Chargebacks are a reality for any SaaS business operating at scale. They’re part of the price of doing business—but what many finance teams don’t realize is just how much these disputes are quietly costing them.
Beyond the obvious losses, the hidden costs—time, labor, compliance risks, and cash flow disruption—pile up fast. If your team is still managing chargebacks manually, you’re likely paying a much higher price than you think.
Manual chargeback management isn’t just a burden on operational resources—it’s a drain on company growth. As businesses look for ways to scale efficiently, outdated processes around disputes can quietly stifle progress, reducing profitability and straining already overworked finance teams.
The Common Pain Points of Manual Chargeback Management
Fragmented Visibility
Dispute data scattered across systems makes it harder to spot patterns and react quickly.
Teams lose valuable time toggling between payment processors, CRM systems, and financial software.
Manual Investigations
Finance and support teams sink hours into gathering evidence, responding to disputes, and reconciling outcomes.
High-value employees spend time on low-value, repeatable tasks instead of strategic initiatives.
Cash Flow Disruption
Chargeback holds and delayed recoveries directly impact available working capital.
These delays can disrupt forecasting and budgeting, creating downstream financial challenges.
Poor Reporting
Without centralized reporting, finance teams miss insights that could prevent future disputes.
Identifying chargeback trends is nearly impossible when data is siloed across systems.
Compliance Risks
Disorganized documentation can lead to failed audits and regulatory penalties.
In industries with strict compliance standards, incomplete chargeback records can expose businesses to significant fines.
Why Manual Processes Cost More Than You Think
When your finance team spends dozens of hours each month manually managing chargebacks, it’s not just operational inefficiency—it’s a hidden tax on your company’s growth.
Time: Manual dispute resolution can take 30–60 minutes per case. Multiply that by dozens or hundreds of disputes, and the hours add up fast.
Labor: High-value finance and support resources are diverted from strategic projects—costing your company in opportunity and productivity.
Revenue Risk: Poor chargeback management can lead to higher dispute loss rates, which means lost revenue and potential customer churn.
But there’s another layer to consider: when a chargeback is issued and the funds are returned, the commercial relationship itself is called into question. Do you still have a valid agreement with that customer? Should that transaction remain on the books? These aren’t just back-office concerns—they raise important questions for both finance and sales teams. Without a streamlined way to loop in commercial stakeholders, businesses risk misrepresenting financials or continuing to recognize revenue on invalid contracts.
The ripple effects are clear: inefficient chargeback processes drag down growth by increasing operational costs, reducing cash flow, and making financial reporting less reliable.
How Maxio Payments Global Streamlines Chargeback Management
Maxio Payments Global is designed to bring more structure and clarity to a traditionally fragmented and manual process. Instead of chasing disputes across systems, finance teams can manage the entire chargeback lifecycle more efficiently.
Centralized Dispute Management
Helps organize all disputes in one system for easier tracking and resolution.
Reduces time spent toggling between platforms and manual tracking.
Guided Processes
Provides structured workflows to standardize evidence collection and dispute resolution steps.
Reduces inconsistencies and helps ensure that teams meet response deadlines.
Organized Documentation
Keeps audit-ready records accessible and easy to retrieve.
Helps businesses maintain compliance with industry and regional regulations.
Improved Reporting Visibility
Offers access to dispute-related reporting and trends.
Helps finance teams identify root causes and proactively address recurring issues.
Reducing Hidden Costs by Working Smarter
Chargebacks aren’t going away. But how you handle them can mean the difference between a slow bleed on your resources and a more proactive process that protects your bottom line.
With Maxio Payments Global, finance teams get the tools they need to handle chargebacks more efficiently—freeing up time, improving cash flow, and reducing risk.
If your finance team is spending too much time and money managing chargebacks manually, it’s time to rethink your approach.
Ready to take charge of chargebacks? Schedule a demo to see Maxio Payments in action.
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How Buying Non-Core Billing Technology Accelerates Your Company Roadmap
Your brilliant engineering team ships features quickly, but what if their early, quick-fix billing script struggles to handle new customers or your Product-Led Growth (PLG) motion? Many early-stage startups reach this point, and it’s usually the Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) who have to jump in and solve the problem.
Let’s explore the build vs. buy dilemma for core infrastructure like billing systems. The instinct to build technology is strong for CTOs and has served them well, but, as growth accelerates, is continuing to build in-house billing the best use of resources when speed and flexibility are needed for growth?”
In this post, we’ll discuss the challenges with building vs. buying, highlighting the advantages that come from considering a strong external billing system. Our goal is to provide a framework for thinking about how this impacts resources, market speed, pricing flexibility, and the foundational needs for PLG, allowing you to make the best decision for your situation. Understanding this balance is key, and it’s where considering a comprehensive billing infrastructure partner, like Maxio, can shift from a tactical choice to a strategic need.
Reexamining the Build Instinct Through a Strategic Lens
As an early-stage CTO, your experience has likely proven the value and power of the build instinct. It’s usually how innovative products first take shape, and it’s an approach that naturally aligns with an understanding of technology and a drive to create it. So it’s worth calling out why this instinct is so foundational before considering how strategic needs can grow with company growth.
Building tech isn’t just a preference for technical founders; it’s what got the product off the ground and is a core part of their problem-solving DNA. That ingenuity is fundamental, and solving hard problems with custom solutions is what gives your company its edge. It’s a source of innovation and pride, allowing for deep learning and a system perfectly tailored to initial, simpler needs.
In the early days, building a lightweight solution in-house, especially for something like billing, can feel faster, more cost-effective, and certainly more within your control. You understand every line of code because you wrote it, which provides a sense of security and adaptability for immediate business needs.
