Hey it's Matt here. So there is some research done by others showing that usage-based model has doubled its adoption in the past four years, and the acceleration has not slowed by even by a bit. Data points to the fact that it will become the mainstream five years down the road. Our personal experience speaks to the same observation. That's why we aim to solve the next gen challenge. :-)
Subscription billing is a solved problem, admittedly. Many existing software is doing a decent job, marginal improvement is needed. However, those old models are very different from usage-based model, because imagine what's the volume of change for a customer's subscription? It's probably at most once a month. But for usage-based model, the volume of events would be at a level of easily 10K per second. These are not the same kind of world. Other challenges include the underlying infra to support usage-based model, flexibility for pricing, integration with usage-based reporting of cloud marketplaces, etc.. all of those things are net new, and necessary for next gen SaaS model.
Hey, it's Matt here to answer this question. Our differentiations compared to Metronome are twofold.
First, we actually, and literally, measure and collect the usage (whereas they don't). So in Metronome's case, a SaaS company needs to develop an internal system to measure the usage amount, and be responsible for sending the measured amount to their REST API or via Segment. However, based on our own experience and many others', those work actually represent the majority of the challenges and engineering time for usage-based billing. Therefore, Paigo takes the full ownership to literally measure the usage whenever we can, and pull the data into our backend journey. So there is no development or integration needed.
Secondly, Metronome has a sole focus on billing infrastructure, whereas we are a broader footprint on usage-based business model. We not only provide billing infrastructure, but also pricing toolkit to optimize unit price based usage, and business analytics such as MRR/ARR/retention for usage-based model.
Hope it helps. Happy to dive deep in however way you are interested!
Hey it's Matt here. This is an area we are looking into. We have current customers being onboarded, and yet to discuss the best option for it. I'm wondering if being a merchant of record is the best solution for you, or SaaS business?
Subscription billing is a solved problem, admittedly. Many existing software is doing a decent job, marginal improvement is needed. However, those old models are very different from usage-based model, because imagine what's the volume of change for a customer's subscription? It's probably at most once a month. But for usage-based model, the volume of events would be at a level of easily 10K per second. These are not the same kind of world. Other challenges include the underlying infra to support usage-based model, flexibility for pricing, integration with usage-based reporting of cloud marketplaces, etc.. all of those things are net new, and necessary for next gen SaaS model.