Alguna - Best alternative to Stripe Billing for scaling B2B SaaS teams

What’s Alguna?

Alguna is a modern pricing, quoting, and billing platform tailored for scaling B2B SaaS companies. Backed by Y Combinator, Alguna unifies the quote-to-revenue process by automating complex, manual back-office operations. It streamlines your revenue workflows and enables quick experimentation with pricing models.

In practice, Alguna acts as an end-to-end revenue management suite for scaling SaaS, fintech, and AI companies looking to eliminate spreadsheet-based processes and siloed tools. It’s especially suited for companies that need to manage both self-serve (PLG) customers and highly customized enterprise contracts in one system.

What’s Stripe Billing?

Stripe Billing is a subscription management platform for early stage companies with basic billing needs. The platform is one of Stripe’s many products that’s part of its payments ecosystem. It allows businesses to set up and automate subscription payments, manage customer subscriptions, and handle basic usage-based billing within the Stripe platform.Stripe Billing is tightly integrated with Stripe Payments for payment processing, meaning it seamlessly handles charging credit cards, ACH, and other payment methods for recurring invoices.

How Alguna and Stripe Billing compare

Below, we compare key differences between Alguna and Stripe Billing across various aspects of the platforms, from supported billing models to integrations, and target users.

1. Billing models and usage-based pricing

Alguna’s pricing engine was designed to be flexible out-of-the-box. You can configure any combination of subscription charges, usage-based fees (metered by any custom metric), one-off setup fees, prepaid credit models, and even bespoke contract terms without coding. This is particularly useful for B2B SaaS companies that might offer hybrid pricing. For example, a platform fee plus consumption charges, or tiered plans with custom overage rules.

Alguna’s interface allows non-technical teams to set up new models and experiment with pricing changes (e.g. try a new usage-based plan) quickly, which supports agile go-to-market strategies.

Stripe Billing also supports multiple pricing models, but wasn’t built for event-driven usage. Instead, it relies on accumulating usage records that you (or your product’s code) must send to Stripe each billing cycle.

If you want to charge per API call or per GB of data, your engineering team needs to aggregate those events and push a usage total to Stripe at the interval, rather than Stripe tracking events in real-time. This extra step can introduce complexity and potential for error.

2. Integrations and ecosystem flexibility

Stripe Billing is tightly coupled with Stripe’s own ecosystem, you cannot natively use an alternative payment gateway or processor for your subscriptions managed in Stripe. This has pros and cons. On one hand, Stripe provides an all-in-one experience–if you use Stripe Billing, you’ll naturally use Stripe Payments to process credit cards, and you can easily tie into other Stripe services (Stripe Tax, Stripe Revenue Recognition, etc.). Stripe also offers third-party integrations with many business tools (for example, you can connect Stripe to popular CRMs, analytics platforms, and accounting software). However, when it comes to payment processing, Stripe Billing locks you in to Stripe. 

Alguna lets you connect to any payment processor or financial system of your choice via either native integrations or custom API connections. For example, you could use Alguna to handle billing logic and have payments collected through Stripe, PayPal, Adyen, Braintree, or a direct bank debit system–whatever works best for your business. Alguna even offers a feature called BankPay for collecting payments directly through bank transfers within the platform. This flexibility eliminates the risk of vendor lock-in on the payments side.

3. CPQ capabilities

Stripe approaches revenue management through a developer-centric lens by providing flexible subscription creation via its APIs. This creates difficulties for non-technical teams to configure custom deals without coding support as crafting complex quotes or custom subscriptions often requires manual onboarding by a team member. 

Stripe can integrate into a broader quote-to-cash process but it relies on other systems for many steps. Stripe’s Quote feature lets you generate quotes in its dashboard or via API and then convert them into invoices. The product has very limited functionality and the use cases are best fitting for SMBs that can use that as pro-forma invoices.

It also connects with popular CRMs (like Salesforce or HubSpot), but those integrations require additional setup like closed-won deals that can automatically trigger subscription creation in Stripe. However, functionality like collaborative quote approvals or contract e-signature is not native to Stripe’s platform.

Alguna delivers CPQ capabilities out-of-the-box enabling non-technical teams to configure flexible product catalogs and create complex subscription plans and pricing directly through its UI.