But as the company grows, the calculus often shifts, and what was once a straightforward internal tool can become a source of complexity, demanding more attention.
Now, let’s talk about collaboratively reexamining where that powerful instinct delivers maximum value and where, as demands change, it might introduce hidden tradeoffs or divert focus from your core product innovation. The goal is to ensure your technical resources are always aimed at what makes your business unique and profitable.
The Unseen Toll of Building Non-Core Infrastructure
The very systems that were once efficient can begin to present new and unexpected challenges as your startup scales. It’s common to see homegrown, non-core infrastructure like billing struggle to support increasing complexity that extends beyond simple payment processing and touches the core of your revenue operations.
Let’s explore some common strategic and operational challenges impacting resource allocation, market agility, and the evolution of pricing or PLG strategies. These are the friction points where a dedicated billing platform like Maxio, designed for B2B SaaS complexity, begins to show its strategic value by proactively addressing unseen tolls.
Growing Resource Demands: As your product and customer base grow, maintaining and adapting a homegrown billing system can pull engineering focus from core product innovation. What started as a small project can morph into a maintenance burden, consuming valuable developer time and focus.
Impact on Time-to-Market: The increasing complexities of billing, like proration, dunning, global taxes, compliance like Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and usage tracking intricacies, can delay new product launches or pricing iterations if your internal system needs re-engineering.
Scalability Hurdles & Technical Debt: Homegrown systems can struggle to scale elegantly with growing transaction volumes, new pricing models, or international operations, leading to technical debt and making future changes slow and risky.
Pricing Strategy & PLG Agility Constraints: An internally built billing system, if not architected for flexibility, can become a bottleneck, hindering pricing strategy experimentation. This can also complicate first-time PLG efforts, which depend on seamless, automated self-serve checkout and dynamic subscription management.
These types of friction points are natural consequences of growth, outgrowing a system designed for a simpler era, and recognizing them early allows for a strategic change.
Buying as a Strategic Accelerator for Innovation and Speed
Buying technology doesn’t mean giving up control, it means gaining leverage to unlock team capacity, enabling greater agility, and building a resilient foundation for future innovation. Leveraging specialized third-party solutions for non-core infrastructure can be a powerful accelerant, and solutions like Maxio are built precisely to offer this leverage for complex B2B SaaS billing.
The benefits of buying flexible, modern billing systems include:
Reclaiming Resources for Core Innovation: Buying a specialized billing solution is a strategic move to free engineering talent. Instead of wrestling with billing logic or compliance updates, your team can concentrate on the startup’s unique value proposition.
Accelerating Speed and Agility: A reliable, robust system, designed for flexibility and adaptive billing, allows for pricing experimentation and faster implementation of pricing models. A configurable platform enables quicker adaptation to market feedback and competitive pressures.
De-risking Growth & Ensuring Scalable Operations: Mature third-party solutions handle complexity, global compliance, security, and high-volume scalability with ease, limiting future operational risks and providing a stable backbone for financial operations.
Sophisticated Pricing & Seamless PLG: Investing in the right infrastructure provides a good foundation for advanced pricing strategies and delivering a smooth, automated PLG experience needed for customer acquisition and retention, without burdening your engineering team.
Unlocking Actionable Data & Strategic Insights: Specialized platforms typically offer more sophisticated reporting and analytics than most homegrown systems, providing clearer insights into revenue trends and customer behavior that inform data-driven decision-making.
Accelerate Growth by Focusing on Innovation, Not Reinvention
The path of an early-stage CTO is one of constant innovation, and the build vs. buy decision for critical billing infrastructure is a strategic choice that impacts technical debt, feature velocity, your company’s growth trajectory, its pricing adaptability, and PLG success.
The challenges with building core infrastructure are common early-stage inflection points that an extensible billing platform like Maxio can turn from hidden costs into opportunities for growth. Don’t think of buying tech as abandoning a core strength. Think of it as channeling that strength where it delivers the most competitive differentiation. By strategically choosing to buy non-core infrastructure like a billing and revenue operations platform, you’re buying speed to market, business model flexibility, and the freedom to focus your team’s genius on what truly sets your startup apart.
Maxio, for instance, is designed as a central B2B SaaS billing platform, offering more than simple payment processing to help you manage the entire quote-to-cash lifecycle, adapt pricing, automate revenue recognition, and gain critical financial insights. Maxio helps turn billing into your secret weapon.
Most finance teams have a firm grip on key metrics like MRR, ARR, CAC, LTV, and churn.
What’s harder is making those metrics reflect the business realities behind them.
Can you isolate ARR by sales channel or region?
Can you compare churn across usage-based and flat-rate plans?
Can you separate your multi-year contracts from short-term pilots?
Without clean segmentations, those questions turn into late-night Slack threads paired with patched-together spreadsheets and a tall glass of rosé. Not because the team lacks technical ability, but because the infrastructure to support meaningful reporting doesn’t exist.
This isn’t about data availability. It’s about data usability.
In most SaaS orgs, customer and revenue data are scattered across tools that weren’t designed to work together:
CRM: Who sold the deal and key customer details Billing: How much and how often Accounting: What was recognized
Even when teams try to reconcile the gaps, inconsistent labeling kills the effort. One customer might be tagged as “direct” in HubSpot, “enterprise” in your GL, and “sales-led” in billing. Multiply that by a few dozen segments, and suddenly your cohort analysis becomes guesswork.
How Maxio Solves This
Maxio gives SaaS finance teams the segmentation they’ve been struggling to put together with spreadsheets.
You get the metrics you need like ARR, MRR, churn, and retention with filters that match how your business actually sells.
1. Structured Customer Data = Reporting That Makes Sense
In Maxio, every customer is a structured object. Not just an invoice or a row in QuickBooks.
