saas的计费数据库设计

您需要的最低可行产品 (What you need for a Minimum Viable Product)

When you are building your Software as a Service (Saas) Minimum Viable Product (MVP), there is a lot of work that needs to be done. It can be difficult to balance this workload.

在构建软件即服务(Saas)最低可行产品(MVP)时，需要完成许多工作。 平衡此工作负载可能很困难。

Oftentimes you are so focused on developing the product that you forget that you still need to sell it to people. This guide is meant to help you get your billing system off the ground to start making revenue, and show what you should be doing when you are ready to scale up.

通常，您过于专注于开发产品，以至于忘记了仍然需要将其出售给人们。 本指南旨在帮助您使计费系统崭露头角，以开始创收，并展示准备扩大规模时应采取的措施。

订阅内容 (Subscriptions)

Subscriptions are key to an effective billing strategy. The ability to charge a credit card on a recurring basis makes payment more efficient for both you and the customer.

订阅是有效计费策略的关键。 能够定期收取信用卡费用，这对您和客户而言都更加有效。

To start selling subscriptions to your clients, you need:

要开始向客户销售订阅，您需要：

• A form users can fill out to enter their credit card
  用户可以填写表格以输入其信用卡
• A backend process that can be called after the payment is successful
  付款成功后可以调用的后端流程

If you don’t have the development cycles to do this, you will be stuck with a painful process of sending invoices manually, giving customers access manually, and adding friction to the on-boarding process.

如果您没有开发周期来执行此操作，则将陷入一个痛苦的过程，即手动发送发票，为客户提供手动访问权限以及增加入职流程的麻烦。

免费试用 (Free Trials)

For many SaaS companies, 100% of their customers come in through their Free trial system. — Lincoln Murphy

对于许多SaaS公司而言，其100％的客户通过其免费试用系统进入。 — 林肯·墨菲

Offering free trials is considered by many to be one of the best ways to find early adopters of your SaaS.

许多人认为提供免费试用版是找到SaaS的早期采用者的最佳方法之一。

When someone is given the opportunity to try your product before committing to a subscription, they are far more likely to become a regular customer.

如果某人有机会在订阅之前尝试您的产品，那么他们更有可能成为常规客户。

It is good practice to treat your trial users with the same level of support and respect as you would your paying customers. Not only are they experiencing your product, they are also experiencing the quality of your service.

优良作法是为试用用户提供与付费客户同等的支持和尊重。 他们不仅在体验您的产品，而且还在体验您的服务质量。

与什么整合 (What to integrate with)

At the end of the day, you will end up integrating with an external system to handle these use cases. I highly recommend looking at Stripe because they have an excellent API to integrate with and a wide range of functionalities.

最终，您将最终与外部系统集成来处理这些用例。 我强烈建议您查看Stripe，因为它们具有出色的API可以与之集成并且具有广泛的功能。

If you don’t want to develop the integration with Stripe yourself, take a look at Servicebot — It comes fully integrated with Stripe and has great Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality so you can better manage your customers and subscriptions from a dashboard.

如果您不想自己开发与Stripe的集成，请查看Servicebot-它与Stripe完全集成，并且具有强大的客户关系管理(CRM)功能，因此您可以从仪表板更好地管理客户和订阅。

自动化是扩展的关键 (Automation is the key to scaling)

During your early stages, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham says, “Do things that don’t scale.” Although this may sound counter-intuitive, this is the best way to grow your customer base before you begin to even think about scaling.

在您的早期阶段， Y Combinator创始人Paul Graham说：“ 做不成规模的事情。 ”尽管这听起来可能违反直觉，但这是在开始考虑扩展之前扩大客户群的最佳方法。

What scaling boils down to is automating the manual processes you’ve found to be effective at growing your startup.

归根结底是自动化的手动流程，您发现这种流程可以有效地促进启动。

When you’re ready to scale your billing solution, here are a few things to consider:

当您准备扩展计费解决方案时，请考虑以下几点：

计费流程自动化 (Billing Process Automation)

Automating the processes involved with billing — such as what happens when a user requests a trial, adds a funding source, or requests a cancellation — is one of the most important parts of scaling your billing solution.

自动化计费流程(例如，当用户请求试用，添加资金来源或请求取消时发生的事情)是扩展计费解决方案最重要的部分之一。

You should first take a look at how you are currently doing your billing. Identify all the manual processes that currently are a part of your system, like restricting access if trials expire or reactivating accounts after they’ve been cancelled. Once you make that list you can start figuring out how much time is spent performing these and start iterating to reduce the most painful parts.

您首先应该看一下当前的结算方式。 确定当前属于系统一部分的所有手动流程，例如在试用期满后限制访问权限或在取消帐户后重新激活帐户。 列出该列表后，您就可以开始计算执行这些操作所花费的时间，并开始进行迭代以减少最痛苦的部分。

Another big part of automating your process is automating customer outreach based on their status in the billing system.

自动化流程的另一个重要部分是根据客户在计费系统中的状态来自动化客户服务。

自动客户拓展 (Automatic customer outreach)

Customer outreach is key to converting customers from free trials to paid. When starting out, this process is mostly manual. Email people when they sign up, remind them when their trial is ending soon, or ask if they need help getting started.

