Profitwell vs Baremetrics

Profitwell and Baremetrics are two popular subscription analytics tools that help SaaS businesses identify how they can increase revenue and decrease churn. Both of these tools have a solid set of features, integrate with numerous other tools, and can track a vast number of relevant metrics. That said, with so many similarities, companies are often left wondering whether Profitwell or Baremetrics will be best for them.

Facing the same dilemma? In this article, I’ll do a deep dive into both tools and help you settle the Profitwell vs Baremetrics debate once and for all.

Profitwell

Profitwell is a subscription tool that’s used to help companies increase their recurring revenue. The tool can also be used to understand how you can reduce churn and essentially optimize your revenue generation process.

Here are some features of Profitwell that you might be interested in:

Helps Users Keep Track of Important Metrics

Profitwell is a pretty solid software with well-designed features. It gives a good amount of insight into your financial progress, account value, churn rate, and other important sales metrics.

With Profitwell, you can track:

• ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
• MRR Churn
• CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
• NRR (Net Revenue Retention)

and more.

One thing Profitwell does well is how it keeps track of important metrics like LTV (Lifetime Value) in addition to giving summarized information. You can also use the detailed tracking feature to figure out why certain seasonal changes occur. This makes it especially useful for service providers that offer once-in-a-month/year offers.

Revenue Recognition Option

Apart from your user metrics, Profitwell also offers an opportunity for revenue recognition. Understanding where your payments come from will enable you to offer special discounts for your desired payment method.

What’s interesting is that Profitwell also inspects the prices within your sector and offers you the prices best suited for your sector. This will help you to gain an edge over your competitors by offering the most suitable prices.  

You can also group these price ranges by subscription numbers, how big a company is, its user retention rates, and other important metrics that will help you find companies that are most similar to yours. This comparison feature is especially useful if you are in a competitive sector.

Set Your Own Goals

You can set your own goals with the help of Profitwell. This is also important for mid to long-term goals. This feature is especially useful for bigger companies that have long-term aims to accomplish.  

ProfitWell Pricing

ProfitWell has a free version and a paid version.

Here is a short list of what’s include in the free version of Profitwell:

• Analysis of growth, revenue, retention, and churn trends.
• Mobile app.
• Detailed information on unit economics, usage data and cohorts.

Here is also a list of what’s included in the paid Enterprise version of Profitwell:

• Enables access to customized reports.
• Enables the use of user management, security audits, and staging support features.

Reviews

“Profitwell takes your payment processor data and creates really solid reports and visualizations for you to show growth, churn and more”

“Support is top notch and the help with issues is outstanding.”

Here is a summarized list of Profitwell’s advantages:

1. Keeping track of your important data like lifetime value(LTV).
2. Provides revenue recognition.
3. Provides information on service providers in the same sector as you.
4. Allows you to set your own goals.

Baremetrics

Baremetrics, like Profitwell, comes with a number of features for subscription and revenue management. The interface of Baremetrics is quite simple. It is easy to look at and enables one to check out many types of data without hassle.

Here are some features that make users inclined towards Baremetrics:

Track the Process of Your Team Members

Baremetrics allows you to track the progress of your co-workers and team members. These sorts of little details are stepping stones for improving your efficiency as a group.

Personalized User Profiles

Baremetrics enables you to create user profiles to better track the individual actions taken by your users. You can group your users according to the metrics you decide and make decisions accordingly. Baremetrics also allows its users to create their own groups and combine metrics for easy data analysis.  

Competitor Analysis

Baremetrics analyzes your data and compares it to other service providers within the same sector. This way, Baremetrics provides you with suggestions regarding what to do with your business.

Can Integrate Data from Multiple Sources

Baremetrics allows the manual import data from checks. This kind of flexibility is a plus for organizations that do not have all their data in one format.  

Aesthetic User Interface

An important part of any software is its user interface. This is one area where Baremetrics is the clear winner in the Profitwell vs Baremetrics debate as one thing everyone praises about Baremetrics is its user interface.  

A good user-interface is especially useful for using any tool to the fullest. With a clear and intuitive user interface, Baremetrics users can understand their data and keep track of their metrics with ease.  

Pricing

Unlike Profitwell, Baremetrics does not offer a free version. Baremetrics’ pricing is also a little more confusing than that of Profitwell as users have the chance to decide from a number of different packages based on the features they’d like.

I would suggest that this is the main point that differs Profitwell from Baremetrics. Profitwell provides a free version while Baremetrics only offers a 14-day free trial.

Baremetrics offers four different packages for its users. The base package offers slack tools, forecasting, people’s insights, and other options. Unlike other packages I will mention, this package does not include setup support. This might be problematic if you do not know how the software operates. 

This version also does not have the feature of automated emails and in-app messages that will help you to communicate with your team. This package costs 179 United States Dollars every month.

