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The new billing system is here!

Posted by David Greiner on February 9, 2007 10:12 PM

Way back in November we asked you guys what sort of changes you'd like to see in MailBuild's billing functionality. The response was overwhelming, with more than 500 of you chiming in with feedback and thoughtful suggestions. Since then, we've been hard at work on bringing your wishes to reality. Today we're wrapped to announce the launch of our brand new billing system. To get started, head into your account, select a client and click Client Settings. Here are a few of the highlights:

Let your clients pay with their own credit cards

Forget having to pay on your clients behalf and chasing up payment, now your clients can pay for their campaigns using their own Visa, MasterCard or American Express card. We handle all your invoicing automatically and each client now has a detailed billing history in their account.

Let your clients pay with their own credit cards

Create your own fee structure and pocket the difference

This one's 'gonna be popular. It's now a piece of cake to set your own rates for each client. Each time they send a campaign, they'll be required to pay at the marked-up rate you specify. We'll collect any profit you make over and above our standard rates and then send it to you via PayPal at the end of every month.

For example, you could mark a client up to $10 delivery and 3 cents a recipient. Let's say your client sends a campaign to 5,000 recipients. They'll need to pay $160 to send the campaign ($10 plus 5,000 x 3 cents). We'll take our cut of $55 ($5 plus 5,000 x 1 cent) and send you the $105 profit at the end of that month.

Our new mark-up reports in your billing section make it nice and easy to see how much your making each month. We even provide an RSS feed so you can stay on top of your earnings without even logging into your account.

Create your own fee structure and pocket the difference

Set different billing options for different clients

We realize every client's different, so instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, you can set billing options on a client-by-client basis.

Set different billing options for different clients

Private label all the way

We realize most of you guys resell MailBuild as your own product (that's what we built it for), and so this update wouldn't be much use if we blew that cover. We go to great lengths to ensure we never mention MailBuild, Freshview or anything that could lead your client back to this software in their account.

When your client uses their own credit card, the transaction on their statement will be from:

To avoid chargeback issues we make this nice and clear on all confirmation pages and client invoices.

Right now, the billing system is available in US dollars only. If the demand to support other currencies is there, we'll certainly consider it, but if it's an issue we recommend paying on your clients behalf and then invoicing them yourself in your own currency.

Thank YOU!

Finally, from all the team at Freshview, thanks for not only telling us what you want, but for your patience as we put it together. We've never seen our customers this excited about a new feature before and really hope this makes your email marketing lives a little easier.

32 comments so far

James Walker

wrote on February 10, 2007 12:19 AM

Yet another fantastic feature - you guys rock!

Mark Walker

wrote on February 10, 2007 12:23 AM

Great to see.

Now starts my campaign to get you to to add UK Sterling as a payment option ;-) If you agree then add your comment below with WE WANT STERLING on it!!!

Nice work on getting this done fella, already had a play and it works nicely.

Vero

wrote on February 10, 2007 12:29 AM

I think I love you guys! This is going to make things so much simpler in dealing with client mailings. Great stuff, thanks!!

PS - We do want Sterling (please!)

Tim Marshall

wrote on February 10, 2007 12:32 AM

I second the call for UK Sterling to be available. It would be a good touch and would increasingly help with being able to pass it off as your own service without client questions like "Why do you charge in US Dollars?".

A brilliant service, multiple currency's would i think make this a completed product that just can't be touched in this arena.

Gavin

wrote on February 10, 2007 12:43 AM

UK (and other currency options) would just make this even more fantastic - although I do tell clients the reason it is billed in dollars is because some things are just cheaper in the US which goes down well!

Jon

wrote on February 10, 2007 1:31 AM

Can clients pre-pay for credits in advance? I just showed this feature to my client and they asked me to give them some sort of bracketing for volume purchases.

They intend to purchase credits enough for several campaigns in advance as my client uses his card and lets his staff do the sending.

Jason

wrote on February 10, 2007 1:41 AM

I don't see where I enter my paypal information. According to the screenshots above, it should be located in the right column somewhere within the Billing History area. But it is not there in my account. Am I missing something?

I am happy that this feature is finally live. And again, it has been implemented with the same quality as everything else. Great Job!

Jon

wrote on February 10, 2007 1:44 AM

Forgot to say thanks!

You guys are the best!

Zoltan

wrote on February 10, 2007 1:55 AM

Thank you, again ! Are you guy planning to add PayPal as a payment option for our clients?

Jason

wrote on February 10, 2007 2:26 AM

Nevermind regarding my question above - it shows up once you change the billing settings for one of your clients. Makes sense.

Mark

wrote on February 10, 2007 2:27 AM

Great feature! Another vote for UK sterling - if it had that we'd probably convert all our clients to this billing method.

Jon

wrote on February 10, 2007 2:32 AM

What if I don't want to use paypal? Some countries like the Philippines, Malaysia & some other countries only have limited paypal accounts. They can only pay but not receive/widthraw payments.

Are there other ways to get my profit like through an ACH wire-transfer or a snail mailed check?

Tim H

wrote on February 10, 2007 2:39 AM

Thank you! Superb Job :)

I second the calls for UK Sterling (and other currencies) as well

Silviu

wrote on February 10, 2007 2:55 AM

Same thing... I vote for another payment method beside PayPal/Google-Checkout.

Andrew

wrote on February 10, 2007 5:10 AM

This is freaking awesome.... THANK YOU!

Phillip Smith

wrote on February 10, 2007 5:22 AM

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! :-)

Phillip.

hash

wrote on February 10, 2007 7:27 AM

Great, this is what I've been waiting for.