Contract details (start date, term length, billing cadence, renewal type)
Revenue data (revenue schedules, deferred revenue, unbilled AR)
This structure powers every dashboard and export—without tags, lookups, or SQL.
2. Real-Time SaaS Metrics, Segmented Your Way
Once customer data is in place, Maxio’s reporting engine takes over.
You can see metrics like:
ARR and MRR by customer type, plan, or product
Churn broken down by contract term or sales channel
Retention trends across customer cohorts or industries
Want to track ARR from multi-year SaaS + hardware bundles sold via channel partners in the public sector?
Done.
How about understanding churn from usage-based plans sold via self-signup?
Insights in two clicks.
3. Segmentation That Stays in Sync
Custom segments are only as good as the data behind them. That’s why Maxio’s bi-directional CRM integrations matter.
Instead of relying on static tags or manually maintained spreadsheets, Maxio pulls firmographic and sales context like industry, region, sales rep, or deal source directly from your CRM. That data stays synced, so your reports reflect reality, not a stale export from three weeks ago.
You can build and save custom segments directly inside the reporting UI—no SQL required. Set it once, and it flows through your dashboards, SaaS metrics, and board-ready exports automatically.
When Metrics Start to Matter
Without segmentation, you’re stuck making directional guesses. With Maxio, you get operational clarity.
You know what products are working (and for whom).
You see which segments are renewing and which need attention.
You can finally align Finance, Sales, and Product around the same metrics.
When you’re ready to move past generic metrics and into revenue intelligence that matches how you sell, Maxio makes it possible.
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For finance teams at SaaS companies, managing payments is more than just processing transactions—it’s about ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and visibility across every stage of the revenue lifecycle. As companies scale across borders, those goals often get buried beneath a pile of manual reconciliation, disjointed gateways, and limited currency support.
Maxio Payments is designed to keep that complexity in check.
Maxio is a unified billing and payments engine that brings invoicing, reconciliation, and reporting into a single platform. With built-in capabilities to support multiple currencies and regional payment preferences, finance teams stay in control, even as they expand into new markets.
That means:
Payment methods that fit local customer expectations
Multi-currency billing and settlement
Streamlined reconciliation and cash reporting
Centralized management of payment operations from acceptance to settlement
A Closer Look at Maxio Payments (with Global Capabilities)
1. Support Major Payment Methods for SaaS Customers
Maxio Payments gives your customers the flexibility to pay the way they prefer, with seamless support for major payment methods. Accept credit card payments and ACH bank transfers—both fully integrated into your billing workflows—with Plaid-powered bank verification for faster, more secure onboarding. Giving customers the experience they expect without adding complexity to your operations.
2. Simplify Chargeback Management
When disputes happen, Maxio makes them easy to manage. The platform surfaces chargeback alerts, categorizes them, and tracks resolution progress in a single dashboard—so your team can act fast and maintain accurate records without jumping between tools.
3. Collect Payments in Your Customer’s Currency
With Maxio Payments, you can collect credit card payments in the same currency your customers are invoiced—supporting a smoother, more consistent payment experience. This allows your customers to pay in their local currency while your finance team maintains accuracy and control over collections.
4. Improve Reconciliation and Cash Flow Visibility
Maxio Payments makes it easier to track deposits, refunds, and transaction statuses by syncing payment data directly into your billing system. This helps finance teams simplify reconciliation workflows and gain clearer visibility into cash flow—without relying on manual spreadsheets or disconnected reports.
5. Integrate Payment Data with Your General Ledger
Maxio Payments works alongside Maxio Advanced Billing to sync settlement and payment data into your general ledger (GL). This reduces the need for manual data entry and helps your finance team maintain a more accurate, up-to-date view of cash and revenue across the business.
6. Give Teams Visibility & Control
Role-based permissions, customizable alerts, and user-level controls ensure that everyone—whether CFO or analyst—sees only what they need. This level of transparency and control helps teams respond faster and reduce operational noise.
A Smarter Way to Manage SaaS Payments
Maxio Payments is built to handle the real-world complexities SaaS finance teams face every day. From localized payment preferences and currency flexibility to integrated reporting and reconciliation, it’s a platform designed to support growth—not slow it down.
By connecting payments to the rest of your revenue operations, Maxio gives you the tools to scale confidently, reduce risk, and maintain full visibility into cash flow—across every region you serve.
Smarter systems. Fewer workarounds. Global-ready from day one.
Most SaaS finance teams set their sights on a five-day month-end close. But the best teams in the business? They’re consistently wrapping things up in three days or less—with greater accuracy, deeper insights, and more confidence in their numbers.
If that sounds like a stretch goal, it’s time to rethink what’s possible. A faster, more strategic close isn’t just achievable—it’s essential for any SaaS company that wants to scale efficiently and make better decisions. Here’s what best-in-class looks like, and how to start moving your team in that direction.
From Reactive to Strategic: Redefining the Close Process
Let’s face it: many finance teams are stuck in reactive mode. Month-end close becomes a fire drill—scrambling to reconcile revenue, track down data from multiple systems, and manually update spreadsheets. The result is a process that’s not only time-consuming, but also prone to errors and blind spots.
High-performing SaaS finance teams take a different approach. They view the close as a strategic function—one that enables better forecasting, more timely decision-making, and tighter alignment with the rest of the business. They know that accurate, up-to-date financials are essential for everything from investor reporting to revenue operations.
This mindset shift—from compliance to enablement—is what sets these teams apart.
Key Benchmarks to Aim For
To understand what “best-in-class” looks like in practice, it helps to look at the benchmarks these teams are hitting:
Close revenue in 1-2 business days Not just closing the books, but having confidence in the numbers and to be able to report and move forward.
