All subscription commerce solutions are basically the same, right? Little known fact is that there are three main categories of subscription providers – and figuring out which solution best fits your business requirements can be tricky. Even providers that help you boost revenue in the short term might seriously limit your ability to respond to future shifts in products and services, pricing and market opportunities. So how do you find one that really works? Included in this complimentary white paper: • The pros and cons of three types of subscription solutions • Concrete use cases for each solution type • Questions to ask yourself when evaluating providers • Questions to ask potential providers

2. The subscription business model has gone mainstream with
companies like Dropbox, Netflix, Adobe and Zipcar because
it offers a predictable, recurring revenue stream.

3. But in their eagerness to earn more revenue and keep up with
trends in global ecommerce, too many businesses want to
dive headfirst into the subscription commerce pool.
With so many subscription commerce solutions available, it can be easy to get
locked into a provider that doesn’t fit your specific requirements. Even worse, the
wrong solution can limit your capacity to respond to shifts in products/services,
pricing or market opportunities.

4. Commerce platforms not designed for the selling of digital
goods are unable to cater to the evolving business models
and specific features needed to sell digital goods and
services online. eBusiness firms with the constraints of an
ill-suited technology will lag behind customer needs, miss
out on monetizing digital content, and neglect launching new
product offerings1.
1 Market Overview: Commerce Solutions For Digital Products And Services, 2015” by Lily Varon, Peter Sheldon with Zia Daniell Wigder, Diana Gold, Forrester Research, Inc. May 27, 2015.
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5. Let’s evaluate the three different solution approaches for recurring
billing and subscription businesses.
Already selling through an existing solution?
This could be a good time to reevaluate a billing solution because it’s likely that there
may be areas lagging behind industry best practices.
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6. Category A – Billing/Payments Solution
A payment gateway provides the technology to securely capture and transfer credit card
information from a website shopping cart to the merchant account. A merchant account
handles the financial processing of the credit card transaction with the banks and card
brand (VISA, MasterCard, etc.). It is very typical to have one company supply the merchant
account and another supply the payment gateway because very few companies supply
both services under the same roof. Some payment gateways have even evolved to offer
simple recurring billing features.

7. Category A – Billing/Payments Solution
Typically the cheapest option to
get you up and running with
accepting basic recurring
payments
Get more pros and cons, plus use cases, in our complimentary white paper!
Subscription and recurring revenue
capabilities are not core
functionalities, which will require a lot
of custom development on your end
Pros Cons

8. Category B – Subscription Management Point Solution
Recurring billing and subscription management point solutions focus on the function of
managing when each customer is due to be billed and for how much. The vendor either
collects the annual/monthly fee or stops delivering the publication if the customer doesn’t
pay by a certain date. A recurring billing platform will manage this information for the
vendor, though they won’t necessarily act as the merchant of record and collect payments.

9. Category B – Subscription Management Point Solution
Can offer deep financial reporting
on your performance, tracking
important sales metrics such as #
of users, churn rate, etc.
Get more pros and cons, plus use cases, in our complimentary white paper!
The initial cost is often significantly
less than your final bill after adding in
all necessary costs for development
and other third-party vendor services.
Pros Cons

10. Category C – Full-Service or Integrated Solution
Full-service or integrated solutions have subscription management, but also core
commerce capabilities (e.g. payment processing, multivariate testing, localization
capabilities, marketing capabilities, fraud prevention, affiliate and reseller support,
customer support, etc.). The benefit of partnering with a full-service or integrated solution
is that they handle all of these activities on your behalf, freeing up numerous resources for
product development that would have been otherwise occupied by ecommerce and
subscription activities.

11. Category C – Full-Service or Integrated Solution
Enables you to go global fast with
new product or services releases,
because localization capabilities
are built in
Get more pros and cons, plus use cases, in our complimentary white paper!
Because more ecommerce and
subscription capabilities are built into the
solution, you may experience sticker shock
compared to the other types of solutions
Pros Cons

12. As you can see, each solution has their place and
serves different purposes.
The right solution will address your unique business needs and capabilities as well as the
needs of your customers who will be interacting with it. Analyze your business needs for
today and anticipate for tomorrow before evaluating providers to ensure the correct solution
is implemented. To help, we’ve included in the white paper some questions to think about
when it comes to your own business, as well as questions to consider asking potential
subscription solution providers.
Get subscription-savvy in our complimentary white paper!

13. cleverbridge provides global subscription billing solutions that help
companies build long-term customer relationships and grow recurring
revenue streams. With its flexible, cloud-based billing and monetization
platform, cleverbridge integrates seamlessly with client systems, simplifies
subscription business models and delivers an optimized online customer
experience. Leveraging cleverbridge expertise, technology and services,
clients monetize products and services more effectively, rapidly expand
their global subscriber base and maximize customer lifetime value.
Headquartered in Cologne, Germany, cleverbridge has offices in Chicago,
San Francisco and Tokyo.
To learn more about cleverbridge, please contact
inquiry@cleverbridge.com or visit www.cleverbridge.com.