The second package, which Baremetrics claims is the most popular one, offers all the features mentioned in the first package and also includes in-app messaging and automated emails. This package costs $268/mo.

The third package does not include automated emails and in-app messages. It is directed at the special purpose of retaining the customers you had at one point. This is especially for service providers that see a fall in their user activation rates.

This package includes follow-up emails, In-app questionnaires, and follow-up emails that are for the mentioned goal. This package costs $358/mo.  

The fourth package includes all the mentioned features and is great for software providers that have surpassed a certain level in their respective industries and want to reach new customers and retain the existing ones at the same time. This package costs $447/mo.

One important thing to note here is that Baremetrics does not offer a discount for any long-term subscriptions, unlike most of its competitors.  

Here’s a screenshot from Baremetrics pricing page to help you get a much better understanding of what’s offered in each package.

One good thing about Baremetrics is how customizable it is according to your needs. Having these many options presents one with the opportunity to keep using Baremetrics with small package changes. If you are looking for a long-term service provider that changes its service according to your needs, this is really useful.  

Reviews

“Profitwell is one of my favorite analytics tools for managing subscription activvity and performance. The best feature is all the key reports are already built for you and they are intutive to use.”

Again, pretty much like what I have presented at Profitwell’s advantages, here is a short summary of Baremetrics’ advantages:

1. Profitwell has multiple useful features.
2. Allows better integration with your team. 
3. Good user interface.
4. Flexible price range.

What are Profitwell’s Disadvantages?

Difficult to Set Up

Despite its overall qualities, Profitwell also has some shortcomings. One major shortcoming is how difficult it is to set up. This is especially problematic if you have certain types of data in your hand that you need to integrate with Profitwell.  

There are even some customers who claim that they have lost their already existing data while trying to integrate Profitwell.

Contacting Support Might be Tedious

There is a general problem among customers that Profitwell’s support team takes their time while solving your problems. This is especially problematic if you are trying to set up Profitwell for the first time and have no prior knowledge.  

Although Baremetrics does not include setup support for all the packages, what they offer is better than having no information. However, Baremetrics has its own customer support problems as it is mentioned below.

Reviews

“The numbers that we pull out of Profitwell are around 95% accurate.”

Here is a short summary of Profitwell’s disadvantages:

1. It is hard to set up Profitwell.
2. Profitwell can have many metrics that might not be necessary for most service providers.
3. Customer takes a long time to solve your problems.

What are Baremetrics’s Disadvantages?

Questions Regarding Data Validity

Some users of Baremetrics claim that the data it shows is auto-generated and is not true. There are multiple examples of users complaining about this issue. This is not something to brush off as something trivial.

So far, Baremetrics has given no explanation regarding these accusations as of the time this article was written.  

Tedious Subscription Cancellation

Canceling your subscription with Baremetrics also requires undergoing a tedious process and forces you to call their support multiple times. This sort of attitude, combined with claims of auto-generated data, is not user-friendly, to say the least.  

Sub-par Customer Service

Baremetrics’ customer service could definitely use some work. Sometimes reaching customer service and getting the help you need can take multiple days.  

Reviews

“Cancelling a subscription is a nightmate. You have to schedule a call with them to start the cancelation process, and it took me a month and an extra monthly payment until it got canceled!”

Here is a short summary of the disadvantages Baremetrics has. 

1. The reliability of data is questionable and users have complained about incorrect data being processed by Baremetrics.
2. Canceling your subscription is tedious.
3. Customer service is lacking.

Profitwell and Baremetrics Don’t Cut It? Try HockeyStack!

Trying to figure out what really drives revenue at your SaaS? With HockeyStack, you can consolidate everything from marketing and sales data to product usage metrics and subscription data to help you get a complete picture of your SaaS.

HockeyStack is an end-to-end analytics and attribution tool for SaaS companies. The tool is set up in 5 minutes, is completely no code, and comes complete with a number of templates to help you start tracking your metrics in no time.

HockeyStack has one-click integrations with HubSpot, Stripe, and Paddle so that you can connect your existing data and answer questions, such as:

• What is the average LTV of a blog post?
• Which marketing channel brings the most engaged users?
• What is the demo close rate of my blog posts?
• What is the average churn rate of users who signed up for a blog post?
• What are the common sales objections of users who signed up from my ad campaigns, blog posts, or top-of-the-funnel content?

and many more.

Start using HockeyStack for free!

Key Takeaways

To settle the Profitwell vs Baremetrics, I have analyzed the differences and similarities, advantages, and disadvantages of Baremetrics and Profitwell. This detailed comparison shows that both are specialized software, each of which are best suited to certain types of users.

I hope the breakdown pros, cons, and reviews of the tools help you make the right choice for your business.

FAQ