Scaling up or moving beyond subscriptions? Switch from Maxio with Zenskar

Implementation and migration

Maxio’s implementation is slow, manual, and dev-heavy.

• Users report a steep learning curve, unclear onboarding documentation, and fragile APIs. 
• Importing historical data often requires custom scripts or manual uploads. 
• Support is slow to respond across time zones, further delaying go-live. 
• The product is built on disconnected systems, making even simple configurations unnecessarily complex.

Zenskar, by contrast, offers structured onboarding with minimal to no engineering effort. We support flexible ingestion methods (API, DB, CSV) with well-documented endpoints. Most customers go live in weeks—not months. We handhold you during implementation. You get a dedicated account manager and 24x7 support via Slack, Zoom, or email. We offer a free sandbox and integrate directly with your existing tech stack to simplify migration.

Products, subscriptions, and contracts

Maxio's design is rigid and unintuitive for businesses with multiple products and pricing strategies. 

• Each business unit needs its own product catalog, leading to duplication and confusion.
• It only supports standard subscriptions—no native support for usage-based, prepaid, or hybrid pricing.
• Multi-year contracts are hard to configure, and users often rely on manual workarounds.
• Contracts cannot be bulk-imported; everything is done manually.
• Subscription setup is complex and error-prone, especially when custom pricing or discounting is involved.

Zenskar is built for billing complexity at scale:

• Configure products across multiple currencies, billing cadences, entities, and geographies.
• Support advanced pricing structures out-of-the-box—no developer intervention needed.
• Contracts can be created via API, CRM (like Salesforce), CSV import, or manually.
• Built-in flexibility to handle:
  
  • Prepaid subscriptions
  • Part prepaid, part postpaid contracts
  • Ramp deals
  • Product bundles
  • Combinations of contract and product-level discounts

Its graphical pricing model lets you visualize how components interact—eliminating ambiguity for both finance and product teams.

Usage and metered billing difficulties

Maxio offers usage data storage within the platform. It also supports event ingestion via API or through Airbyte integration. Its usage capabilities are far from easy or intuitive though. Some of its glaring limitations come from the way it handles usage.

• Events are not tied to subscriptions automatically on Maxio. The event data itself must identify the subscription through an identifier while data ingestion to be filtered and aggregated at the end of the billing cycle.
• Usage data must include pricing identifiers, forcing engineers to manually maintain these and update systems whenever pricing changes. This creates dependency between usage and pricing terms, resulting in frequent engineering efforts for updates.
• Usage data must be sent via APIs with strict cadences, with no remote database connections—leading to inefficiencies.
• Usage data has to be time-stamped - the start and end dates often cause inconsistencies due to timezone differences or systems.
• Prepaid billing for usage-based pricing cannot be supported.

In contrast, Zenskar simplifies billing with flexible pricing models. Instead of a rigid template to force fit your use case, you have the building blocks that can be put together any way you like, just like legos. 

• Zenskar automatically maps raw usage data to contracts and pricing models without needing specific identifiers or engineering intervention.
• Metering is decoupled from pricing—no need for engineers to store identifiers. Our system automatically handles billing based on the customer’s usage.
• Metered components can be added to the billing through the dashboard itself. These can be modified at any time too.
• Pricing itself is straightforward - a user could pick from a library of pricing plans or build a pricing model from scratch through a drag-and-drop configuration.
• The billing cycles are easily configured separately  from the invoicing periods.

Unlike Maxio’s fragmented platform, Zenskar is built as one unified system, eliminating sync issues.

Billing and invoicing

Since pricing intricacies cannot be fully automated, the billing functions downstream are not fully automated either. 

• Metered billing components, conditional terms, and prepaid invoicing have to be handled manually, often leading to errors in invoicing and tax calculations.
• Invoice customization options are limited to adding logos or adjusting line items.

Zenskar automates billing and invoicing end-to-end. 

• Once the pricing and invoicing terms are configured, the invoices can be generated dynamically from the preset templates. 

Customizations are fully supported, from line items to tax calculations and entitlements, including automated tax computation via Avalara integration.

