Recovery by Sticky.io vs. FlexPay: Choosing the Best Smart Dunning Solution

Every year, failed payments drain billions from businesses, cutting into profits and jeopardizing customer relationships. 

To recover lost revenue and protect customer lifetime value (CLTV), businesses need intelligent dunning solutions that go beyond simple retry attempts.

But with so many options on the market, how do you choose the best payment recovery software?

Recovery by Sticky.io and FlexPay are two of the most advanced AI-powered smart dunning solutions available today. If you're deciding between them, this guide will break down their key differences and strengths, so you can determine the tool that aligns with your business goals.

What is Recovery by Sticky.io?

Sticky.io’s Recovery is an intelligent dunning tool designed to maximize revenue recovery for both initial and recurring transactions. By automating retries based on customer behavior, Recovery helps businesses:

• Minimize involuntary churn
• Improve customer retention
• Reduce failed payments and credit card declines

With 16+ years of expertise in subscription commerce and high-risk ecommerce, Sticky.io processes $8 billion annually and has powered over 100 million transactions, giving merchants the reliability and scale they need to succeed.

Key strengths of Recovery:

Compared to traditional dunning methods, Recovery improves first-attempt success rates by up to 51% and recovers up to 75% of your declined transactions. 

It is a cost-effective automated recovery solution that maximizes CLTV downstream after the initial recovery while fitting smoothly into existing payment and billing systems.

• Powered by AI and ML: Recovery is backed by advanced machine-learning models and the latest advances in artificial intelligence, using real-time and historical data to predict the optimal date and time to retry a failed transaction.
• Comprehensive coverage: Recovery tackles both initial transactions and subscription rebills, saving up to 75% of failed transactions overall.
• First-retry success: Recovery is extremely precise, saving up to 51% more transactions on the first retry attempt compared to other methods.
• Streamlined integration: Setup takes as little as one to two weeks and works seamlessly with existing billing and payment systems via API.
• Customizable dunning profiles: Recovery offers split testing and granular segmentation for optimized strategies across specific segments of transactions. This has benefits for businesses running in multiple geographies and those looking to isolate strategies by business line or gateway.
• Unmatched data intelligence: Recovery uses more historical and transactional data than any other smart dunning tool to make retry decisions, drawing on over 16 years of data from successful and failed transactions across the high-risk ecommerce and subscription commerce spaces.
• Downstream impact on CLTV: Recovery generates 3.5 additional successful transactions per customer, boosting CLTV. If your average order value (AOV) is $50, a single save with Recovery could really be worth as much as $225 when accounting for future transactions.
• Cost-effective pricing: Performance-based pricing starts at just 20% of recovered revenue, but custom pricing is available to accounts with sufficient decline volume.
• Outperformed FlexPay head-to-head: Science of Skill, a Sticky.io customer that made the switch from FlexPay to Recovery reported a remarkable 40.7% improvement in their revenue recovery rates. Results will vary by industry and by decline volume, but comparisons show strong performance gains.

Shortcomings of Recovery:

• No tools for voluntary churn: Recovery doesn’t include tools for reducing voluntary churn, such as direct customer outreach or save-a-sale offers.

What is FlexPay?

FlexPay focuses on recovering failed subscription rebills using AI-driven payment optimization. Their solutions include Invisible Recovery for involuntary churn and Engaged Recovery for voluntary churn.

Key strengths of FlexPay:

FlexPay shines with its targeted focus on subscription rebills, the use of specific transaction fields, and tools to address voluntary churn. It is particularly effective for businesses prioritizing customer re-engagement and those looking to address subscription cancellations.

• Powered by AI and ML: FlexPay uses machine-learning models and artificial intelligence to predict the optimal time to retry a failed subscription transaction.
• Subscription-focused: It recovers up to 70% of failed subscription rebills. This laser focus on subscription transactions is a strength of FlexPay.
• Advanced field use: Leverages numerous data fields, such as Product SKU and other descriptors, to optimize retry timing.
• Voluntary churn support: Offers Engaged Recovery to actively re-engage customers at risk of leaving.

Shortcomings of FlexPay:

• Limited scope: FlexPay offers support for the recovery of failed subscription rebills, but does not recover failed payments for initial transactions.
• Pricing model: FlexPay costs 25% of recovered revenue over a calculated baseline, which can be less predictable and generally falls on the pricier side for most businesses.

Feature comparison: Sticky.io’s Recovery vs. FlexPay

Cost comparison

Recovery by Sticky.io is typically more cost-effective than FlexPay.

While FlexPay's pricing is fixed at 25% of recovered revenue over a calculated baseline, Recovery offers custom pricing starting at 20% of recovered revenue.

FlexPay does not offer any statistics on medium to long-term impacts of their payment recovery tool and it’s more challenging to truly understand the potential ROI that their service could yield.

With Recovery being able to support 3.5 successful transactions after an initial save, it’s easy to calculate the true return on your investment for the service. 

For businesses seeking a flexible and transparent pricing model, Recovery offers a clear advantage.

Which solution is right for you?

Both Recovery by Sticky.io and FlexPay offer cutting-edge solutions to combat failed payments. However, their differences make each better suited to specific use cases.

Choose Recovery if:

• You need to recover both initial and recurring payments.
• You see a high volume of soft declines and are looking to mitigate involuntary churn.
• You value cost efficiency and comprehensive data insights.
• You are looking to keep your billing and payments technology stack intact and are looking to stand up a solution quickly.

Choose FlexPay if:

• Your primary concern is voluntary churn.
• You want active re-engagement tools for customers at risk of leaving.
• You are not concerned about payment declines on initials.

Still unsure? Connect with one of Sticky.io’s payments health experts for a complimentary analysis. Learn how Recovery can help you build traction that translates into more successful transactions.