Recurly Helps Resource Guru Focus on Growth

Overview

Resource Guru is going big, fast. The company counts global brands such as Intel, AT&T, and General Electric among their customers. Resource Guru is particularly successful with advertising heavyweights, supporting Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy, Publicis and many more.

Resource Guru is an easy-to-use scheduling tool for teams, who use it to coordinate their efforts and deliver for their customers. One customer calls Resource Guru “the most intuitive and well-designed resource scheduling software on the web today.”

Build Versus Buy

For subscription billing services, Resource Guru faced a ‘make vs. buy’ decision as they were starting the company. Resource Guru co-founder Percy Stilwell has many good things to say about the choice they made: Recurly. After careful research, Stilwell saw that Recurly “would do a better job than we ever could, and save us lots of time and money too.”

Resource Guru’s developers had previous experience in building their own custom subscription billing solution. “It’s a difficult nut to crack. Like many things that may at first appear simple, it’s anything but”, said Stilwell. “If you don’t have 100% confidence in this stuff, it can play havoc with your sleep patterns. Peace of mind is worth a great deal.”

According to Stilwell, this early decision has paid off well. “Recurly has freed us up to concentrate on building functionality that matters to our customers: team scheduling functionality.” Recurly has helped Resource Guru “move fast from the start.”

Resource Guru had a long needs list when looking for a subscription billing solution – all met by Recurly:

Core Billing Features

Dunning management
Accepts all major payment methods
Multi-currency
VAT compliance
Complimentary subscriptions
Free trials; discounts; coupons; credits
Upgrades and downgrades

Security

PCI compliance
Ability to take data with them if ever needed

Integration

Strong API

There are certain aspects of the business that just need to work, and Recurly has never let us down.

Percy Stilwell, Co-FounderResource Guru

In regards to VAT, Stilwell said that other companies have struggled with new VAT rules with varying rates across the European Union – much like US sales taxes (which Recurly also supports). “Recurly has made all that a breeze for us,” said Stilwell. “This kind of ‘out of the blue’ regulation would have been a real setback for us had we built our own subscription system – so we’re very happy customers.”

“There are certain aspects of the business that just need to work, and Recurly has never let us down,” related Stilwell. “Training our Customer Success Gurus on Recurly couldn’t be easier, as the permissions are straightforward and the interface is very intuitive. Whether searching for a customer’s details, issuing a credit, making a refund, or creating a coupon, it’s always quick and easy.”

In the near future, Resource Guru will be adding new features – and upgrading their Recurly implementation. “We’ve always wanted to use Recurly.js,” said Stilwell, citing Recurly’s JavaScript option, “but we started with hosted payment pages to support our payment provider’s requirement for 3D Secure.

We’ve since changed our provider so we can now move to Recurly.js, which is more flexible and powerful. Recurly.js will make it easy to experiment with different pricing models as we work to reduce churn to an absolute minimum.”

Resource Guru seeks to go above and beyond the call of duty in meeting customer needs and has appreciated seeing the same dedication from Recurly. “Recurly customer service is great! Always accurate, helpful, and super fast,” Stilwell said. “They also went beyond the call of duty on one occasion and manually un-expired a coupon which we had printed onto some promotional material. We have a rock-solid partner in Recurly.”

Stilwell cites Recurly as a strong supporting factor in his company’s fast take-off. “We are growing fast and we have made sure that we have built our foundations on a platform that is fully scalable. Recurly is a very important part of the jigsaw, and we look forward to taking things to new heights in the future.”