ISG Buyers Guide for B2C Subscription Management in 2025 Classifies and Rates Software Providers

ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The B2C Subscription Management: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.

The era of subscriptions has fundamentally changed how consumers access and interact with products and services. Instead of traditional ownership, people now expect flexible options such as subscriptions, pay-per-use or on-demand access, often in combination with physical goods enhanced by digital experiences. Shoppers increasingly prefer to buy on their own terms—through digital storefronts, self-service apps or even voice and text—making convenience and choice central to engagement. Compared with just five years ago, the way consumers discover, purchase and stay connected to brands looks dramatically different.

ISG defines subscription management for B2C as the end-to-end process of delivering a seamless subscriber experience from selection and configuration through billing, payment and fulfillment while enabling organizations to treat subscriptions as products with full lifecycle management. This includes automation, analytics, pricing, loyalty and system integration, as well as support for diverse monetization models such as flat-fee, usage-based, milestone and one-time sales. Effective applications must also manage complex payment flows, allocate revenue across partners and asset owners and ensure strong receivables, cash flow and collections capabilities.

Subscriptions are not new. Newspapers and magazines adopted the model decades ago, and Netflix first offered DVDs for a flat monthly fee. But the rise of digital products and services has accelerated mainstream adoption. From HBO and Spotify to fitness apps and streaming platforms, subscriptions are now a standard way for consumers to access content and services for a set period. This shift has made subscriptions widely accepted as a pricing model, giving people the ability to spread expenses over time while companies benefit from predictable, recurring revenue tied to ongoing usage.

Businesses built on or heavily reliant on B2C subscription models face the challenge of giving customers seamless, self-service options to start, manage or change their plans at scale. For those introducing subscriptions alongside traditional one-time purchases, the key is to integrate these models smoothly so that subscribers enjoy a consistent experience—avoiding problems such as duplicate charges, mismatched payment methods, or fragmented checkout journeys.

Effective subscription management systems must support a wide range of business models and use cases, either through built-in features or smooth integration with existing platforms. For enterprises that have traditionally relied on one-time purchases, adding subscription options often requires new systems and processes that work alongside existing infrastructure without disrupting the customer experience. Whether the subscription platform serves as the central hub for billing or simply connects into legacy systems, interoperability is critical—especially in keeping customer and product data consistent and synchronized to ensure a seamless subscriber journey.

Unlike one-time purchases, which rarely change and typically rely on simple product lists, subscription and digital models require frequent updates to pricing, bundles and catalogs demanding, both flexibility and ease of use. Effective subscription management often goes beyond flat monthly fees to include usage- or consumption-based pricing, where costs reflect actual activity (such as streaming hours or in-app transactions) and better balance value between customer and provider. These models can include tiered pricing triggered by usage thresholds, as well as more dynamic approaches that factor in time, location, customer preferences or bundled product and service combinations.

By 2026, increased adoption of the subscription business model will lead to more complex pricing, rating and billing and, if not successfully addressed, will diminish the customer experience and restrict growth. Usage-based pricing can feel appealing to consumers, but often creates uncertainty, since charges vary and are difficult to predict in advance. Costs might come from things like mobile data usage, streaming hours, or in-app purchases, making monthly bills less transparent. Telecom providers illustrate this challenge: After years of itemizing every call or text, many shifted to unlimited or block plans to simplify billing. Unlike flat fees, usage-based models require smarter forecasting to help both companies and customers anticipate costs, avoid surprises and maintain trust. Yet many subscription systems still lack these capabilities.

Subscription pricing affects when and how revenue is recognized, since most of it is realized over time and only after meeting certain events like service delivery, payments or milestones. While accounting systems can track the financial side, subscription platforms are better suited to manage the events behind recognition. Advanced tools can automatically calculate adjustments from usage or activity, create detailed revenue entries and sync them with the main accounting system—ensuring accuracy and compliance while reducing manual effort.

For usage-based subscriptions, data mediation is often necessary because raw usage data can come from many different sources and formats. This process involves standardizing and combining the data for use with pricing. When volumes are high, companies may rely on pre-aggregation or rolling pricing, with the option to reprice if usage crosses certain thresholds or tiers. In some cases, usage may even be pre-priced outside the system and passed through directly. These variations reflect the practical realities of managing subscriptions in real-world consumer scenarios.

