Billing Enabled

Damian Moore, Published: 15 May 2022

I’m very excited to announce that we have just launched our subscription billing implementation. This is an important milestone in Audio Audit becoming a self-sustaining business as all development and running costs have been provided by myself the founder so far.

We have enough features, speed and reliability that we are confident we can provide a super service to all levels of users. We look forward to welcoming them and helping them make their podcasts as good as they can be.

This is the last major step before we can proclaim Audio Audit as being out of beta testing so stay tuned for that announcement very soon.

The Plans

One of our core missions is that we’re able to help small and independent podcasts improve and compete with the best. One of the things that makes podcasting great is that there’s a low barrier to entry and we get to hear from so much more of the world than in traditional media. Because of this we’re proud to provide a free plan that should be suitable for productions that don’t produce many episodes per month.

The free plan runs the full suite of checks so anybody can get started for free with no credit card required. We felt this was important so you can really get used to the tool and employees within an organisation don’t need to get approval to use the company credit card.

As you use the tool more and the more hours of analysis you want to perform each month, the more you’ll need to pay. We felt this was the fairest way with the biggest users paying proportionally more. If you find yourself running into quota limits the choice is yours whether to instantly upgrade at a pro rata price or wait for it to renew at the end of your billing month. In addition the more expensive plans also include longer periods of report storage and preferential customer support.

You can peruse the full range of plan packages on our pricing page. If you already have an account you can upgrade or switch plans from within your account settings.

Our Implementation

We hope you find the billing experience pleasant. A great deal of effort was taken to make the process as painless as possible. Firstly we try to explain the differences between plans clearly with the number of hours per month as the headline title for clarity. Secondly we try to show you prices in the currency that is most relevant to you. You’ll find lots of currencies supported and you can switch between them yourself. We think there should be minimal regional restrictions on who can use the service so we chose a payment provider that can support that.

SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies operating worldwide can face a load of tax challenges as sales/VAT needs to be paid in each country you operate in. This is good for ensuring the taxes are spread across the world but quite complex. For this reason our payment provider (Paddle) is also technically the MoR (Merchant of Record). You’ll notice that they are the ones who will show up on your bills and collect your money so they can deal with all the local taxes and leave us to focus on Audio Audit.

All the forms you have to fill in throughout the billing process are as minimal as we could make them and we let you self-serve within your account for tasks like switching plans, updating card details and cancelling. We also try to be as clear as possible with regard to showing what plan is action, renewal dates, past/future payments and invoices.

The Future

As Audio Audit becomes a more sustainable business we can focus our time and energy on the core of the product which is the audio quality checks themselves. We have a long list of checks we want to implement fuelled by a large collection of podcast episodes we noticed with various flaws. This list is growing each week so I don’t see us running out for a long time yet.

Thank you to everyone who’s tested our service so far and for all the feedback we’ve received. Your enthusiasm pushes us to carry on to new heights and we hope to serve you well. I think we could be a great asset to the podcasting community and help take the medium where it deserves to be.