MRR-to-revenue bridge ready by Day 1 The ability to reconcile subscription activity with revenue quickly means fewer surprises and stronger performance tracking.
Deferred revenue recognized and reconciled automatically No more guesswork—just accurate, audit-ready financials.
These aren’t just aspirational targets—they’re achievable with the right processes and systems in place.
What Best-in-Class Teams Do Differently
So how do these top-tier finance teams operate? There are a few common themes:
1. Real-Time Transaction Processing
To close the books quickly and accurately, it all starts with getting transactions into the ledger efficiently and without delay. When a contract is entered, a platform like Maxio automatically generates the transactions, invoices, MRR/ARR reporting, and revenue recognition in real time. This real-time processing ensures finance teams always have up-to-date data at their fingertips, laying the foundation for a faster and more accurate month-end close.
2. Standardized Close Playbooks
They don’t reinvent the wheel every month. Close tasks are clearly documented, repeatable, and assigned to the right stakeholders. This reduces confusion, increases accountability, and makes onboarding new team members far easier.
3. Automation at the Core
Revenue recognition and reporting flows are automated wherever possible. With a tool like Maxio, revenue is automatically calculated at the time a transaction is input, and real-time revenue reports are generated. Automating revenue calculations at the source dramatically shortens the close timeline and improves the accuracy of financial outputs, enabling finance teams to spend more time on review and analysis rather than manual data entry.
4. Seamless Integration
Billing and revenue recognition aren’t siloed. These systems are tightly connected, enabling real-time visibility and faster reconciliation. When your systems talk to each other, your team spends less time chasing down discrepancies.
The Role of Technology: Spreadsheets Can’t Scale
Excel will always have a place in finance. But if your month-end close is still entirely spreadsheet-driven, you’re building on a shaky foundation.
Manual processes introduce risk, reduce visibility, and limit your ability to scale. As your business grows, those inefficiencies only multiply.
This is where a platform like Maxio makes all the difference.
With Maxio, finance teams gain:
Real-time visibility into MRR and subscription metrics
Pre-built reports and dashboards that are ready on Day 1
By automating routine tasks and consolidating key financial data, Maxio helps SaaS finance teams close faster, with greater confidence—and frees them up to focus on what matters most: guiding the business forward.
What’s Standing Between You and a 1-2 Day Close?
If you’re still closing your books on Day 5—or later—you’re not alone. But you also don’t have to stay there.
Most delays come down to a few common culprits: manual processes, disconnected systems, and unclear ownership of close tasks. The good news? Each of these is solvable. And the teams that tackle them head-on are already seeing the payoff: faster closes, cleaner data, and more bandwidth to focus on strategic initiatives.
The right technology can help accelerate that shift. With automation, standardized playbooks, and tighter system integrations, your finance team can move from reactive to proactive—without sacrificing accuracy or control.
You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. But the sooner you start removing friction from your close, the sooner you can spend more time delivering insights instead of just reconciling numbers.
Want to see what’s possible? Join our upcoming webinar to learn how Maxio helps SaaS finance teams transform the month-end close process.
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Variable revenue comes in a wide variety of forms, and there is no “one-way” to forecast. Below, I will address two common approaches that will be helpful if revenue follows a seasonal pattern and/or companies have larger customers.
The Cohort Approach
Based on historical monthly revenue for all established customers, identify common patterns and divide your customer base into cohorts accordingly. Types of grouping you might find include seasonal versus non-seasonal, low versus high volume, different verticals, or by pricing plan. Remember, you are NOT grouping by start date, as is common in cohort analysis.
If you find monthly revenue patterns, then:
Calculate the percent of revenue recognized in each month for each cohort
Calculate a net revenue retention number for each cohort
When performing the above calculations, only use existing customers in your yearly data set. Revenue from customers acquired during the year will distort the results.
If you have a mix of subscription and consumption revenue, you may forecast them separately or combine them; however, patterns may be clearer if you focus only on variable revenue.
Below is an example from a client I worked with a few years ago. Their customer revenue patterns were based on the vertical markets they served.
Once the cohorts are built, forecasting existing customer revenue is straightforward.
Multiply the beginning ARR for each cohort by its NRR, then spread the revenue out for the next twelve months based on the calculated percentages.
AWS and Databricks use macroeconomic forecasts for each cohort to tweak their projected revenue. Feel free to do this if you think one cohort might behave much differently going forward, but don’t overthink it.
When projecting new customer revenue. Forecast bookings based on these cohorts and then apply the monthly percentages to determine the amount and timing of revenue from each booking.
It’s also quite possible you will not find patterns in your existing customer base. If that’s the case, you must educate your board and senior management that there will simply be unexplained revenue variability.
The Customer Approach
If you have a few large customers (over 10% of revenue each), it makes sense to forecast their revenue individually for the coming year. Sales and Customer Success should have a view into known upgrades, downgrades, and churn. Each may have a seasonal pattern you can forecast as well. Use the cohort approach for all remaining customers.
What’s My ARR?
If your revenue has identifiable monthly patterns, as in the example above, the most accurate way to calculate ARR is to divide current MRR by the percentage of revenue historically recognized that month. (The same percentage used to build the forecast.) I would do this calculation for each of the past three months and then average them.
When calculating ARR for valuation purposes, I would separately note any booked but not yet recognized/implemented revenue.
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SaaS pricing models are much more than just numbers on a page—they’re a core driver of how SaaS companies generate revenue, grow their market share, and retain loyal customers over time.
The right pricing structure helps align your product with customer needs, differentiate your offering from competitors, and support long-term monetization. Whether you’re targeting startups, small businesses, or enterprise teams, choosing the right approach can unlock new revenue streams, improve retention, and make your pricing page a conversion asset instead of a roadblock.