Paul

wrote on February 10, 2007 9:47 AM

Great work guys! I just finished writing a php soap class to communicate with your server like so....

include('listmanager.class.php');

$listmanager = new listmanager($apiKey,$listid);
$listmanager->addsubscriber($email,$name);
//or
$listmanager->addsubscriber($email,$name);

If anyone is interested please email me
pkruger@speeduneed.com

Any word on the ability to add data to the newsletter from rss feeds on the site?
It would be awsome if I could configure the site to sent out a weekly email from an rss feed on the website or when ever x number of new items appeared.

Damien Buckley

wrote on February 10, 2007 10:28 AM

This is a great update though I must admit the currency issue hadnt occurred to me before, doh. It was better when you guys stuck to your home soil and currency, lol. Just kidding guys. I second the call for additional currencies if possible - i know, i know, people are just never satisfied are they. In order to have our clients pay themselves, the fee would have to be a fixed rate in A$ as thats what we quote so we'll carry on invoicing them for now and see what happens with the billing system.

Dan B.

wrote on February 10, 2007 11:15 AM

This is a great feature - thanks so much! I have one question about billing, though. Currently my credit card charges me a "foreign transaction fee" of just under 3% as a separate line item for every transaction. I am in the U.S. and am wondering 1) is this unusual? and 2) will my clients see this same charge on their bills thus causing some confusion?

Jacob Ball

wrote on February 10, 2007 1:18 PM

A great step in the right direction!! I agree with the calls for multiple currencies - I'd love to bill them directly in Aussie dollars. At the moment, I have to mark up the billing to cover the USD - AUD conversion rate, so that I don't get left short. I know USD is the most used currency, but you guys are based here in Australia! As I see it, you're getting each campaign's value, converting it to USD (hence the 'approximate USD value' on invoices) and then it gets converted back again on my card.

I know the whole currency thing is a non-trivial exercise, and one you're probably working on furiously, but I'd be hard pressed to think of how else you can improve after that's sorted out!

Oh - one more point. I'm not sure why you've hard-coded the delivery fee and cost per recipient fields? Surely we should be able to enter those values ourselves?

Jim

wrote on February 10, 2007 1:25 PM

In my opinion having the options in the drop down list for the cost/recepient go in increments of .05 is too limiting. Also, how about some movement on your pricing, I'd like to see some better discounts, .01/recipient is too pricey for my giant customers.

Dave Greiner

wrote on February 10, 2007 2:41 PM

Hey guys, thanks for the comments and feedback so far, keep it coming. We'll certainly do more research into the other currency options, but for the time being we'll be keeping things simple and supporting US dollars only.

Can clients pre-pay for credits in advance? I just showed this feature to my client and they asked me to give them some sort of bracketing for volume purchases.

Not right now Jon, it's pay-as-you go at the rates you set.

Are you guy planning to add PayPal as a payment option for our clients?

Unfortunately not Zolton, because we're an Australian company, PayPal don't offer their payments pro service to us yet, meaning your clients would be redirected out of the app to a PayPal page to make payment. This, combined with little demand means we won't be pushing for this any time soon.

What if I don't want to use paypal? Some countries like the Philippines, Malaysia & some other countries only have limited paypal accounts. They can only pay but not receive/widthraw payments.

We're just as frustrated about this as you are Jon and Silviu, it blows me away that there still isn't an international standard for this. Unfortunately if your country doesn't support PayPal, you'll need to pay on your clients behalf and then invoice them yourself.

I just finished writing a php soap class to communicate with your server... Any word on the ability to add data to the newsletter from rss feeds on the site?

First off, thanks for putting that PHP class together for the API. If you feel like sharing, send it to support@ and we'll add it to the API docs for everyone. In regards to RSS support, this isn't something we're looking at right now.

Currently my credit card charges me a "foreign transaction fee" of just under 3% as a separate line item for every transaction.

Dan, this upgrade has seen us switch to a completely new banking system all in US dollars which we're hoping will minimize these kinds of fees. Once you guys start seeing some payments go through, let us know if the foreign transaction fee is still an issue.

I'm not sure why you've hard-coded the delivery fee and cost per recipient fields? Surely we should be able to enter those values ourselves?

That's definitely something we'll be considering, thanks for the suggestion Jacob and Jim.

Jennifer

wrote on February 10, 2007 2:43 PM

Hi,

How do I assign the new billing settings for existing clients? I have tried adding a new client and I can see the new billing system straightaway but haven't figured out how to set it for my existing clients. Thanks in advance.

Dave Greiner

wrote on February 10, 2007 3:24 PM

Jennifer, once you log into your account, select the client you'd like to change, then click the "Client Settings" tab. On the left you'll notice a new section called "Billing Options".

Scott Matthew

wrote on February 10, 2007 6:15 PM

This is FANTASTIC guys! Well done.

It would be great if you could offer payment in Aussie dollars too please. Thanx!

Dean Wood

wrote on February 10, 2007 11:19 PM

I'm still considering whether to use MailBuild my clients but the lack of billing in UK Pounds is a bit of a show stopper for me - and I don't want to pay it on my clients behalf.

Kym

wrote on February 11, 2007 10:39 PM

Yes $AUD would be great!!

Silviu

wrote on February 12, 2007 11:04 PM

What if my clients CAN login into the system, but the "SEND" btn would be "disabled" and only I, the "administrator" could send the campaigns.

Would that be possible?

P.S. Your application butterflies my mind! :)

Ross from Thrive

wrote on February 18, 2007 8:30 PM

Guys this is brilliant. Exactly how I would want to see it done, but AU$ would be nice to have so I don't have to explain that thats just the way it is - even though you guys are from Sydney, Australia!

Sukhi

wrote on February 24, 2007 11:25 PM

It would be great if UK Sterling to be available.

GloucesterRugby

wrote on March 20, 2007 11:44 PM

Hi,

Just to chime in prices in EURO please for those of us outside the UK.

Damo