Alguna’s setup supports everything from standard subscriptions to usage-based fees, one-time charges, custom terms based on multiple discounts, and credit based metering–all without writing a single line of code.

This unified approach empowers go-to-market teams to iterate on pricing or tailor deals for enterprise customers (without waiting on engineering). For fast-moving teams, this offers a level of agility and customization that’s hard to achieve with Stripe’s developer-led approach.

On the proposal side, built-in approval workflows support the entire process. From creating professional proposals to offering an embedded e-signature experience for clients. This means clients can digitally sign the quote without leaving the proposal interface. Once signed, the agreement flows automatically into your CRM records and billing engine, ensuring that what the sales team closes is immediately reflected in your invoicing and revenue recognition data. 

Ultimately, this end-to-end automation means RevOps and Finance maintain a single source of truth for quotes and contracts, providing accuracy that both you, as a seller, and your customers, as buyers, can rely on. 

4. Revenue workflows

Stripe reliably handles the mechanics of billing and payments, but Finance teams often need engineering support or third-party tools to tie Stripe data into their broader financial reporting and reconciliation processes.

Stripe Billing streamlines many revenue workflows by automating invoicing and payment collection. It can automatically generate invoices for subscription charges or one-off fees and send them to customers via email, complete with links to a Stripe-hosted checkout page for immediate payment. Leveraging Stripe’s global payments infrastructure, businesses can easily accept a wide range of payment methods (credit cards, ACH, digital wallets, etc.) in 135+ currencies, all through a unified system. 

The platform handles retrying failed payments and can send automatic reminders or update requests for expiring cards, which reduces the manual workload of chasing down collections. Basic dunning settings (like the schedule of payment retries) are configurable in Stripe, and its customer portal allows clients to update their payment details or view invoices, helping to improve collection rates with minimal oversight. Where Stripe is less prescriptive is in back-end accounting integration as exporting billing data from Stripe into a company’s ERP or ledger often requires additional work.

Alguna takes a deeply integrated approach to invoicing, payments, and collections as part of its end-to-end revenue engine. In Alguna, invoicing is a natural continuation of the quoting process: once a quote or contract is finalized in Alguna, the platform automatically generates invoices with the exact negotiated terms and schedule. It natively supports complex billing scenarios like multi-entity invoicing (allocating invoices to different legal entities within the company) to accommodate sophisticated SaaS billing arrangements. In simple terms, what your sales person is able to agree with the customer and close, Alguna would automatically follow through on the invoicing side with no human in the loop needed.

Payment collection is orchestrated in-platform as well. Alguna can route charges through your chosen payment processor or via its own AlgunaPay system for ACH/bank payments, all tracked in one place. This means revenue teams can manage credit card and bank debit collections side by side through a single workflow, without manually bridging between the billing system and external payment gateways as would be required with Stripe.

Another key advantage of Alguna’s revenue workflows is native integration with financial systems and automated dunning processes. Because Alguna serves as the system of record for all invoices and payments, it can sync billing information directly into external accounting/ERP tools like QuickBooks, NetSuite, or Xero in real time, ensuring Finance has up-to-date records without manual data entry.

⚙️ No-code commitment: RevOps or Finance can adjust billing schedules, dunning rules, and reminder emails via configuration in the platform, whereas achieving similar custom tweaks in Stripe Billing might require writing scripts or using additional services.

5. Pricing structure and cost transparency

Stripe Billing uses a transaction-based pricing model: it charges a percentage fee on your billed volume (in addition to the base Stripe payment processing fees). In most markets, Stripe Billing’s fee is around 0.5%–0.8% of the revenue you process through it. This pay-as-you-go pricing means you don’t pay much (or at all) in months where you have little revenue, which is attractive to new startups. However, these percentage-based fees can add up quickly as you scale.

Alguna charges a fixed subscription fee for its platform rather than taking a cut of your revenue. Plans start at $399 per month for the full platform, which includes concierge onboarding and support. Higher tiers likely scale based on factors like feature needs or usage (but notably not on your revenue directly). This means costs are more predictable.