In this guide, we’ll walk through the most effective SaaS pricing models, explore real-world strategies for different pricing approaches, and share best practices for optimizing your pricing strategy as your business evolves.
What is SaaS pricing?
SaaS pricing refers to a subscription pricing model that allows customers to pay at regular intervals (typically monthly or annually) instead of making a large upfront purchase. This structure gives SaaS companies the flexibility to match their pricing plan to customer expectations while steadily growing recurring revenue.
Plus, unlike traditional software sales that rely on one-time licenses, SaaS pricing models are designed for scalability, predictability, and long-term value. With recurring payments tied to usage, number of users, or access to features, companies can evolve their pricing structure over time to reflect changing customer needs and market dynamics.
How SaaS product pricing is different from other pricing models
What makes a SaaS product unique isn’t just the delivery model—it’s how pricing influences adoption, customer acquisition, and retention. Traditional software models require large upfront investments that can create friction for small businesses and startups. SaaS, on the other hand, lowers that barrier by spreading costs over time and allowing companies to pay as they grow.
This shift allows SaaS businesses to be more responsive:
Pricing tiers can be updated to reflect new capabilities or competitive pressure.
Features can be bundled or unbundled based on buyer personas.
Plans can be adjusted to better reflect the value of your product—especially when offering usage-based pricing to align cost with activity.
Popular B2B SaaS pricing strategies
B2B SaaS companies use a variety of pricing strategies to attract the right customers, optimize revenue, and stay competitive. Choosing the right approach depends on factors like the perceived value of your product, buyer personas, your competitive landscape, and how you position your product in the market.
Below are three of the most common frameworks that help guide decision-making around product pricing and long-term growth.
Value-based pricing
Value-based pricing focuses on what customers are willing to pay for the perceived value your product delivers, rather than tying prices to costs. In B2B SaaS, this often means aligning your pricing plan with business outcomes like time saved, revenue generated, or operational efficiency.
To execute this well, companies must conduct customer pricing research: collecting feedback, analyzing usage data, and assessing willingness to pay across segments. The goal is to understand how different customers assign value to your features and outcomes.
The upside? You can increase revenue and profit margin without necessarily adding more features or users. The downside? It’s research-intensive and must be continuously revisited as your pricing as strategy evolves.
Competitor-based pricing
Competitor-based (or competitor pricing) involves analyzing what similar SaaS companies charge for their services and then positioning your pricing relative to them—either slightly above, below, or directly in line.
This approach is especially common for newer companies trying to gain traction or enter saturated markets. It’s relatively easy to execute and offers a quick benchmark when building your first pricing page.
However, there are serious risks. Relying too heavily on your competitors’ strategy can lead to a race to the bottom, profit margin erosion, or a lack of meaningful differentiation. You’re also not pricing based on your product’s actual value to your audience, which may hurt customer acquisition and retention in the long run.
Cost-plus pricing
Cost-plus pricing sets your prices based on production or operating costs plus a fixed markup (e.g., 20%). It’s simple, ensures basic profitability, and is often used as a starting point for internal decision-making.
However, it doesn’t account for perceived value, customer expectations, or competitive pressure. As a result, it may lead to overpricing (if your costs are high) or underpricing (if your buyer personas would have paid more). In B2B SaaS, where margins are high and the cost to serve additional customers is often low, this method is rarely the most effective long-term strategy.
The 6 most common SaaS pricing models
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to SaaS pricing. SaaS companies often experiment with different pricing models to meet the needs of different customer segments, whether they’re small businesses, startups, or enterprise clients. The right model can dramatically affect your ability to acquire new users, grow revenue, and scale sustainably.
Below, we’ll break down the most popular SaaS pricing models, how they work, and when each is most effective depending on your product, target market, and business goals.
1. Flat-rate pricing model
The flat-rate pricing model is the simplest option: one pricing plan, one price, and unlimited access. All users, regardless of size or usage, pay the same monthly or annual fee. It’s easy to communicate and frictionless to manage, which is why many early-stage small businesses and SaaS startups use it.
This model works best for straightforward products with a narrow set of features and a uniform user base. But it can be limiting for companies serving a different customer mix. If your product serves both solopreneurs and large team members, a one-size-fits-all price can underserve some and overcharge others—leading to churn or missed upsell opportunities.
Flat-rate pricing is most effective when simplicity is part of your product value and you don’t need to segment by usage, team size, or additional features.
2. Tiered pricing model
The tiered pricing model offers multiple pricing plans at different price points, each designed for a specific target market or customer segment. These tiers often scale by number of users, set of features, or usage limits—allowing SaaS companies to serve small businesses, mid-market teams, and enterprises from the same platform.
For example, a starter plan might include basic access for a small business, while higher tiers unlock advanced API access, analytics, or additional features for power users. This structure gives customers the flexibility to choose what fits their current needs—and upgrade as they grow.
Tiered pricing is one of the most popular SaaS pricing models because it balances accessibility with monetization. It supports different pricing for different customers, improves customer acquisition, and enables clear upsell paths that drive higher price retention.
3. Usage-based pricing model
With the usage-based pricing model, customers pay based on how much they actually use the product. This could mean charging per API call, GB of storage, number of transactions, or another measurable unit tied to value. Then, as customer usage increases, so does the price—making this model inherently scalable.
It’s especially effective for SaaS companies with a wide customer base and variable usage patterns. Rather than forcing a flat fee on a light user or undercharging a heavy one, usage-based pricing aligns cost with consumption and gives customers control over their spending.
Zapier does an excellent job of this—their pricing is separated by individual tiers, however, their pricing also scales depending on the number of automated tasks, or “zaps”, their customers use each month.
