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Stripe is indispensable for the average online business, providing the many different tools, reports, and customizations that power online payment processing, but it isn’t without limitations.
For example, the Stripe analytics dashboard lacks the needed depth for SaaS businesses that rely on recurring revenue. Here is where Baremetrics becomes a great additional tool. The automated processing of raw Stripe data with top-of-the-line data visualization allows you to put all that customer information into action.
In this article, we will continue our series on how Baremetrics and Stripe work in tandem to maximize the value of your SaaS enterprise.
For more discussion on this topic, check out the rest of the series on using the dynamic duo of Baremetrics and Stripe to automate the calculation of your customer lifetime value (LTV), churn, and customer acquisition cost (CAC). In addition, we’ve recently written about why you should use Baremetrics to get the billing history of your Stripe customers.
Before we discuss the benefits of combining Baremetrics with Stripe, we’ll briefly introduce Stripe and its advantages as a payment processor.
Baremetrics monitors subscription revenue for businesses that bring in revenue through subscription-based services. It can integrate directly with your payment gateway, including Stripe, and pull information about your customers and their behavior into a crystal-clear dashboard.
Baremetrics offers metrics, dunning, engagement tools, and customer insights. It monitors MRR, ARR, LTV, the total number of customers, total expenses, quick ratio, and more.
Sign up for the Baremetrics free trial and start managing your subscription business right.
What is Stripe?
Billing has become one of the most difficult aspects of running a business. There was a time when you could invoice with a pen and paper, and the customer, standing right in front of you, would hand you cash.
However, those days are long gone. Even in person, writing complex invoices by hand is no longer efficient. There are too many to write, and the chance of error is too great.
The Internet brings further complications. The distance between customer and supplier has grown; customers can use their local currency, and recurring payments mean repeating the process monthly.
CRM (customer relationship management) software and online payment processors have become integral to any company’s success. And in the competitive payment processing market, there is one clear champion. Of course, this is Stripe.
So, what is Stripe? Well, Stripe is a complete suite of payment products. It combines all the payment processes required to build websites, apps, and online stores that accept payments. Furthermore, it can send payouts globally.
While Stripe’s tools were designed and implemented to power payments online, they also work for brick-and-mortar retailers (or those running both online and in-person sales channels). Stripe can also run software platforms, marketplaces, and subscription businesses.
In addition, Stripe performs many of the other necessary tasks found in payment processors. For example, it can help prevent fraud through fraud checks, generate and send invoices, provide financing, and manage a business’s budget. It even offers virtual and physical corporate credit cards.
What are the pros and cons of using Stripe?
When choosing your payment processor, it is important to look at all the products provided to determine whether the company meets your needs. The price, per month, transaction, and/or as a percentage of sales is also a key point. That’s why we have recently evaluated many of the popular payment processors on the market, including Stripe. Here, we will mention a few of the main advantages and disadvantages of using Stripe.
The advantages of using Stripe
Stripe offers many benefits to the SaaS enterprise:
- It is easy to set up recurring payments
- Stripe enables you to offer your customers discounts and coupon codes
- You can set up subscription payments
- Stripe allows you to prorate your charges when customers change their subscription in the middle of a billing period
- It offers a reminder system
- There are no refund fees
- The simple checkout system reduces the chance of stranded shopping carts
The disadvantages of using Stripe
While the advantages are clear, Stripe does have a few downsides:
- There can be issues with frozen or canceled accounts
- If you also have a brick-and-mortar shop, there are limited options for in-person payments
- A lot of Stripe’s customization requires technical skills or a developer
- The Stripe analytics dashboard is very limited
This last point is why using a third-party analytics dashboard is necessary when choosing Stripe as your payment processor.
So, let’s discuss all the amazing features of Baremetrics, a tool that fully integrates with Stripe and brings the data to life in an easy-to-interpret and act-on way.
Since your SaaS company uses a CRM and/or payment processing software, the data required to compute these core metrics can be everywhere. Integrating innovative software to cull MRR values from CRM and payment processing systems is a valuable shortcut. Baremetrics can do all of this for you.
Integrating this innovative tool can make financial analysis seamless for your SaaS company, and you can start a free trial today.
Why Baremetrics is the best Stripe analytics dashboard
Baremetrics isn't just a dashboard; it's an all-in-one platform designed to streamline your subscription business. Enhance your Stripe data and analytics with Baremetrics. Start your free trial today.
Metrics
The Control Center provides all the important information you need about your business. It automatically calculates and displays your MRR, net revenue, average revenue per user, MRR growth rate, user and revenue churn, LTV, and so much more. It also gives you a breakdown of your numbers, including your new trials, customers, expansions, and reactivations. Finally, it gives you a live feed of all the money coming in.
Unlike the Stripe analytics dashboard, Baremetric’s People Insights allows you to segment your customers into super-fine detail. You can separate customers across multiple different characteristics simultaneously.
Recover
Dunning is such an important part of any subscription revenue company. When earning money through recurring revenue, keeping your customers happy month on month is the only way to profitability.
While churn due to dissatisfaction is frustrating and needs to be addressed, nothing is more upsetting than losing happy customers due to credit card issues. Recover can help you keep your happy customers signed up. It provides a suite of tools, from dunning emails to in-app reminders and paywalls, to recover your failed payments. Baremetrics is so confident in its Recover tool that the first $1000 in recovered payments is free.
Trial Insights
Free trials are a great way to onboard new customers (we use it at Baremetrics!), but not all free trials are designed the same. Trial Insights helps you optimize your trial experience to convert more free users into paying customers.
One element that can be refined is determining how long potential customers should be allowed to use your platform. If your platform requires two months to show its value, then a seven-day trial will probably not be enough time for a customer to understand the indispensability of your service. Conversely, if your trial is too long, it might incentivize customers to cheat by using multiple email accounts to keep using your platform for free.
Also, decisions need to be made about whether a credit card number should be required to access the free trial, whether the free trial should include the whole site, and, importantly, how to focus your free trial period marketing campaign.
Indeed, a good set of emails that points customers to your best features teaches them how to use them, and gets them to integrate your platform into their daily work processes during the free trial will help you hook those leads.
Figuring out how your trials are working with Baremetrics will help you refine this process.
Cancellation Insights
While churn due to dissatisfaction is frustrating, nothing is more preventable than losing happy customers due to avoidable issues. Cancellation Insights helps you understand why customers cancel by gathering their feedback. This will help you refine and improve your platform to prevent further cancellations and win back lost customers in the future.
It consists of three parts: a customizable email that customers receive after they cancel, a form that you can embed into your app to gather data before they cancel, and an automated email campaign that reaches out to customers based on cancellation reason.
By analyzing the cancellation reasons, you can identify common themes and areas for improvement. For example, if many customers cancel because they find your product too complex, you can focus on improving your user experience. This can also help prioritize product development efforts. By understanding which cancellation reasons are causing the most churn, you can focus on fixing the most impactful issues first.
Forecast+
While there isn’t space to mention every great feature Baremetrics has in one article, it would be incomplete without mentioning Forecasting. The Stripe analytics dashboard is sorely lacking in forecasting ability, and this is something that every company must do to be successful. The forecasting alone is reason enough to add a third-party Stripe analytics dashboard to your software repertoire.
Finally, we researched this article online through dozens of “best Stripe analytics dashboards” lists. While we are happy to see that all of the independent raters and our competitors agree that we are among the best, an error is found on every list that must be corrected. Baremetrics does not cost money for young companies! We aren’t sure where this misconception originated, but Baremetrics is COMPLETELY FREE until you reach an MRR of $30,000!
