by Ben Dwyer If you’re in the market for a new payment gateway and many (if not all) of your customers pay through recurring billing, you might be interested in learning more about Recurly, an automated recurring billing platform for businesses.
First and foremost, Recurly is a recurring billing platform that allows subscription-style credit card payments. It also functions as a payment gateway that links your business and payment processors and has a built-in virtual terminal that enables you to accept credit card information by phone.
The company was founded in 2009 when its founders saw a need for a recurring billing solution as a result of the popularity of subscription services. Recurly also has its own payment gateway for US-based vendors. The company claims that the benefits of using its gateway are that you’ll see a reduction in credit card declines because of Recurly’s credit card retry logic technology.
Compatible Processors
Recurly integrates with many major credit card processing companies and gateways including Amazon Payments, Authorize.Net, Beanstream, Braintree, Chase Paymentech, CyberSource, First Data, Merchant Solutions, PayPal, Stripe, Vantiv, and WorldPay. You’ll need a merchant account through one of those companies in order to use Recurly. The processor will set pricing for your accepted transactions.
In addition to integrating with major processors, Recurly is compatible with Xero accounting software.
Recurly Features
Recurly’s features include a number of options to help you securely accept subscription and one-time payments while minimizing the risk of declines. Invoicing, sales tax calculations, and data portability are also included. The company offers a video introduction that walks you through how Recurly works, and what you can expect when using it for your business:
Let’s look at some of Recurly’s most popular features in greater detail.
Hosted Payments Page
Recurly offers a hosted payments page to provide businesses with a PCI-compliant solution for accepting payments online. Hosted pages can be customized with your logo and specific information fields you need. Recurly’s hosted payment pages are mobile optimized, ensuring that customers can use them from their phone or tablet in addition to a computer.
And Recurly isn’t just for recurring payments. You can use it to bill customers for one-time transactions. The solution will create a customer account for the shopper, so if he or she wants to sign up for a subscription service in the future, it will be hassle-free.
Subscription Plan Management
Your customers want flexibility, and Recurly lets you give it to them. With Recurly, you can create a variety of subscription plans for your customers with different billing cycles and pricing tiers.
Recurly also automatically prorates payments when your customers decide to change plans. Sometimes, your customers will purchase multiple subscriptions. Recurly lets them pay for more than one subscription simultaneously.
Trial Period and Setup Fee Configuration
Offering a free trial period for your subscription-based products or services is a great way to attract customers. All you have to do is tell Recurly how long you want the free trial to last. Is there a one-time setup fee involved in your product or service? Define that fee as you customize each subscription plan.
Add-On Offers and Coupons
Do you have a seasonal product you think would interest your customers? Maybe you see an opportunity to upsell. Recurly lets you offer additional services to your subscription plan quickly. If your customers decide they don’t want the add-on anymore, they can change the subscription plan and Recurly will prorate the payments. You also have the option to offer oupons and discounts to attract potential customers and engage current clients. Recurly’s interface allows you to manage all of your promotional offers in one place.
Virtual Terminal
Virtual terminals are a secured browser that let you enter credit card information so you can process the payment from phone orders or other situations where you can’t physically swipe the customer’s card. Recurly’s virtual terminal helps your customer support staff handle orders over the phone, by mail, or in any other method your customers prefer.
Related Article: How to Use a Virtual Terminal.
Sales Tax Collection
Calculating and collecting sales tax doesn’t have to be a headache. Recurly uses the most up to date tax rules and rates. It even handles European VAT.
Invoicing and Metered Billing
Some customers want a traditional invoice. You don’t need separate software for that – you can create invoices within Recurly, then record whether the customer has paid partially or in full.
If your product is metered, you can still use Recurly to bill your customers. The company boasts that it’s easier and cheaper to set up metered billing with Recurly than with other billing solutions.
Credit Card Decline Logic Technology
It’s inconvenient and costly when a customer’s credit card is decline. Recurly’s credit card decline logic technology automatically corrects 60 common error types to retry the card and ensure that you get paid for your goods and services.
Automatic Billing Information Updates
People get new credit cards and don’t always update their information with service providers or vendors, resulting in lost time as your staff chases down correct account information. Put a stop to interrupted and declined payments.Recurly compares your customers’ credit card details with Visa and MasterCard, so every transaction has the most up-to-date information.
Data Portability
If you ever decide to switch to another company, Recurly offers data portability, ensuring that you’ll have access to your transaction information and stored card data so it can be transferred to your new provider.
Related Article: Subscription and Recurring Billing Options.
Security
Recurly is PCI-DSS Level 1 compliant, the highest level of PCI-DSS compliance achievable. It encrypts data, utilizes industry guidelines on secure coding, and hosts data in facilities with high levels of physical and network security.
The billing solution claims that it has measures in place to prevent customers from committing fraud. However, its website doesn’t offer many details. It does state that Recurly’s fraud prevention technology minimizes chargebacks, stops card-not-present fraud, and halts account takeovers.
Reporting
As a business owner, you want access to data to make better decisions. Recurly’s reporting functionality includes an Analytics Dashboard to give you key info at a glance. You can see churn rate, plan performance, and sales revenue. You can also take advantage of pre-made reports for multiple areas of business, and customize by date range, currency, and more.
Recurly’s reports include graphs and charts, displaying key information visually for quick comparisons.
Recurly Pricing
The only pricing plan available on Recurly’s website is for small businesses. The core plan is $99 per month. You pay 1.25% per transaction plus $0.10 on payments made by credit card, PayPal, and Amazon. These costs are in addition to processing fees from a separate credit card processor.
Recurly also offers a professional plan, which includes more features. That plan costs $299 per month. The same 1.25% plus $0.10 for credit card, PayPal, and Amazon payments applies. However, ACH payments only incur the gateway fees, and you pay $1 per invoice (but not the 1.25%). Moreover, the professional version supports multiple currencies and allows for basic Salesforce integration.
These prices are subject to change, and may not include all rates and fees that apply.
Have you used Recurly at your business? Let us know what you think! Leave a review below.