For companies targeting developers, infrastructure teams, or transaction-heavy apps, this model improves adoption by removing upfront friction and making the pricing plan feel fair. It also creates strong expansion revenue opportunities from active users whose value grows over time.
4. Per-user pricing model
The per-user pricing model charges customers based on the number of users or team members accessing the software. This approach is simple to understand and easy to forecast, which makes it especially attractive to small businesses and IT buyers who want predictable costs.
It’s also commonly used in collaboration tools like project management or CRM platforms, where the value of the SaaS product increases as more team members are onboarded. Each new user added represents incremental value, justifying the higher price.
For instance, Slack models their pricing based on a mix of individual tiers and per-user pricing. Under this model, customers are charged for every new user they add under their designated pricing tier.
However, this model isn’t without its drawbacks. Charging per user can discourage larger teams from adopting the product widely—especially if it creates internal debate over who “deserves” a paid seat. It can also stifle viral growth if product adoption depends on broad internal use.
Still, per-user pricing remains one of the most popular SaaS pricing models because of its alignment with business scaling—especially when paired with free trials or flexible pricing tiers that reduce upfront friction.
5. Freemium pricing model
The freemium pricing model offers a free plan with limited functionality, allowing users to try a product before they fully commit to a paid pricing plan. By lowering the barrier to entry, this helps drive product adoption—especially for small businesses, startups, or individual users that are interested in exploring a new tool.
Freemium models also typically include a product’s core features, while more advanced functionality—like integrations, advanced analytics, or additional features—is gated behind a higher price. Then, as users become more engaged or outgrow the limitations, they’re encouraged to upgrade to a paid tier.
For example, as part of Maxio’s 30-day free trial, users get access to everything from dozens of billing scenarios to a full product catalog—plus CRM and payment integrations.
This model supports wide customer acquisition by building trust early and turning product usage into a conversion funnel.
But it also has tradeoffs: supporting a large base of active users who don’t pay can strain support and infrastructure. It requires careful segmentation and strong upgrade paths to ensure freemium doesn’t erode margins.
6. Feature-based pricing model
The feature-based pricing model charges customers based on access to specific tools, modules, or additional features—rather than usage or number of users. Each pricing plan unlocks a different set of features, allowing SaaS companies to pick and choose the tools that meet their customer needs and budgets.
This model works well when your SaaS product serves a wide target market with varying levels of complexity or technical requirements. For example, an enterprise-grade CRM like Salesforce allows users to purchase their modules at a feature-based price depending on their specific use case.
The benefit? You can clearly communicate product value while encouraging users to upgrade as their needs evolve. The real challenge here lies in segmentation—if your pricing tiers don’t reflect real user value or are too confusing to your potential customers, you risk leaving money on the table.
Importance of choosing the right pricing model
Your SaaS pricing model isn’t just a financial decision. It’s also a strategic growth lever that can be used to shape the future trajectory of your business.
The right pricing structure directly impacts your ability to generate revenue, attract new customers, and retain them over time. It also shapes your overall value proposition and influences everything from your pricing page layout to product packaging and go-to-market messaging.
Ultimately, strategic decision-making around your pricing will help you build a solid foundation for long-term success, especially as your product evolves and pricing changes are introduced.
Increase revenue and profitability
A well-structured pricing model can stimulate revenue growth through optimized pricing tiers, strategic add-ons, and thoughtful price increases. Then, by aligning these plans with customer segments and usage behaviors, you can reduce churn and capture more value from your existing power users.
For example, a SaaS company that introduces a premium plan with additional features and white-glove support can upsell its existing customers and increase profitability without acquiring more users.
Improve customer acquisition and retention
Your pricing model is also often your first impression—and a poor one can derail customer acquisition before it starts. A clear, frictionless structure reduces confusion on your pricing page, helps users self-select the right plan, and eases onboarding. Additionally, offering freemium plans, trial periods, or tiered options that match new customers’ expectations can also drive stronger retention, as users scale within your product instead of outgrowing it.
Align pricing with customer value
When pricing reflects the true value your product delivers, customers are much more likely to convert and stick around. Value-based pricing ensures buyers feel they’re paying a fair price for meaningful outcomes (and not just access to features). This alignment not only boosts conversion rates but also helps your team better communicate your value proposition, especially when rolling out new features or adjusting plans.
Enable business scalability and market growth
Finally, choosing a flexible, future-ready pricing model will allow you to grow into new markets, support diverse customer segments, and adapt as your offering matures. Whether through add-ons, usage-based plans, or segment-specific packages, the right pricing helps you meet evolving customer needs without overhauling your existing monetization model.
Best practices for optimizing your SaaS pricing strategy
Effective pricing isn’t something you set once and forget. It’s a continuous process of decision-making, experimentation, and iteration. And as your product, customer base, and market positioning evolve, so should your pricing.
Here are a few best practices SaaS companies can use to refine their pricing strategies over time:
Continuously test and refine your pricing model: A/B testing different pricing structures can reveal which combinations of plans, features, and messaging drive the best conversion rates. Even small tweaks—like moving a feature to a higher tier or changing the format of your pricing page—can have a measurable impact.
Use customer feedback to adjust pricing tiers: Surveys, user interviews, and product usage data can surface whether your pricing tiers match customer expectations. If users consistently undervalue certain add-ons or overlook new features, it may be time to restructure how value is packaged and priced.
Utilize data to track pricing performance: Key metrics like monthly recurring revenue (MRR), churn rate, and customer lifetime value (CLTV) are essential for evaluating pricing health. Tracking plan upgrades, downgrades, and expansion revenue helps guide pricing changes with confidence.
Communicate pricing changes transparently: When rolling out price increases or restructuring plans, communicate early and clearly. Let customers know what’s changing, why it’s happening, and how it impacts them. This kind of transparency builds trust and reduces the likelihood of churn.