• You can create branded invoice templates on Zenskar or upload HTML code.

Collections automation and receivables management

Maxio’s collection capabilities are limited to payment failure retries. Collections and dunning outside of that has to be handled manually or outside of Maxio.

• Invoice emails have to be created separately for each payment method.
• Payment reminders cannot be sent before the due date.
• Payments cannot be reconciled on Maxio’s dashboard.

Zenskar automates dunning and collections.

• Create templates for reminders, receipts, and invoices, and automatically populate them with relevant customer data. 
• Customize dunning schedules based on customer segments for a fully automated collections workflow.

Reliable revenue recognition

Maxio revenue recognition cannot handle beyond vanilla subscriptions owing to the limited architecture to support pricing and billing intricacies. It also lacks a fully synced accounting system. This results in including inaccuracies and manual adjustments.

• Maxio’s recognition is confined to AR, revenue, and deferred revenue.
• Maxio lacks the flexibility to automate rev rec for complex pricing models or adjust revenue schedules automatically when plans change.
• Maxio offers limited multi-entity support.
• Maxio’s recognition granularity is less accurate, requiring manual updates for complex scenarios.

Zenskar helps you stay compliant with ASC 606/IFRS 15 and supports creating journal entries automatically and posting them to ledgers, revenue reporting etc.

• Allows custom rules for performance obligations, recognition schedules, and revenue allocation.
• Supports multi-entity and multi-currency structures, ensuring compliance across regions and organizations.
• Revenue recognition can be scheduled periodically, manually, or through specific events or triggers.
• Revenue periods can be set irrespective of the contract period to give you control over your accounting periods.
• Performance obligations can be automatically derived from contracts and products, or defined on the contracts by you.
• Manual reconciliation can be eliminated by syncing transaction records from your payment gateway.
• Ingests usage data in real time, recognizing revenue at the event level for precise reporting.

Reporting

Maxio's reporting and analytics are inadequate and not user-friendly. 

• Key metrics like ARR and MRR are hard to track, and AR reconciliation is cumbersome. 
• Users often rely on third-party tools like ChartMogul or build their own reporting solutions. 
• Maxio lacks support for customized or multi-entity reporting, forcing manual workarounds. 
• For example, handling overages or multi-year contracts requires manual reporting, and formula creation is limited.

Zenskar provides real-time, granular usage data ingestion, ensuring accurate reporting without the need for manual work.

• You can modify and create reports and dashboards that are as unique as your business with a simple report builder.
• You also get access to pre-built charts for key insights on ARR, MRR, etc.

Integration challenges

Maxio offers integrations, but they are outdated and unreliable. 

• Users struggle with inefficient connections, often requiring manual workarounds. 
• For example, the QuickBooks integration is available but rarely used due to consistent issues. 
• Maxio also fails to integrate with Salesforce orders, leading to clunky and ineffective workflows.

With Zenskar, you can choose multiple ingestion methods. We offer seamless two-way data sync with 200+ data sources and warehouses, and 35+ tools to best fit your needs.

• Connect your CRM with Zenskar to sync your customer data, contracts, and communication emails. We fully integrate with your Salesforce workflows and automate all billing from the CRM directly. 
• Automatically send customer invoices, credit notes, payment status, and refund information into your ERP.
• Add your tax computations to the invoices automatically with integrations with tools like Avalara.
• Collect payments via Stripe, Adyen, Razorpay or offline payments methods.

Cost affordability, ROI and scale

Maxio’s pricing is prohibitive for smaller companies and quickly scales as your customer base grows. With limited flexibility and a rigid feature set, it also doesn’t provide the value enterprises with complex billing needs expect from a premium solution. For the high price, the scalability and customizability simply aren’t there.

Zenskar offers a more flexible, growth-oriented pricing model. Pay once for the platform, not per invoice or payment. We don’t charge a percentage of your revenue, allowing your costs to scale with your business, not your transaction volume. Our pricing is tailored to your business size and needs, reflecting the impact we bring and our operational efficiency. We focus on long-term partnerships that benefit both sides.

Learn more about the principle behind our pricing and how we can align with your growth.