Lago, best Maxio alternative for usage-based Billing

What is Maxio?

Maxio, formerly Chargify and SaaSOptics, is a Billing and Financial Operations platform. Chargify specialized in billing and subscription management for SaaS companies, while SaaSOptics focused on revenue management. In April 2022, they merged to create Maxio, offering comprehensive solutions for SaaS businesses.

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What is Lago?

Lago is an open-source metering and usage-based billing solution. It offers a self-hosted and cloud-based, scalable, and modular architecture to manage subscriptions, usage based billing and all the nuances in between. It's the go-to choice for companies that require a powerful tool to handle complex billing logics, allowing you to build a comprehensive billing system from scratch with ease.

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How is Lago different from Maxio?

1. Feature comparison

Translation: Maxio currently does not offer a translation feature, limiting its invoicing to English only. In comparison, Lago offers support for multiple languages, including English, French, German, Italian, and Norwegian. Additionally, Lago's infrastructure allows for easy integration of new languages, making it a versatile solution for businesses operating in various countries or aiming for global expansion.

Rate limit: Maxio does not specify its capacity but recommends contacting support for aggregating over 200K daily events. Meanwhile, Lago is built to manage up to 200K events per second, showing its efficiency for high-volume scenarios.

Payment gateways: Maxio provides compatibility with 16 payment gateways, offering a range of options for transactions. Lago is agnostic and enables you to connect with any payment providers. In addition, Lago is already natively integrated with a list of payment providers here.

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2. Is Lago cheaper than Maxio? 💸

Maxio’s pricing does not include a free trial, starting with the Essentials Plan at $599 per month, $1 million in annual billings included. However, the overage charge of approximately 0.9% of revenue could potentially add up significantly for high-volume users. For the Growth and Scales plans, pricing is upon request. According to the Fififinance’s review, Maxio’s custom plans include a fixed fee and overage charge on revenue.

Lago offers a forever-free Open source solution for small businesses, allowing access to fundamental billing features. Besides, Lago provides Startup and Enterprise Plans with access to premium features listed here.

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3. Transparency matters

Transparency is one of the 8 things to consider when choosing your billing system.  When choosing a third-party billing solution, it's essential to ensure your team understands its architecture. This knowledge is invaluable, especially for tricky scenarios. You want to avoid being in the dark when trying to resolve critical issues.

If you opt for a closed-source solution like Maxio, push for transparency and try to understand how it works.

Lago, being open-source, offers complete transparency, allowing engineers to audit its code and even build on top of it. And the best part is, it’s always free and accessible. So, Lago serves as a fall back option without vender lock-in concerns. What’s the fallback option for a tool like Maxio? The pertinent question arises: what if Maxio discontinues its product or enforces a significant price hike?

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4. Support & Community

Maxio provides live chat support on their website for new visitors, but technical knowledge and detailed assistance are limited. Sales rep meetings are necessary for product access, catering to clients’ needs with custom pricing.

Lago, on the other hand, offers extensive support through an engaged Slack Community, featuring experienced engineer contributions to code auditing and enrichment. Committed to providing top-notch support, Lago covers comprehensive billing needs for both open-source and paid users.

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TL;DR: Table of comparison Lago vs. Maxio

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Is Lago an Open Source alternative for Maxio?

Yes! Lago is an open-source and open-core Maxio alternative. Lago’s GitHub repository is open to everyone, running under an AGPL v3 license.

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Does Lago provide a user interface similar to Maxio's?

Yes! In addition to being API-first, Lago provides a user-friendly interface that can be used by non-technical people.