Align pricing with your value proposition: Your pricing should reinforce what sets your product apart. By using a value-based pricing approach, SaaS companies can highlight their unique advantages—whether that’s through powerful additional features, better support, or seamless integration with workflows.
Offer flexibility with add-ons and discounts: Strategic add-ons and time-sensitive discounts allow you to attract new customers while increasing revenue from existing ones. Whether it’s bundling new features or offering temporary incentives, flexibility in pricing can support both growth and retention.
Manage your SaaS pricing with confidence using Maxio
Your pricing model directly impacts how you monetize, retain customers, and scale in a competitive market. Whether you’re serving startups or enterprises, the right structure drives both growth and differentiation.
That’s exactly why we built Maxio: to help SaaS companies manage their pricing with precision and capture the full value of their SaaS. From real-time analytics and automated adjustments to customer segmentation and flexible subscription model support, our platform gives you the tools to adapt as your business evolves. Ready to scale smarter? Get a demo or explore our subscription billing solutions today.
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If you’re exploring usage-based billing or trying to modernize how your business meters customer activity, chances are you’ve got questions. And you’re not alone. Since launching Maxio Metering, we’ve had in-depth conversations with SaaS product leaders, finance teams, and RevOps professionals all navigating the same territory: What exactly can Maxio Metering do? How flexible is it? What does implementation look like, and how does pricing work?
We pulled data from dozens of customer and prospect conversations, analyzed recurring themes, and cross-checked our product documentation to bring you this curated list of FAQs. Whether you’re evaluating Maxio Metering for an upcoming launch or planning to evolve your current billing infrastructure, this guide gives you clear, no-fluff answers to help move your decision forward.
Product Functionality
Q: Can Maxio Metering support caps — like charging only the first 5 usage events per user?
Yes. You can define usage caps at the individual entity level (e.g., per customer, user, or transaction). For example, if you only want to charge for the first 5 activities tied to a specific user ID, we can support that logic using flexible metering rules. You’ll configure this in your event schema and usage pricing setup.
Q: Can we meter usage by unique identifiers, like a candidate or verification ID?
Absolutely. Maxio Metering allows you to track and bill usage based on custom identifiers. Whether you’re linking usage to a project ID, user ID, or any unique token, we support metering at that granularity.
Q: Does Maxio Metering support different rates for different types of usage or geographies?
Yes. You can define usage pricing based on multiple dimensions—such as geography, plan tier, or custom attributes (like usage type or data volume). This is perfect for product teams experimenting with overage models or regional rate structures.
Q: Can I notify customers when they’re about to hit their usage limits?
While we can help you periodically query usage totals and build an alerting/limit mechanism, we don’t do this in real-time today. It’s on our roadmap though, stay tuned!
Post-Sale Support & Growth
Q: What support does Maxio offer after implementation?
Maxio offers 24×5 support via live chat and email, with real-time access to our documentation hub. For complex scenarios or new billing strategies, our team is happy to hop on a call and walk you through it.
Q: Can I update my pricing model after launch?
Yes. Maxio Metering is designed for flexibility. You can adjust pricing tiers, overage rules, usage caps, and custom metrics without rebuilding your entire product catalog.
Q: How do I stay informed about product updates?
Customers receive access to product release webinars, documentation updates, and enablement sessions. We also offer custom consults when your use case evolves—especially helpful for finance and operations leaders planning their next phase of growth.
These FAQs reflect the real questions SaaS teams are asking as they consider Maxio Metering—and the clarity they need to move confidently. But no FAQ page can cover every edge case.
If your team has unique requirements, billing challenges, or strategic goals you’re trying to align around, we’re here to help. Reach out for a tailored conversation, or check out our introduction to Maxio Metering for a closer look at the philosophy behind our approach.
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Global expansion is a natural next step for many SaaS companies—but it’s rarely as straightforward as it should be. Managing payments across currencies, markets, and compliance requirements can introduce significant friction into your revenue operations. The more countries you serve, the more likely it is your finance team ends up wrangling multiple gateways, mismatched reports, and manual reconciliation workarounds.
That’s why we expanded Maxio Payments with global capabilities—enhancing our platform to support SaaS businesses as they scale internationally.
We didn’t just add new regions—we extended the same finance-first payment experience Maxio is known for to support global growth.
Scaling with You
As SaaS businesses expand into new markets, they encounter a growing list of operational challenges: local payment method preferences, currency exchange complexities, delayed settlements, and rising costs tied to third-party processors. These issues don’t just slow growth—they burden finance teams with added manual effort and introduce risk into otherwise predictable revenue streams.
Maxio Payments Global solves these challenges by integrating international capabilities directly into the Maxio Payments platform. You get what you need to scale—multi-currency support, international onboarding, and a growing list of international payment methods—all delivered in a platform that’s purpose-built for SaaS financial operations.
No more stitching together siloed systems or relying on external gateways to support your expansion plans. With Maxio, international growth doesn’t have to mean operational sprawl. And because everything is part of the same Maxio experience, your team spends less time troubleshooting and more time focused on driving revenue.
The Power of Maxio Payments, Expanded
Maxio Payments goes beyond basic transaction processing. It’s built to automate the financial workflows SaaS businesses rely on to scale. By combining payment acceptance with automated reconciliation, chargeback management, and billing integrations, Maxio empowers finance teams to scale without adding overhead.
And now, with global capabilities built in, you can:
Handle multi-currency payments with ease—including EUR, GBP, JPY, and INR.
Automate global currency reconciliation without relying on multiple gateways.
Navigate chargebacks, refunds, and disputes with in-platform workflows.
Consolidate your revenue operations stack under one vendor.
