Enterprises are increasingly adopting cloud billing platforms to replace older, on-premises systems that are typically rigid, difficult to scale and support limited pricing models. These legacy systems require significant time and effort to manage – which diverts attention away from core business priorities – and may have unpredictable costs. As a result, billing can become a revenue bottleneck, hindering innovation and impacting customer experiences.
Modern cloud billing platforms, on the other hand, provide the scalability to handle growing transaction volumes, the flexibility to support complex and evolving business models, and the agility to adapt quickly to market or organizational changes. The best platforms incorporate AI to improve revenue assurance and efficiency, reduce assisted customer care and uncover new revenue opportunities. The right platform is a driver of revenue innovation, enabling organizations to deliver exceptional customer experiences and ensure accurate, timely revenue recognition. Choosing a cloud billing platform is therefore not just a technical or procurement decision, but a strategic choice with wide-reaching business impacts.
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What to look for in a cloud billing platform
Large enterprises have far more complex billing requirements than small start-ups. The latter often begin with simple subscriptions in which they charge customers the same amount every month, while large enterprises have more sophisticated multi-segment product offers which may comprise a mixture of basic subscriptions, one-time purchases, usage-based and committed consumption models.
In addition to this, large enterprises are more likely to operate B2B, B2C and B2B2C lines of business, compared with smaller businesses, which often start selling via simpler routes to market. This adds further complexity to their business organizations and account hierarchies.
This means that while smaller businesses and start-ups can treat billing as a straightforward back-office task, enterprises rely on billing as a critical operational and strategic function that impacts revenue, compliance and customer experience. With this distinction in mind, here are the essential features a cloud billing platform must offer to meet the needs of large enterprises:
- Scalability and performance: Large enterprises may handle millions of usage events each day, often across regions, currencies and tax jurisdictions, so the ability to scale automatically to meet demand is essential.
- Flexibility and agility: Large enterprises use a variety of pricing models to support their sophisticated product offers. A flexible billing platform can support all of these models without the need for IT engineering. This flexibility is especially valuable when needing to launch a new product quickly, or when testing new offerings without committing significant time and resources to development.
- Integration with other platforms: Large enterprises operate complex ecosystems that include CRM, ERP, analytics tools and others, so it is essential that the billing platform integrates seamlessly with these systems to automate business processes, avoid duplicate work, and reduce operational risk.
- SaaS: SaaS-based billing platforms offer a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), continuous updates and innovation, faster access to new features, and built-in scalability.
- Best-of-breed: For smaller businesses, a billing system that is part of a best-of-suite solution can be sufficient as it provides simplicity and a single vendor to manage. However, these solutions may offer limited functionality and innovation. Large enterprises should select the most capable and specialized billing platform that can handle high transaction volumes and complex billing models.
- AI-powered: AI can improve revenue assurance and efficiency by automatically detecting and resolving errors, reducing revenue leakage, and handling repetitive tasks, such as billing inquiries, often the number one reason for customer contact. It can also boost revenue by suggesting new products, optimizing existing offerings, and identifying up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
The 5 best cloud billing platforms for large enterprises
There are more than 250 vendors in the billing application market. Here is our take on the top five:
1. Aria Systems
Aria Systems provides a cloud-based SaaS billing platform called Aria Billing Cloud. The solution is built specifically for large enterprises with high transaction volumes and complex billing models. Aria’s customers include Experian, Verisure, Subaru and Telstra.
PROs: Aria Billing Cloud enables enterprises to deploy advanced billing models across industries and geographies. The platform scales on demand to support high transaction volumes and complex usage-based metrics. It is designed to optimize revenue operations via AI agents and ecosystem integration, and has deep, native integrations into Salesforce and ServiceNow for automated order, customer and service management. The company boasts an 87% on-time, on-budget go-live rate, compared with the industry average of 17%. Aria has recently been named a Leader by top analyst firms including IDC and Omdia, and has also been recognized by Gartner.
CONs: As Aria Billing Cloud is designed for enterprise complexity, it is not a good fit for small businesses with low transaction volumes and simple billing models, or for businesses that need a full suite solution from a single platform covering customer order management, enterprise resource planning or financial management.
2. Zuora
Zuora offers a suite of tools which includes a billing solution. The business focuses mainly on small to mid-market B2C companies, targeting accounts that offer software or technology products. Zuora’s customers include GoPro, Hive, Fender and Ubisoft.