An often-overlooked part of subscription management is properly accounting for revenue owed to partners providing add-on products or services within a bundled offer. Partnerships today go far beyond traditional reseller models, as businesses increasingly team up with others to create ecosystems that deliver more value without having to build everything themselves, shifting from “build or buy” to “build, buy or partner.” This creates accounting challenges, such as calculating commissions, applying markups or splitting bundle costs across multiple parties. Real-world examples include gyms pairing memberships with nutrition services, rental companies leasing fleets or travel platforms sharing revenue with airlines and hotels. As these ecosystems expand, businesses need more advanced systems that can handle complex revenue-sharing tied directly to the subscription pricing models offered to customers.

To improve efficiency and gain clearer insights into profitability, revenue allocations to partners should mirror the payments received, with contracts detailing not only the product or service terms but also any revenue-sharing or royalty obligations. Strong contract management is, therefore, essential in subscription models, ensuring that changes to orders, plans or terms are handled smoothly with accurate proration, adjustments or refunds.

Today’s subscription management systems need to integrate seamlessly with customer, product, pricing and partner data so updates to contracts or orders flow directly into billing, payments, receivables and accounting for accurate revenue recognition. Intelligent automation and proactive alerts play a key role in reducing manual work, quickly resolving issues, and delivering subscribers a smooth, hassle-free experience.

While automation is the goal, reporting remains vital for both auditing and insight. Reporting generally falls into two categories: operational and analytical. Operational reporting provides detailed, transaction-level data for validation and audit, usually pulled directly from stored records with minimal filtering and delivered in formats like CSV or print. Analytical reporting, on the other hand, aggregates and filters data to highlight trends in customer behavior and performance, often presented through dashboards, interactive tables, or integrations with BI tools and data warehouses.

Subscription management platforms are increasingly incorporating artificial intelligence (AI)-driven analytics and predictive tools, such as suggesting collection strategies for overdue accounts or spotting passive churn from expired cards and invalid addresses. While adoption of advanced features like pricing optimization and bundle recommendations has been slower, many providers see growing demand as traditional businesses add subscriptions to complement one-time sales and digital-first companies expand into physical offerings.

Enterprises need subscription platforms that work for today while scaling for tomorrow. The best applications use AI to improve operations and customer experiences—like smarter payment strategies, churn prediction and productivity tools—while integrating seamlessly with existing systems for smooth billing, orders and payments. They should also support partner ecosystems and new product models without workarounds, making it easy to test, adjust and grow offerings. Ultimately, the right platform helps businesses meet customer expectations, stay compliant and drive long-term profitability.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for B2C Subscription Management evaluates software providers and products in key areas as part of the capability model. including:

• The Subscriber Experience
• Managing Subscriptions
• Loyalty and Rebates
• Data Mediation
• Pricing and Rating Methods
• Payments In—Billing
• Payment Accepting Systems
• Contract/Order Management and Adjustment
• Dunning and Collections
• Revenue Recognition
• Automation and Error Handling
• Operational Reporting
• Analytical Reporting
  
  

This research evaluates the following 24 software providers that offer products to address key elements of B2C subscription management as we define it: AdvantageCS, Aria Systems, BillingPlatform, Chargebee, Cleverbridge, FastSpring, Gotransverse, keylight, LogiSense, Maxio, NetSuite, OneBill, Oracle, Paddle, PayPro Global, Recurly, Sage, Salesforce, SAP, Stripe, Verifone, Younium, Zoho and Zuora.

This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of B2C subscription management software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool.

We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating B2C subscription management offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI.

The Buyers Guide for B2C Subscription Management in 2025 finds Zuora first on the list, followed by Oracle and BillingPlatform.

Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader.

The Leaders in Product Experience are:

• Zuora.
• Oracle.
• BillingPlatform.
  
  

The Leaders in Customer Experience are:

• Zuora.
• Oracle.
• Gotransverse.
  
  

The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:

• Zuora, which has achieved this rating in seven of the seven categories.
• Oracle in six categories.
• BillingPlatform in four categories.
• Salesforce and in two categories.
• Gotransverse and keylight in one category.

The overall performance chart provides a visual representation of how providers rate across product and customer experience. Software providers with products scoring higher in a weighted rating of the five product experience categories place farther to the right. The combination of ratings for the two customer experience categories determines their placement on the vertical axis. As a result, providers that place closer to the upper-right are “exemplary” and rated higher than those closer to the lower-left and identified as providers of “merit.” Software providers that excelled at customer experience over product experience have an “assurance” rating, and those excelling instead in product experience have an “innovative” rating.

Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle B2C subscription management, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another.

ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our B2C subscription management blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects.

You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.