Gain visibility across geographies and currencies from a single dashboard.
Behind the scenes, we’ve partnered with Adyen to deliver reliable international payment infrastructure —while retaining full control of onboarding, risk, and support. This gives Maxio customers the best of both worlds: enterprise-grade reach with the flexibility and service SaaS businesses expect.
Why Finance Teams Choose Maxio Payments
Unlike standalone gateways that stop at transaction processing, Maxio Payments supports the full payment lifecycle. From quote to cash, every step is integrated, automated, and designed with finance teams in mind.
Unified Workflows – Sync invoicing, collections, and payments in one system.
Automation-First Design – Reduce manual effort with built-in workflows for chargebacks, account updates, and failed payments.
Transparent Pricing – Interchange-plus from day one with no volume thresholds or surprises.
Faster, Flexible Underwriting – We own the process, so we can move quickly and support a broader range of business models.
One Support Team – Get answers across billing and payments from one partner—not a patchwork of vendors.
And because we manage risk monitoring and underwriting in-house, we’re able to support more customers, catch bad actors sooner, and help SaaS businesses grow confidently without falling victim to payment failures or fraud.
Let’s Go Global
Global expansion shouldn’t come with operational sprawl. Maxio helps you scale internationally without the overhead. With Maxio Payments Global, you can confidently expand into new markets, streamline international revenue operations, and empower your finance team with the tools they need to move faster.
Whether you’re billing locally or globally, Maxio Payments is ready to support your next stage of growth, without adding operational complexity.
Discover how Maxio Payments can streamline your revenue operations and simplify global collections.
Want to see it in action? Schedule a demo to explore how Maxio Payments Global can support your international growth strategy.
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AI is the Future — But Billing for It Feels Stuck in the Past
Generative AI is changing everything. From how we write emails to how we code software, LLMs are rapidly being embedded into every layer of modern SaaS products. But with innovation comes complexity — especially when it comes to pricing and billing.
AI companies don’t charge by the month. They charge by the millisecond, by the token, by the prompt. Some apply regional surcharges, others vary pricing by model tier. It’s precise, usage-based, and often deeply custom.
And most billing systems? They weren’t built for this. Traditional subscription billing tools can handle “$99/month” just fine, but start to fall apart when you need to invoice based on the number of API calls, the total tokens consumed, or the version of model a user selected.
That’s where Maxio Metering comes in.
Meet NamelessdotAI
To bring this to life, let’s imagine NamelessdotAI — a fictional generative AI platform designed to help B2B SaaS marketers do their best work.
NamelessdotAI lets marketers generate product messaging, campaign concepts, launch copy, and more — all powered by large language models. Its business model is usage-based, and it charges customers based on:
The number of prompts submitted
Whether the user selected a Standard or Turbo model
Where the request originated geographically (e.g. US vs. UK)
This flexible pricing strategy gives customers more control — but it creates real challenges for the finance and product teams behind the scenes.
Why Traditional Billing Systems Can’t Keep Up
NamelessdotAI’s pricing model breaks traditional billing tools in three ways:
No granular tracking. Legacy systems can’t track tokens, query types, or model versions without heavy customization.
Manual overhead. Finance teams resort to spreadsheets, scripts, and elbow grease to reconcile usage and generate invoices.
No experimentation. Product managers are stuck waiting on engineers every time they want to test a new pricing lever.
The result? Missed revenue, poor scalability, and internal frustration.
Enter Maxio Metering: Purpose-Built for Dynamic Usage
Maxio Metering was built for exactly this kind of complexity. It lets companies like NamelessdotAI:
Ingest real-time usage events (e.g. a prompt submission)
Track usage across any number of dimensions
Layer pricing logic on top of event streams
Apply that pricing to customer subscriptions, automatically
What used to take weeks of engineering effort can now be configured directly by a product or finance lead.
See It In Action: How NamelessdotAI Configures Maxio Metering
Here’s how NamelessdotAI set up usage-based billing in Maxio, step by step:
Step 1: Set Up the Product Catalog
In the Maxio UI, the team creates a new product entry called “NamelessdotAI.” This forms the base product that all usage and pricing components will attach to.
Step 2: Create the Event Stream
Every time a user submits a prompt, NamelessdotAI sends an event. This includes metadata like:
prompts_submitted
model_tier
region
subscription_id
The team creates an event stream called Prompt Submissions and links it to customer subscriptions using subscription_id.
Step 3: Define Meters for Usage Tracking
Meters are created to track:
Total prompt submissions (using prompts_submitted)
LLM model used (model_tier: turbo)
Region-based usage (region: uk)
Step 4: Create Metered Components for Pricing
Each meter is attached to a metered component in the product catalog. For example:
Prompt Submissions: $0.02 per prompt
Segment Rate: $.03 for Turbo prompts submitted in the US
Step 5: Assign Components to Subscriptions
The finance team then assigns these components to each customer subscription. This links real-world usage to real billing configurations.
Step 6: Send Usage Events via API
With everything configured, NamelessdotAI begins sending usage events using a simple API call to Maxio Metering. These events are processed, metered, and billed automatically.
Step 7: Generate Invoices with Full Usage Breakdown
At the end of the billing period, Maxio generates a fully itemized invoice that breaks down charges by prompt count, model tier, and geography. Finance can preview pro forma invoices at any time.
Why This Matters
Maxio Metering gives NamelessdotAI’s finance and product teams the flexibility they need to keep pace with product evolution and customer demand.
Finance teams get clean, audit-ready invoices with accurate usage data
Product managers can launch and iterate on pricing experiments without dev time
Engineering can stay focused on building product — not hacking billing workarounds
For modern SaaS companies with usage-based pricing, Maxio Metering turns billing from a bottleneck into a strategic enabler.
