If you’re a SaaS provider managing your own subscription billing, you might think your setup is “good enough.” After all, your platform bills users every month, you send out renewal emails, and failed payments eventually get flagged. But while you’re focused on product updates, sales goals, and customer support, your billing process might be quietly costing you more than you realize.
In the world of recurring revenue, poor billing hygiene can create massive cracks in your retention strategy. From silent churn caused by outdated cards to confusing renewal flows, DIY subscription management often leads to lost revenue, reduced lifetime value, and frustrated users.
Here’s a breakdown of the hidden costs, and how Authvia helps SaaS companies simplify payments, reduce churn, and improve customer retention with intelligent, SMS-powered subscription billing.
1. Missed Renewals Are More Common Than You Think
The average SaaS platform experiences 10–15% churn from billing failures, not because users want to cancel, but because they never saw the reminder, forgot to update their card, or didn’t understand the renewal notice. Most platforms still rely on emails to communicate with customers. The problem? Email open rates in SaaS hover around 20%, and renewal emails often get lost in spam folders or buried under promotional content.
Authvia flips the script by sending payment and renewal prompts via SMS, directly to the user’s phone, where 95% of texts are read within three minutes. That means no portals, no logins, no lost emails. Just a simple text message that links to a secure checkout page your customers can access anytime, anywhere.
2. Credit Card Declines Hurt More Than Your Bottom Line
Payment failure doesn’t just delay revenue, it risks losing the customer altogether. Expired cards, fraud alerts, insufficient funds, and incorrect billing details are the top reasons for payment declines in recurring billing. But if there’s no smart retry system in place, or worse, no follow-up at all, the transaction fails and the customer churns silently.
Authvia’s Managed Dunning lets you recover revenue without lifting a finger. Our platform automatically follows up on failed payments using a strategic SMS cadence designed to maximize recovery and minimize user frustration. Because it’s messaging-first, the experience feels personal and frictionless, keeping customers engaged, not annoyed.
3. DIY Billing Systems Can’t Keep Up With Growth
As your business scales, so do the complexities of managing billing cycles, customer tiers, free trials, and proration. Most SaaS teams cobble together a mix of plugins, spreadsheets, and manual processes that just don’t scale. Your developers end up maintaining a billing system instead of building product. Your support team handles preventable payment issues. And your finance team is stuck chasing reports that should’ve been automated.
Authvia’s subscription and recurring billing tools are designed to offload the entire back-and-forth, from initial signup through dunning and retention. Whether you’re billing monthly, quarterly, or on custom terms, we help you automate reminders, collect payments securely via SMS, and ensure your team stays focused on what they do best.
4. Poor Payment UX Kills Retention
Your product might be great, but if paying for it is a hassle, customers will leave. Forcing users into clunky portals, forgotten logins, or outdated checkout flows creates friction, especially on mobile, where most users are now managing subscriptions. This creates unnecessary drop-off and hurts your NRR.
With TXT2PAY®, your users get a link to pay instantly from a text message, no app, no login, no browser redirects. That simplicity reduces churn and improves the overall brand experience, giving you a leg up on competitors still using outdated billing systems.
Stop Losing Revenue to Subscription Complexity
Recurring revenue is only reliable if your payment process is. Authvia’s managed subscription billing and dunning tools help SaaS businesses:
- Reduce involuntary churn
- Increase renewal rates
- Recover failed payments
- Improve customer satisfaction
Best of all, onboarding is fast and flexible, with easy API integration, white-label options, and support for over 250 processors.
Don’t let billing be the bottleneck in your growth.Start simplifying your subscription payments with Authvia today.
