Reliable payments and subscriptions

Renderforest were struggling to maintain all this logic with their previous payments & billing solution to deliver their existing growth strategy.

To deliver frictionless user acquisition (via freemium and one-time purchases) together with the ability to grow the value within each account (via tiered and usage-based models), the subscription and billing logic had become very complex.

Renderforest’s previous payments and billing provider struggled to handle all this complexity.

Firstly, it was difficult to track each account through the entire buying journey, as the same user, and same card may have been used for multiple transactions. Notifications of subscription changes, product orders, and the growth of the customer account failed to send, leaving a hole in its “source of truth” reporting.

CEO, Narek Safaryan explained his frustration:

"The API would not send off calls that the payment is processed. On the first day, we had a few hundred angry customers who paid for the service but didn’t get the service. Our support team had to serve them manually one-by-one."

Secondly, with a high volume of transactions, their previous billing provider struggled to show the insights, particularly after the vendor updated its interface.

"Their new dashboard was not user-friendly and had lots of bugs. We became their QA."

Thirdly, their previous provider also struggled to create an effortless customer experience as customers moved between plans, adding additional one-off purchases within a subscription.

"It was quite a hassle. We had to ask the user to cancel and resubscribe with a new plan with a discount which is a hassle for the user as well. We also had to resubscribe them again to the new plan."

Fourthly, their previous provider added a currency conversion fee for all purchases in currencies outside of their payment account. Renderforest wanted to accept payment from their global audience in as many currencies as possible and convert into accounts denominated in US dollars and Euros but ended up accepting and holding only US dollars.

From other Paddle sellers, localized pricing can increase conversion rates by up to 30%. Renderforest faced either high payment fees on international customers or fewer conversions - neither of which tallied with their strategy to acquire new users globally.

"Our previous provider started charging a currency exchange fee which added to our overall cost. Over about two weeks, we lost about $7,000 in fees. So we started charging only in USD."

Finally, their previous provider gave little support and was slow to reply, leaving Renderforest without the means to help their customers.

"We used to wait about 12-13 hours until support got back to us. When you are continuously growing, it’s a really big hassle. We were losing lots of clients."

This disjointed user experience and payment process led to a high refund rate, support burden, and customer churn - clear obstacles to the growth Narek needed to address to meet Renderforest’s ambitious growth targets.

With that, Narek and his team looked for a more reliable payments solution to partner with through Renderforest’s next phase of growth.

Renderforest needed a platform for growth.

Implementing Paddle to achieve a bottom-up growth strategy

Narek’s team was cautious to test new payment solutions. With hundreds of thousands of new users each month running through their purchase or subscription process, Renderforest wanted to compare providers based upon:

1. Reliability of payments: Did order and subscription updates trigger notifications correctly across the billing logic that matched their strategy?

2. Checkout conversion rates: Did the new checkout negatively impact the number of users buying?

By following Paddle’s documentation, Renderforest was able to implement and test Paddle quickly and easily. With more reliable payments flowing through and the checkout conversion rate remaining high, Renderforest accelerated its planned migration from their previous provider to move over to Paddle faster.

The Paddle team also worked with Renderforest to implement customer-first best practices.

Firstly, Paddle’s customer success manager worked with Renderforest to ensure billing updates would sync to the product, meaning the burden on buying support was removed from their support team.

Secondly, Renderforest was able to restore localized pricing without the tradeoff of holding only one currency or suffering high currency conversion fees for international users. Instead, Paddle enables Renderforest to hold and payout funds in the currencies they wanted - both Euros and US dollars.

Thirdly, the complexity around subscriptions was managed seamlessly through Paddle’s Subscriptions API, including the revenue-driving use cases of incremental charges. Instead of manually intervening and requiring the customer to create a new subscription, they used Paddle to create one-off charges when existing subscribers wanted to make additional one-off purchases, removing the manual support burden and creating a seamless customer experience.

Finally, Renderforest had complete visibility over their revenue metrics in the Paddle dashboard, including all of its millions of users' orders and subscriptions.

Unlocking 3X growth

With Paddle’s Merchant of Record model, Narek and the Renderforest team had a reliable checkout provider to implement the billing model they needed to drive growth globally.

Using Paddle’s checkout, subscriptions management, and customer success team, Renderforest has:

• Delivered a seamless experience to its users and customers
• Reduced the refund rate by 60% ddding tens of thousands of dollars in ARR
• Removed hundreds of hours of support burden.
• Saved tens of thousands in hidden foreign exchange fees from their previous payment provider.

As a Merchant of Record, Paddle manages the burden of global sales tax compliance for Renderforest.

Instead of creating and maintaining tax and accounting relationships in every jurisdiction worldwide, Renderforest lets Paddle manage all the complexity behind calculation and payment of taxes to maintain compliance globally.

This was something Renderforest had to build and maintain on their own, on top of their previous payments solution, which diverted attention and headcount from elsewhere in the company.

"For me, it’s better to leave all that accounting to a third party rather than keep another operational team to handle all of this."

Paddle’s Buyer Support team took over the remaining burden around billing questions, fraud, and chargebacks on Renderforest’s behalf.

This removed the need to maintain a heavy support team to resolve buyer purchasing questions . A perfect solution for a company who sought the ability to outsource all of their accounting and transaction management to a third party.

Finally, the biggest unforeseen benefit was Paddle’s account management support. Instead of the 12-13 hour support wait times with their previous payments provider, Renderforest could rely on the Paddle team to respond quickly and promptly.

Paddle works with sellers to answer queries and questions around global growth, deriving insights from 6,000+ customers on the platform.

"Paddle is super flexible in supporting our clients which is really amazing. We do appreciate the amazing quality support. It’s the top reason why we love Paddle so much!"

Renderforest is well on its way to growing globally and realizing their growth strategy. They have proven that customer-first best practices drive user delight and revenue growth together.