Dunning software cost per month, and when it pays for itself

Dunning software cost per month, tool by tool

Dunning software costs $60 to $1,249 a month at Stunning by MRR, $129 a month for Baremetrics' Recover (Payment Recovery) add-on, and from $269 a month at Churn Buster. Churnkey Starter is $250 a month billed yearly, and Stripe Billing includes its recovery tools in its own fee.

How each vendor sets the fee: MRR, ARR, churn volume or billing volume

Stunning charges a flat monthly fee by MRR, takes no percentage of what it recovers and prints no price under $5K MRR. Churn Buster's flat fee follows your MRR tier, but it prints starting prices only, so no fee is worked out here for a given MRR.

Churnkey prices on churn volume, the average monthly revenue lost to churn, and fixes the price for 12 months. Churnkey's page data lists Core at $500 to $1,300 a month billed annually for teams at $10K or more.

Baremetrics sets its plan by tracked ARR: Launch is $49 a month with the pricing page's yearly-billing switch on, or $75 with it off, up to $360K ARR; Growth is $189 or $255 up to $3.6M ARR. Payment Recovery is a flat +$129 a month on top, with SMS on prepaid credits the pricing page does not list. The Build-your-own page also offers Recover at 10% of recovered revenue.

The pricing page sells Payment Recovery as an add-on to a plan, but one Baremetrics article says Recover can be had without paying for Metrics; ask which applies before you budget $129 alone.

The break-even: fee against revenue at risk

A dunning fee pays for itself when the revenue it wins back beyond what your processor's own retries recover exceeds the fee. Baremetrics says around 9% of MRR is at risk from expired cards, insufficient funds and bank issues for the average SaaS business. On that claim, the arithmetic for the $129 flat fee is:

• At $15,000 MRR ($180K ARR), $129 is 0.86% of MRR, so 9.6% of the revenue at risk must come back.
• At $30,000 MRR ($360K ARR), it is 0.43% of MRR, so 4.8% must come back.
• At $83,333 MRR ($1M ARR), it is 0.155% of MRR, so 1.7% must come back.
• At $300,000 MRR ($3.6M ARR), it is 0.043% of MRR, so 0.48% must come back.

This is arithmetic from Baremetrics' claim, not a result Baremetrics reports. On the flat-priced add-on, Baremetrics guarantees it: "Recover more than your Baremetrics cost or your next month is free". Its pages do not say whether that cost is the plan, the add-on or both; counting Launch plus Recover, the monthly total to beat is $178 with the yearly switch on or $204 with it off. The Terms say payments are non-refundable.

Churn Buster says its price breaks even at roughly a 1% improvement in recovery rate, and Stunning says its customers recover 10 to 30 times more than they pay; both are vendor claims.

When a paid tool does not pay yet

Churn Buster's own comparison page says no tool can prove a difference on only a handful of failures a month. At about $25,000 MRR on Stripe, Stunning's ladder lists $100 a month and Recover is $129 plus a plan, yet the first cost is zero: the Stripe settings sorted in best failed payment recovery tools come with Billing.

Pick Stunning for a flat fee under $129 a month from $5K to $50K MRR; best dunning software for small business compares it with the others. Pick Churnkey when cancel flows and recovery should share one fee. Pick Baremetrics Recover when you use Baremetrics analytics and want the guarantee on the flat add-on.