Item: Zuora
Rating: 3
Author: Erik Mullen

Overall Satisfaction with Zuora

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Was used for a small product offering. My main experience with Zuora was as an implementation partner.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Integration with Salesforce
API is fairly easy to use

Cons

Please stop doing client driven development. New mystery features seem to crop up all the time that are obviously not for mass use. The release cycle also seems a bit chaotic, new features get added all the time and makes it difficult to stay on top of the platform.
Please test your releases better. Every new Salesforce release seems to bring a new set of seemingly glaringly obvious bugs.
The knowledge center can be a lot easier to navigate. I find it easier to google for the topic and have it lead me to the knowledge article I am looking for rather than using your UI.
There is a real lack of enterprise level support (last time I checked). There really is no easy way to segment the system by profile/division etc. People still need global access to do simple things like creating a bill run.
There needs to be WAY better documentation on your payment processor integration. There are a number of special flags that need to be set, and data is being grabbed from all over the place making customizations a long and arduous process.
Why can I only have a single Accounting Code per payment type (especially when I cannot have multiple of the same type - e.g. Credit Cards).
The product catalog UI can really use a re-haul (plus the naming system is confusing). Any product with 20+ rate plans becomes a huge chore to manage.
The Multi-Currency editing is awful as well, you can only set one charge at a time instead of making several changes at once and then saving
More debugging tools on the platform would be extremely helpful. The product itself has so many moving parts it's sometimes impossible to tell WHY something is happening.

Alternatives Considered

Stripe and Braintree

Currently not using Zuora or the alternatives, but Stripe is a cheaper and simpler solution for small companies.

Right now Zuora seems to be fit in a really odd space. Not quite powerful enough for enterprise level customers, way too much for commercial (not to mention costs). Mid market seems to be the only place suited for Zuora, but that space now has more viable options.

Comments

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Christina Porter
commented 8 years ago
Hello Erik, We appreciate your candid feedback about Zuora and are happy to hear that you have seen clients grow on the platform, and that you helped them during implementation via our APIs and integration with Salesforce. We take great pride in our ability to operate mission critical applications for large enterprises and helping our customers become successful in using our solutions. It sounds like we fell short of this goal and missed your expectations as well as ours. Even though you no longer implement the system, I am happy to report that areas such as segmenting for the enterprise are marching forward! We agree with you that this is critical to any enterprise which is why we prioritized multi-entity support and announced Zuora 17 during Subscribed.com. A first step to achieve your requirement is "A multi-entity framework that enables entity separation, entity rollup reporting, and product sharing across entities." Enclosed is the announcement about the Zuora 17 release: https://www.zuora.com/press-release/zuora-17-enables-global-fortune-100-companies-to-embrace-subscription-revenue-models/ and the product datasheet: https://www.zuora.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/zuora-17.pdf Additional product and release details can be found on community.zuora.com. Erik, I am the head of our customer and executive programs at Zuora. In the event that you’d like to discuss your experiences further, please contact me directly via email at c@zuora.com. Thank you again for sharing your experiences with our community! Christina PorterZuroa Head of Customer and Executive Programs

Zuora - Not for Everybody