💡 Pro tip: Consider your current and projected billing volumes when comparing costs, as well as the value of the extra flexibility Alguna provides for that price.

6. Developer experience vs no-code empowerment

Stripe has long been known for being a developer-first platform and Stripe Billing is no exception. Stripe Billing provides clean APIs, extensive documentation, and a robust ecosystem of libraries. For developers, Stripe Billing is generally a joy to work with as integrating subscriptions or invoices into your application can be done with relatively few API calls, and Stripe’s documentation has plenty of examples. The platform is highly reliable and takes care of edge cases like proration, timezone handling for billing cycles, and so on. This is one reason Stripe is often the default choice for technical founders: engineers can implement billing logic quickly and trust Stripe to handle the heavy lifting. 

Alguna empowers non-technical teams while still providing an API-first platform for developers when needed. In practice, this means Alguna offers a lot of no-code or low-code tools: a visual interface to set up pricing rules, automate events (like “if usage exceeds X, send alert or upgrade customer plan”), and connect with other software via built-in integrations or simple configuration.

This approach can significantly reduce the dependency on developers for day-to-day billing operations or pricing experiments. For instance, a Growth team member could launch a new pricing tier or promo in Alguna’s interface, whereas doing so in Stripe might involve engineering to adjust backend logic or use the API to create new prices and coupon rules. 

7. Ideal use cases

Finally, it’s important to consider which types of companies and teams each product serves best:

Early-stage startups and small businesses (Founders/Product Teams):

Best choice: Stripe Billing is often the choice here. Its quick setup, low upfront cost, and developer-friendly nature allow new ventures to start charging customers with minimal hassle.If you’re a founder or product manager who needs to implement simple subscriptions or one-off charges and move fast, Stripe’s pre-built checkout pages and subscription logic are very convenient.

Scaling B2B SaaS companies (Growth, Finance, RevOps): 

Best choice: Alguna. As your company grows (~$1–5M ARR range), the needs of Growth, Finance, and RevOps teams become more sophisticated. This is where Alguna shines. It’s best suited for B2B SaaS, fintech, or similar companies that have complex deals or a mix of self-service and enterprise customers.

📌 Example: RevOps and Growth teams can iterate on pricing or packaging in Alguna’s no-code interface. If your team is struggling with manual billing workarounds or maintaining a patchwork of tools (spreadsheets, Stripe, or maybe a separate usage tracking system), Alguna’s unified approach is likely a game-changer.

Industry and business model fit:

• Stripe Billing caters to B2C and subscription-economy businesses such as subscription boxes, media subscriptions, or any scenario with straightforward recurring payments. It also supports global currencies and one-time charges, which makes it flexible for things like online services or e-commerce wanting to add a subscription component.
• Alguna is tailored to B2B SaaS and usage-heavy models. Companies in sectors like cloud infrastructure, API platforms, fintech services, or AI platforms (where usage metering and customized contracts are common) will appreciate Alguna’s robust metering and contract management.If your company operates in a domain with complex pricing negotiation (enterprise SaaS with custom quotes, long-term contracts, usage commitments, etc.), Alguna is built for that reality.

Alguna vs Stripe Billing: Product overview

Which platform should you choose?

Choosing between Alguna and Stripe Billing ultimately comes down to the stage of your business and the complexity of your billing requirements. 

Stripe Billing is a great choice for startups and businesses that value a quick, out-of-the-box solution with minimal setup friction.

Alguna is geared toward companies that have outgrown basic tools and need more customization and control. If you find yourself pushing against Stripe’s limits, like hacking around its product catalog, wishing for more flexible usage billing, or spending too much time on manual processes, then it might be time for an upgrade.

In many cases, the decision might not be “either/or” but “when.” A common pattern is to start with Stripe Billing during the early phase of a SaaS business, and then transition to a platform like Alguna once you hit complexity or scalability pain points (for example, new pricing models you can’t easily implement in Stripe, or revenue levels where Stripe’s fees become significant). 

Bottom line: Use Stripe Billing for simplicity, quick deployment, and if you’re comfortable within Stripe’s all-in-one ecosystem. Consider Alguna if you require a more comprehensive revenue management system that can adapt to complex billing scenarios and empower your non-technical teams.