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Zuora S-1

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Re: Zuora S-1

#21

Post by manigandham »

pg_bot wrote: post #2

I have never heard of this company before and if you told me their website was a parody of an enterprise software company I would believe you. It shouldn't take more than 10 seconds for me to understand what you do. "ZUORA BRINGS FREEDOM TO THE SUBSCRIPTION ECONOMY" What the fuck does that mean!

You're not the right customer.

Interestingly, their sales deck is one of the best (as considered by Andy Raskin who's very good at marketing): https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-e...

Re: Zuora S-1

#22

Post by whalesalad »

trjordan wrote: post #12

My experience with Zuora is that it's a feature-complete payments subscription that's an unholy pain to work with. We chose them over Stripe before Stripe has ACH. My favorite part is that 25% of their revenue is professional services, and their professional services are sold essentially at-cost. You're going to need somebody to help you get set up, but at least the pricing on that extra headcount is fair :) They're…

We had horrible interactions with Zuora in terms of integration. Worst vendor ever.

Re: Zuora S-1

#23

Post by abakker »

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #18
trjordan wrote: post #12

My experience with Zuora is that it's a feature-complete payments subscription that's an unholy pain to work with. We chose them over Stripe before Stripe has ACH. My favorite part is that 25% of their revenue is professional services, and their professional services are sold essentially at-cost. You're going to need somebody to help you get set up, but at least the pricing on that extra headcount is fair :) They're…

Yup. Literally the worst. I've implemented 4 different payment providers and they're in last place, far behind any of the others.

Out of curiosity, who were the other? Aria? Stripe? PayPal nee Braintree?

Re: Zuora S-1

#24

Post by abakker »

deathtrader666 wrote: post #20

Can anybody chime in on how they are different from ChargeBee for subscription businesses?

Enterprise focused, aiming at integrating with big, complex, multinational, multi currency ERP kinds of projects.

Re: Zuora S-1

#25

Post by erik_landerholm »

manigandham wrote: post #21
pg_bot wrote: post #2

I have never heard of this company before and if you told me their website was a parody of an enterprise software company I would believe you. It shouldn't take more than 10 seconds for me to understand what you do. "ZUORA BRINGS FREEDOM TO THE SUBSCRIPTION ECONOMY" What the fuck does that mean!

You're not the right customer. Interestingly, their sales deck is one of the best (as considered by Andy Raskin who's very good at marketing): https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-e...

How is that good? It basically said nothing. Cool.

Re: Zuora S-1

#26

Post by Boxbot »

trjordan wrote: post #12

My experience with Zuora is that it's a feature-complete payments subscription that's an unholy pain to work with. We chose them over Stripe before Stripe has ACH. My favorite part is that 25% of their revenue is professional services, and their professional services are sold essentially at-cost. You're going to need somebody to help you get set up, but at least the pricing on that extra headcount is fair :) They're…

Not gonna argue that integrating with their platform is a gigantic pain in the ass, but I feel that part of it is the flexibility (and complexity) of their subscription model. Would you say different? Not too familiar with the other players in the field so I don't know how they compare really.

Definitely some reliability and performance concerns, though. I feel like half the pain is just having to shove so much defensive programming in our integration.

Re: Zuora S-1

#27

Post by Confusion »

trjordan wrote: post #14
pg_bot wrote: post #2

I have never heard of this company before and if you told me their website was a parody of an enterprise software company I would believe you. It shouldn't take more than 10 seconds for me to understand what you do. "ZUORA BRINGS FREEDOM TO THE SUBSCRIPTION ECONOMY" What the fuck does that mean!

Consider a company that used to sell stuff by the unit. Boxed software, DVDs, whatever. There is a new world of their product, and even though it's 2018, they're not in it. It might feel like Spotify has won, Netflix has won, and so on, but in other verticals, subscriptions still aren't the norm. Remember when Dollar Shave Club started selling razors by the month and got bought for a billion dollars? P&G needed to fi…

Minor note: Dollar Shave Club was bought by Unilever, not P&G.

Re: Zuora S-1

#28

Post by yladiz »

thelevante wrote: post #19
mikikian wrote: post #13

For those wondering like me what the UI looks like, here's a video: https://youtu.be/9Vca8JBIiUY

That video and therefore the UI is not current.

What do you mean? Besides the color, the UI looks essentially identical to the UI I'm used to working with when I've previously worked with Zuora.

Re: Zuora S-1

#29

Post by FunnyLookinHat »

abakker wrote: post #23
FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Literally the worst. I've implemented 4 different payment providers and they're in last place, far behind any of the others.

Out of curiosity, who were the other? Aria? Stripe? PayPal nee Braintree?

(In order of ease of implementation) Stripe, Braintree, Authorize.net

TBH though - Authorize.net was a pretty good experience overall (esp. considering when I had to implement it years ago). I'd still take their 10-year-old API over Zuora's nowadays. The docs were a bit rough, but nothing you couldn't sort out with some trial and error and brute forcing of a few weird payloads to their sandbox environment. :)

Re: Zuora S-1

#30

Post by manigandham »

erik_landerholm wrote: post #25
manigandham wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not the right customer. Interestingly, their sales deck is one of the best (as considered by Andy Raskin who's very good at marketing): https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-e...

How is that good? It basically said nothing. Cool.

I guess it again comes down to "you're not the right customer". They didn't file an IPO because they couldn't make any sales.

Zuora builds payments systems and other services to help companies who want to offer subscription-based products and services - a trend that has been seen in pretty much every industry from software to groceries.

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