nathanfish.com » Web Services

Subscription management services for SaaS businesses

nathan — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:48:56 +0000

There is a rise in the number of payment management services for SaaS based businesses. The growth is good, it shows there is an increasing trend to subscription based businesses online and away from the software or long term licensing. However, many of these SaaS based businesses are just a wrapper around payment gateways. Their value is in the ease at which they enable the software developer to integrate a recurring payment stream. They provide reporting on top of the payment systems but they do little more. They don’t seem to integrate well with marketing efforts. Here’s a quick list of the ones I have checked out.

Chargify.com – Is a dedicated SaaS solution with easy integration and solid management of failed charges through Dunning. Chargify supports only Authorize.net as a payment option, which limits their applicability to some companies. Fixed pricing based on number of customers managed.

Zuora.com – The Salesforce.com of SaaS subscription management solutions. Zuora is an “enterprise” model, from its web site to its lack of pricing details. They have all the bells and whistles but may not be a good fit for the small nimble start up.

Vindicia.com – Another enterprise player in the SaaS subscription management solution space. They look to target online gaming and virtual worlds. This is a unique differentiator from Zuora.com which is focused at SaaS and service based businesses.

CheedarGetter.com – Dedicated SaaS subscription management solution targeted at the small business, similar to Chargify. CheedarGetter offers more options in terms of user management and pricing including aggregated transaction billing solutions and feature specific pricing. Only offers support for Authorize.net as a payment gateway. Pricing is either fixed or percent per transaction.

Spreedly.com – Dedicated SaaS subscription management solution similar to CheedarGetter.com and Chargify.com. They support feature sets, promotions, free services, etc. What makes them stand apart from others is their support for multiple payment gateways including PayPal and others. Pricing is fixed per month plus a fixed fee per transaction.

Know of another SaaS subscription management service provider? Leave a comment and let me know.

Yahoo Shuts Down Shopping API

nathan — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:58:15 +0000

Yahoo has offered one of the broadest ranges of API’s for developers. The breadth has made it possible for numerous entrepreneurs to build out supplemental incomes or be their own boss businesses. However, as they begin to realign their business and strategies they have begun to kill off the API’s that made them so popular with developer/entrepreneur. The recent end of life for the Shopping API and the backlash highlights the risks in providing API’s http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2010/01/yahoo_shopping_api_announcement.html and the impact it has when you find API’s don’t offer value to the bottom line. They may have offered growth but that growth becomes a risk as costs overcome generated revenue. Many have lost their faith in Yahoo as an API end point and have begun looking for business continuity through other partners. My own thoughts go to other businesses that offer API’s that other small business rely on to make money, for example Twitter or Facebook for that matter. At what point does that provisioning become a risk and how is it addressed? What models are in place, what needs will there be in the future? Limitation on calls? Pay-for-provisioning? Revenue sharing? The model will be heavily dependent on the nature of the business. If the API provides direct revenue to the provider then it would be possible to pay people for API usage not charge them. Citysearch does this, but are there other businesses that could do the same?

Yahoo YQL – Web Service Innovation

nathan — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:39:58 +0000

Yahoo recently launched YQL http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/ it provides developers with unique and compelling access to structured data. Instead of calling different web service interfaces that have limited inputs and limited outputs, you simply write a query. This is brilliant. As a developer I previously had to call multiple services, using different inputs, capture all the data and merge it into a meaningful experience for the user. Now all I have to do is create a single query, get the data in the way I want and present to the user. It’s like righting a SQL query, with joins, and all the other fancy stuff. This is cutting edge stuff and I’m very interested in seeing who will be next to support something like this. Personally Google Analytics comes to mind. Right now their API is very limiting, and highlights the challenges with current API development. The interface can be very limiting for the developer. Limiting applicability or causing inefficient use of API’s to achieve results. I have seen, for example, a loop through thousands of results from one API to get additional details on each of the items in the result. YQL will certainly allow a developer to avoid that mess. Now if only I could use proxy YQL service to mashup sources across platforms, get data from Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, Google in a single YQL like call. Dreams, I know, but the amazing consumer applications that could be created, easily and without any fuss. Add in some data portability and I’m in mashup heaven.

Update: YQL does allow you to access other web services using the YQL syntax, its called “YQL Open Tables”. You simply define a few things in an XML file and you can use YQL to query Amazon products, etc. This is really great stuff. Thanks to spullara for pointing it out.