PROs: Zuora’s solution is designed for smaller B2C companies and it serves these accounts well. Zuora’s suite of products is extensible via workflow engines, but its real strength is its user-persona-focused desktop, which is designed for finance teams to step through billing runs on their screens. Zuora also popularized the phrase “the subscription economy” and hosts regular conferences on this theme. Zuora has been named a Leader in reports by analyst firms such as Forrester and Gartner, alongside other suite solutions.
CONs: Zuora’s focus on the B2C market means they only have a handful of enterprise clients, particularly in the financial services and telecommunications industries. There is no evidence they have made any efforts to be TM Forum certified for the telecom industry. The company is also relatively new to the usage-based billing space. Additionally, as Zuora offers a suite of tools, there are limited options for integration.
3. BillingPlatform
BillingPlatform offers a cloud-based SaaS revenue management platform as part of a suite of tools designed for businesses across both B2B and B2C. The company’s customers include Instacart, Resmed, CooperSurgical and Amadeus.
PROs: BillingPlatform is often praised for the exceptional flexibility it offers via customization, enabling customers to modify their instance to meet their exact requirements. It boasts a modern UI, making it simple and intuitive to use for most customers. For businesses looking for a suite solution, rather than best-of-breed, BillingPlatform may well be a good fit. BillingPlatform has been named a Leader in more general analyst reports that do not differentiate between enterprise and SMB needs.
CONs: BillingPlatform customers that customize their instance so extensively that it runs on unique code may face challenges with maintaining the platform and being able to take advantage of future updates to the original code line. Extreme customization can also result in higher professional service costs, longer implementation timelines and slower time-to-value. It also departs from the core principle of SaaS, in which all customers operate on a single, shared code line. BillingPlatform customers have complained about poor implementation projects and weak ongoing support.
4. Stripe
Stripe is first and foremost a payments platform. It is used by companies of all sizes, from small start-ups through to tech giants such as Amazon and Atlassian. Stripe recently launched a billing solution designed for simple B2C and B2B monetization models.
PROs: With its origins in the payments processing space, Stripe provides robust capabilities for consumer-focused businesses to collect and automatically retry payments if they fail. Popular with customers on developer-led projects, which are typically focused on API integrations and sample code, Stripe is well suited for do-it-yourself deployments of simple B2B services and B2C retail and technology. Stripe has been named a Leader in reports like Gartner Magic Quadrant primarily due to its attractiveness to companies with a DIY approach to back-office projects.
CONs: Businesses with complex monetization models and account hierarchies may find that Stripe cannot support their requirements, particularly in industries such as telecommunications, finance and media. In addition to this, organizations looking to integrate the billing solution across both modern and legacy systems may find the do-it-yourself approach risky.
5. Chargebee
Chargebee is a subscription billing and revenue management platform that launched with a focus on startups in both B2B and B2C. It has since expanded its target audience to include small to medium-sized businesses. Chargebee’s customers include Kommunicate, Slidebean, Vital Proteins and Phrase.
PROs: Chargebee’s grounding in the startup world has resulted in a solution that can be implemented quickly and easily for businesses employing straightforward subscription business models. The platform’s self-service approach translates into straightforward self-service payment capabilities for end-users (the customers of Chargebee’s clients). Over the years, Chargebee has added revenue recognition, tax and payment collection to their SMB billing suite. Chargebee has been named a Leader by analyst firms such as Gartner and Forrester, alongside other B2C-focused suite solutions.
CONs: Large enterprises that need to manage complex product offerings or support complex account hierarchies, or those that require high levels of configurability, performance and scalability, may find Chargebee to be a poor fit. Additionally, the platform does not include business process workflows, which will limit the largest businesses.
Interested in like-for-like comparisons? See How We Compare for per-vendor comparisons.
Aria Billing Cloud is the #1 cloud billing platform
For large enterprises with complex business models and high transaction volumes, Aria stands out as the clear choice. But its advanced features don’t just simplify billing, they deliver measurable business impact:
- 30%+ revenue uplift: Aria’s flexibility and scalability enables enterprises across all industries to support complex, usage-based pricing models, while its powerful AI-driven analytics optimize product and pricing strategies, helping businesses to achieve more than 30% higher revenue.
- Up to 75% reduction in billing costs through automation: Aria automates billing operations so efficiently that a single person can manage what once required a whole team. AI-driven insights reduce revenue leakage by up to 40%, while its cloud-native architecture eliminates infrastructure costs. Combined, these savings deliver up to a 75% reduction in billing costs.
- Up to 30% lower cost to serve: AI automation and predictive capabilities streamline operations, reducing service costs by up to 60%. At the same time, AI-powered personalization decreases churn by 40%, while increasing customer lifetime value. CRM workflows further enhance efficiency, cutting overall cost to serve by as much as 30%.
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