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Schematic

Ship Pricing Faster: Usage based billing & customer portals

2025-05-21

Product Introduction

  1. Schematic is a modern monetization platform designed to streamline revenue generation through usage-based billing, sales-led and product-led deal support, and pre-built components for customer-facing interfaces. It enables businesses to implement flexible pricing models, manage entitlements, and deploy conversion-focused elements like customer portals and checkout flows without extensive engineering effort. The platform integrates directly with Stripe while providing abstraction layers for rapid pricing experimentation and lifecycle management.

  2. The core value of Schematic lies in decoupling monetization logic from product code to accelerate pricing iterations and reduce engineering overhead. By centralizing billing rules, feature entitlements, and customer lifecycle management, it allows product and growth teams to independently optimize revenue strategies while maintaining technical scalability. This approach transforms pricing from a static backend concern into a dynamic growth lever aligned with market demands.

Main Features

  1. Schematic enables usage-based billing implementation without code changes by providing metering infrastructure that tracks API calls, MAUs, credits, or custom metrics while automatically syncing with Stripe subscriptions. Developers instrument events once via SDKs, while business teams configure pricing tiers, overage rules, and hybrid models (seat+usage) through no-code interfaces. Real-time usage dashboards and threshold alerts allow proactive customer engagement before churn risks.

  2. The platform offers dynamic plan and entitlement management through a centralized catalog where product teams define feature limits, trial extensions, and enterprise overrides without developer involvement. Role-based access controls allow sales reps to grant temporary feature access or usage bumps directly from CRM systems. Automated synchronization ensures Stripe subscriptions always align with in-app entitlements, eliminating manual provisioning errors.

  3. Pre-built React components for customer portals, pricing tables, and paywalls provide drop-in monetization interfaces with enterprise-grade customization. Teams white-label layouts using CSS variables, embed interactive usage graphs, and A/B test checkout flows via visual editor. SDKs handle client-side evaluation of feature flags with <50ms latency, combining entitlement checks and usage tracking into single API calls optimized for performance.

Problems Solved

  1. Schematic eliminates the need to hardcode pricing logic across frontend and backend systems, which traditionally causes months-long delays when modifying monetization strategies. By abstracting billing rules into a configuration layer, it prevents technical debt accumulation from frequent pricing experiments and reduces cross-departmental dependencies during GTM launches.

  2. The platform primarily targets growth-stage SaaS companies (Series A to C) transitioning from static subscriptions to usage-based or hybrid pricing models. It serves product managers needing to test monetization features independently, engineering leaders seeking to reduce billing system maintenance, and revenue operations teams requiring CRM-billing synchronization for complex deals.

  3. Typical use cases include migrating from Stripe Billing to support metered usage without rearchitecturing payment flows, unifying self-service and sales-negotiated contracts under single entitlement rules, and deploying localized pricing pages for international expansion. Churn prevention is enabled through real-time usage alerts triggering automated loyalty credit offers via customer portal nudges.

Unique Advantages

  1. Unlike legacy billing platforms requiring full migration, Schematic layers monetization controls atop existing Stripe integration, preserving historical data while adding usage tracking. Competitors like Paddle or Chargebee focus on payment orchestration, whereas Schematic combines feature flagging, entitlement management, and billing automation into a unified developer toolkit.

  2. The platform innovates with monetization-aware feature flags that evaluate user access rights, current usage against limits, and billing status in sub-50ms checks. Flags can trigger automated workflows like plan upgrades when usage thresholds breach or trial extensions based on engagement scores, merging product-led growth mechanics with infrastructure-level reliability.

  3. Competitive differentiation stems from production-ready React components that reduce implementation time from months to days, SOC2-compliant event streaming architecture, and client-side SDKs supporting offline entitlement evaluation. Schematic's Stripe-native approach avoids vendor lock-in risks while providing deeper usage analytics than pure billing systems.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

  1. How does Schematic integrate with existing Stripe subscriptions? Schematic connects via Stripe API to sync products, customers, and invoices while adding metered usage tracking and entitlement layers without disrupting live subscriptions. Existing Stripe webhooks and pricing models remain operational, with Schematic augmenting capabilities through usage dashboards and plan override controls.

  2. Can we implement seat-based pricing with usage overages using Schematic? Yes, the platform supports hybrid pricing models where base plans include fixed seat counts while tracking overages via API calls or custom metrics. Product teams configure seat allocation rules, automated seat upgrade prompts in customer portals, and prorated overage billing through visual policy builders.

  3. What is the typical implementation timeline for core features? Most teams integrate Schematic's SDKs for metering and entitlements within 2-3 development days, with customer portals and pricing tables deployed in 1 additional week using pre-built React components. Full migration from custom billing logic typically takes 3-5 weeks depending on pricing model complexity.

  4. How does Schematic handle free trials without engineering involvement? Growth teams configure trial durations, extension rules, and post-trial conversion workflows through Schematic's web interface. The system automatically applies trial dates in Stripe, gates feature access via flags, and triggers email sequences when trials near expiration—all without code deployments.

  5. Is usage data stored redundantly for compliance purposes? Schematic employs encrypted event streaming with 90-day retention in SOC2-certified AWS infrastructure. All usage metrics write simultaneously to Schematic's audit log and the customer's designated data warehouse, ensuring compliance with GDPR and CCPA data portability requirements.

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