What is our primary use case?
Zuora is used for different organizations. Some are energy-based, while others are usage-based, like providing paritcular mobile data. Some organizations use Zuora for updating their accounts, subscriptions, and usage.
Currently, I use Zuora for a few customers who are focused on usage and use a mediation model, which has an order-based subscription. These are my use cases.
How has it helped my organization?
There is AI to enhance subscription management and billing processes. However, I have not used it. If Zuora provides key training on how to use it and how it can be useful for organizations to show dashboards and prepare quick responses, that would be helpful. AI can also make mistakes in terms of changes or subscriptions, which could be difficult for the organization to manage. But, 99.9% of the time it would be correct, and the 1% where AI would not showcase a good result is a rare case.
What is most valuable?
Zuora is really helpful for organizations trying to manage their revenue. They can rapidly take the revenue and recognize it directly from Zuora and prepare their finances quickly.
It's not easy for them to manually recognize all the transactions in their system when they are trying to compile data from each customer, where they have multiple invoices and bulk customers. So it's really easy to use.
With their new features, they can easily track their data, manage their usage, and provide accurate billing to the customers.
Different pricing models and billing cycles:
Zuora supports multiple pricing models. There are one-time usages, flat fees, per unit, tiered, overages, and consumption-based models. For consumption-based models, if there are prepayments in the system, Zuora can manage subscriptions, prepare billing, and showcase within the subscription how the balance is utilized.
What needs improvement?
There are a few areas for improvement. Some APIs aren't working in amendment-based subscriptions, although that will be resolved in 2026.
We also have certain features in orders that aren't fully compatible right now, but they are still usable.
Some people don't easily understand things like JavaScript, so Zuora could provide more content in their knowledge center to help users learn and implement those features.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Zuora for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There are a few issues I've encountered while working for clients. There were some systems where I was moving data from one environment to another in Zuora. I was deploying the whole data from one system to another using a workflow, but it gave me a lot of issues in the last couple of months.
It wasn't able to properly move the data due to concurrent limits and log competition errors. These are areas that Zuora can improve.
Considering the current scenario in today's market, Zuora has a vast system, and it's really improving for the betterment of the customer. I would give it an eight out of ten based on stability. They need more data from the customer and are doing some upgrades every month, so customers do face some issues due to that.
So, due to some updates going on within the sandbox and production, they need to update more quickly.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Zuora is already managing this system for multiple customers across the globe, so scalability is there.
There are around 15 to 20 people using it in my company. Zuora is a PaaS system, and the competition is very high; not everyone use it. I know a few more colleagues who use Zuora.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service and support have knowledge and content available through the Zuora knowledge center. I always get a response, but some of the responses are not on time.
There is room for improvement in the response time.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
The deployment is difficult for those who do not have a Zuora background or a technical background. The knowledge center doesn't fully explain how to prepare workflows from scratch, but it does mention the tools that can be used to build them.
If someone has good knowledge about Zuora, they can easily tackle those things. They can do some research and development and prepare workflows using the Zuora API or other integrated systems, which can be used in Zuora for the customers' benefit.
- Deployment time: It depends on the customer's requirements. If the workflow is properly created according to their terms and conditions, then we can deploy it within one week or one and a half weeks. But if it is not as per their requirement or is put on hold for some reason, then it could take months.
- Deployment model: It's already a system generated by Zuora for the organization, and we manage it for implementation and the billing side. We create workflows and use APIs through Force.com and different integration systems with Salesforce and accounting systems. That's how we manage it.
What about the implementation team?
I do it myself within the organization for the customers. I build different workflows based on their requirements, and we deploy them after testing in the sandbox.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Zuora has different pricing for each product, like for Zuora and Zuora's knowledge center training modules and different other systems. So I am aware of it, but not fully involved in it.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I already recommended it to some customers, and even my customer recommended it further.
My advice: If you want to use Zuora, you have to think about their business, and if it is really needed, then you can opt for it and manage their system within Zuora.