客户推广是将客户从免费试用转换为付费试用的关键。 刚开始时，此过程通常是手动的。 注册人员时向他们发送电子邮件，试用期即将结束时提醒他们，或者询问他们是否需要帮助。

This is not scalable — you need to eventually automate this process, and the best place to focus on is the billing side because so many steps are processed there

这是不可扩展的-您最终需要使该过程自动化，并且最需要关注的地方是计费方，因为那里要处理的步骤很多

• On-boarding — When a new user signs up, your system should automatically send an email explaining how to get started.

  入职 —当新用户注册时，系统应自动发送一封电子邮件，说明如何开始使用。

  More advanced systems follow the customer’s journey and send specific help articles for things they haven’t done yet.

  更加先进的系统将跟随客户的旅程，并针对他们尚未完成的工作发送特定的帮助文章。

• Trial Conversion — When a trial is created, there are a few things that should be sent to the user to convince them to convert. Things like a “3 days left” reminder or a message asking for a 1-on-1 call can really make the difference.

  试用转换 -创建试用版时，应将一些内容发送给用户，以说服他们进行转换。 诸如“还剩3天”提醒或要求一对一通话的消息之类的东西确实可以有所作为。

  Automating these messages is important to insure scalability.

  自动化这些消息对于确保可伸缩性很重要。

• Lead recovery — When a trial expires or a user cancels, all is not lost. Sending emails a specific duration after they leave explaining new features, asking for feedback of what you can do better, and articles about your product may be enough to bring them back around to give you another chance.

  潜在客户恢复 -试用期到期或用户取消时，所有操作都不会丢失。 离开后，在特定的时间发送电子邮件，说明新功能，征求您对您可以做得更好的反馈，有关产品的文章可能足以使它们重新流行，从而给您带来另一个机会。

To ensure seamless communication between your system and the customer, it is important for your system to be tightly integrated with your billing.

为确保系统与客户之间的无缝通信，将系统与计费紧密集成非常重要。

与其他系统集成 (Integrating with other systems)

One of the best ways to automate your businesses with minimum development effort is to integrate with third-parties who have already solved the problems you are facing.

以最少的开发工作量实现业务自动化的最佳方法之一就是与已经解决了您面临的问题的第三方集成。

Here are my favorites which I’m using for my own SaaS startup:

这是我用于自己的SaaS启动的收藏夹：

条纹-付款处理 (Stripe — Payment processing)

Stripe has become the staple of SaaS payment providers. With a developer-friendly API and constant new features, I (and countless others) feel it’s an obvious integration point.

Stripe已成为SaaS付款提供商的主要内容。 凭借对开发人员友好的API和不断的新功能，我(以及其他众多人)认为这是显而易见的集成点。

Some of the features you can integrate with to automate more of your billing are:

您可以整合以自动执行更多结算操作的一些功能包括：

• Webhooks to alert your system of failed payments
  Webhooks提醒您的系统付款失败
• No credit card free trials
  没有信用卡免费试用
• Add charges to existing subscriptions
  向现有订阅添加费用

There is much more you can do with Stripe, it should be up to you and your startup’s needs to determine how deep of an integration you need.

您可以使用Stripe做更多的事情，这取决于您和创业公司的需求，以确定您需要集成的深度。

对讲机-通信自动化 (Intercom — Communication automation)

The staple of Intercom is the live chat widget that you embed on your site to enable communication with your customers. What many people don’t realize is that Intercom also provides an automation platform. If you integrate with Intercom, you can send customized messages to your customer based on what they do with your product.

Intercom的主要功能是您嵌入到站点中的实时聊天小部件，以实现与客户的通信。 许多人没有意识到的是，对讲机还提供了一个自动化平台。 如果与Intercom集成，则可以根据客户对产品的处理方式向他们发送自定义消息。

This allows you to automate the communication with your customer so you don’t have to manually email anymore.

这使您可以自动与客户进行沟通，因此您不再需要手动发送电子邮件。

Servicebot —订阅管理 (Servicebot — Subscription Management)

Servicebot comes out-of-the-box with a Stripe and Intercom integration. When a customer requests a free trial, Servicebot creates a new trialing subscription and customer in Stripe and a new user in Intercom, and directs them to a newly-created instance to use.

Servicebot开箱即用，具有Stripe和对讲机集成。 当客户请求免费试用时，Servicebot将在Stripe中创建一个新的试用订阅和一个客户，并在Intercom中创建一个新用户，并将他们定向到一个新创建的实例中使用。

Intercom will send automated messages with the goal of converting to a paying user while Stripe will manage the subscription automatically.

对讲机将发送自动消息，以转换为付费用户，而Stripe将自动管理订阅。

A good first step to begin scaling is with automating your billing process. When it all comes together, you can connect parts of your business to a centralized location, as well as integrate it with third parties. The result of all this will be massive gains in productivity and efficiency that make the effort well worth it.

开始扩展的一个好的第一步是使您的计费过程自动化。 当一切融合在一起时，您可以将部分业务连接到一个集中的位置，并将其与第三方集成。 所有这些的结果将是生产力和效率的大幅度提高，这值得付出努力。

If you are interested in automating parts of your SaaS billing solution to do things like automate customer on-boarding and connecting business processes to your billing system.

如果您对自动化SaaS计费解决方案的一部分感兴趣，以执行诸如自动执行客户入职并将业务流程连接到计费系统之类的事情。

翻译自: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-and-scale-your-saas-billing-solution-d6111b9ae253/

saas的计费数据库设计