App-solute Success: How OneStream Live Navigates Mobile and Web Subscriptions Efficiently with Chargebee

OneStream Live is a cloud-based, all-in-one live streaming solution that allows hosting live events, recorded videos, and multistreaming across several platforms while incorporating different media sources and innovative elements into video streams. With a remarkable streaming capability across 45+ social media platforms and custom RTMP destinations, and serving 500,000+ active users, OneStream Live is a perfect storytelling platform for diverse consumers – from content creators and marketers to educators and health professionals.

The Problem

Before Chargebee, OneStream Live managed its web and mobile subscriptions on multiple platforms — Stripe and PayPal for web subscriptions (depending on the customers’ payment mode) and Apple and Google for mobile (in-app) subscriptions.

OneStream Live embraced a mobile-first vision and developed successful iOS and Android apps, growing its customer base significantly. But the disparate revenue systems posed severe operational challenges:

• Navigating customer concerns: While OneStream Live meticulously optimized the app interface to provide the best customer experience, the behind-the-scenes subscription processes often presented challenges. “We used to receive frequent support tickets around billing, refunds, or discounts. Upon deeper analysis, it became apparent that these issues primarily arose from the scattering of subscription and revenue data across multiple systems beyond our direct control,” said Hanan Naeem, CEO, OneStream Live.

• Resource-intensive processes: The disconnected systems led to the manual consolidation of revenue data from Stripe, PayPal, Apple App Store, and Google Play Store every month, which made the month-end accounting processes tedious and error-prone.

• Lack of cross-channel insights: The absence of a single source of truth for web and mobile subscriptions hindered obtaining actionable insights on business growth across channels, significantly limiting decision-making.

The Solution

After evaluating multiple subscription management vendors, OneStream Live partnered with Chargebee as it could streamline its subscription operations across channels. Here’s how the team transformed its finance operations with Chargebee:

• Single source of truth for all subscriptions: For the web subscriptions, Chargebee became the single system of record while they continued to collect payments through their preferred payment gateways — Stripe and PayPal. Chargebee's native integrations with Apple App Store and Google Play Store extended this unified view to encompass mobile subscriptions.

• Automatic sync for subscription events: Chargebee's seamless sync of mobile app subscription changes significantly eased the workload for OneStream Live's engineering team. Furthermore, Chargebee's capacity to promptly stay abreast of policy changes from Apple and Google enabled OneStream Live to adapt swiftly, while eliminating the need for extensive maintenance.

• Comprehensive revenue analytics: Chargebee's reports and dashboards seamlessly incorporate both web and mobile subscriptions, eliminating the need to pull data from multiple sources and significantly enhancing the accuracy of critical business metrics such as MRR, ARPU, and churn.

The Result

By entrusting Chargebee with the complexities of subscription management and making it the central system of record, OneStream Live unlocked remarkable benefits:

• Exceptional customer experience: A consolidated view of subscriptions empowered customer-facing teams with rapid access to subscription information, translating to quicker response times. With streamlined processes and automated features, OneStream Live focused on enhancing activation rates and feature adoption.

• Reduced maintenance cost: The shift to Chargebee translated to significant cost savings in development efforts, which would have otherwise been allocated to mobile app subscription management.