

Essentially, you can apply a few filters to your products, add-ons, and user types to get a relatively small experimental group. “We just started on one particular product that we knew sold in volume with one particular scenario, which was only business, and then one particular type of customer who’s like, ‘I’ll take the discount for the renewal.’”

Once you start to see those first subscriptions begin to flow in, you can gauge whether it’s flowing as expected and make adjustments as needed, Brad says. “You compare and contrast, like, ‘How many people are choosing the subscription?’ And then you just amplify things up. You go to another product, and go to another product. And then you try a primary product. And then you try the big suite,” which for Stardock is Object Desktop™, containing all of their apps. “That was the big switchover once we had confidence.”

Starting small helped Stardock avoid any large upfront risks as they began testing the benefits of SaaS. 

3. Communicate Frequently and Clearly With Customers

Communicating business model and/or delivery model changes to your customers can be a real struggle, and they can greatly affect the user’s experience and relationship with your company and your product. Brad recommends you put a lot of strategy and care into how and when you announce upcoming changes.

“It distills down into reducing risk, not from a technology perspective, but from a communication issues perspective. There’s no way to mitigate all possible communication issues, and marketing is always the last thing you put out,” he says. 

“It distills down into reducing risk, not from a technology perspective, but from a communication issues perspective.”

“There are a lot of challenges from the perspective of marketing, communication, educating the end user, unlocking value, and creating expectations that what you’re doing is better for everybody involved,” Brad outlined. “Because it’s really easy for people to hear ‘subscriptions’ and think, ‘Oh, the business just wants to suck more money out of us.’ And that’s not the path we tried to take, but that’s always the narrative that’s going to be pushed, from a client perspective, onto you.” 

Brad further explains that “Anytime you move anybody’s cheese, they get really upset. People will say, ‘I’ve been a customer for 20 years, and suddenly you’re changing your business model! Why are you doing that? Is it because you hate money?,’” he quotes, implying that customers may threaten to stop using the product.

He says challenges like those are evergreen and will continue to come up, so being proactive about communicating changes is key to working through the change with your customers, especially long-term ones. 

Stardock’s “Start small, risk small; move big, manage big” rollout model really applied to customer communications. 

“If you try to go out the gate with a really high value, then the marketing messaging must really be on point to the dollar value you’re trying to charge for your SaaS service or product.”

But since Stardock had started their SaaS transition with a small subset of products, they were able to test communications and evaluate customer feedback in a very manageable pipeline before transitioning to their larger core products. “Because once you put your core product out there in that model, the amount of inbound communications you get is a lot,” Brad tells us. “And to try to manage that, we needed to be prepared.”

Those inbounds from customers can come from anywhere, he says. “From every possible direction — you get it from your forums, you get it through email, you get it through social media, you get it through phone calls, you get it everywhere, because people are trying to figure out what you’re doing. And you learn real quick — and I mean real quick — where your communication wasn’t clear or effective.” 

But thanks to the small-to-big transition plan, those learnings get applied to the next larger product you roll out on subscription, and the communication bumps you may experience at first are only with a relatively small subset of customers. For the next round, now you know where, when, and how additional communications need to be posted. 

4. Prepare for Renewals With Value-Adds to Help Reduce Churn

Because Stardock opted to offer their subscription software on an annual pricing model instead of monthly — and because they launched subscriptions a little under a year ago, not just to new customers but also to all existing customers at the same time — Stardock’s first big renewal period is yet to happen. But it’s quickly approaching.

“For us, the big question for 2024 can be summed up in a single word: churn,” Brad explains. “We have expectations and some modeling that suggest where things should land. But this will be the year for us to determine how we approach subscriptions going for year two and effectively beyond.”

Despite the possibility for churn, he says they feel they’ve added a lot of value to their SaaS products. Besides having FastSpring’s retention-supporting features such as churn reducing dunning management as part of their tech stack, Stardock is releasing new apps and services for their subscription products to add to the real and perceived value of their products to customers. “We’ve tried to increase the value from our perspective, and we’re going to learn real quick whether or not we’ve increased the value from the user perspective.”

5. Design the Transition Plan That’s Right for Your Company

Back when Stardock had begun planning a SaaS transition for their products, Brad says they heard a few different things within the industry about the absolutely best way to do it. One particularly common piece of advice was to “go cold turkey” and launch everything as SaaS all at once. 

“The best way I can describe my job is trying to decide what advice is bad advice,” he told us. “And I would say that was bad advice.” 

That hard-won sense of discernment is how Brad and Stardock landed on the small-to-big rollout plan, which really worked well for them.

But he recommends that any software company evaluating if and how to make the switch to SaaS should decide what’s best for their own company, without just listening to the loudest chatter in the industry. 

“Every company is unique in what their clientele will expect and/or tolerate.”

“There was no company that we talked to who had gone through similar things, that had the same experience as us, and nobody after us will, either,” Brad assures us. “Every company is unique in what their clientele will expect and/or tolerate.”

Partner With FastSpring

Ready to explore how your SaaS or software business can benefit from FastSpring’s continued commitment to subscription management product development?

FastSpring is a merchant of record that provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital products businesses, including subscription management, global payments, fraud prevention, VAT and sales tax management, consumer support, and so much more. 

Set up a demo or sign up to check out the platform yourself.

Related Reading

• Visit our Subscription Management product page for more info and links to our documentation.
• Read more about how FastSpring helps SaaS businesses move subscriptions on our SaaS solutions page.
• Hear from many more satisfied FastSpring customers on our Case Study page. 
• Check out our Dashboards documentation page for detailed info on our subscription, revenue, and chargeback dashboards. 
• Wondering about how SaaS renewals might go? Read SaaS Churn: Myths, Benchmarks, and Strategies to Retain More Revenue for benchmarking data and five tips for reducing SaaS churn.
• Still not sure you fully understand dunning management? Read more about what our dunning management features do to help reduce failed payments and involuntary churn.
• Wanting to sell subscriptions with a sales team? Check out FastSpring’s Digital Invoicing and Interactive Quotes. 
• Running a startup that’s focused on getting a great valuation? Listen to our podcast episode on What Brands Look for When Considering Acquiring Software Companies.

The post Navigating Your Transition to SaaS Subscriptions: 5 Insights From Stardock’s Experience With FastSpring appeared first on FastSpring.