It’s time to fluff and refresh Kill Bill’s most frequently asked questions (FAQs)! If your question isn’t covered here, make sure to check Part 1 and Part 2.
General Questions About Kill Bill
I’m a software consultant/shop. Can I implement Kill Bill for my customers?
Yes, others have used Kill Bill as white label software. The source code has a permissive Apache Version 2.0 license, and you can hide the Kill Bill brand from the API and user interface. If you need further information, please feel free to contact us.
What is Kaui?
Kaui is a browser-based application that enables back-office staff (in Finance, Marketing, Development, etc.) to perform Kill Bill-related tasks, such as creating customer accounts, subscriptions, adding plugins, and so forth. “Kaui” (KAUI) stands for Kill (Bill) Admin User Interface. For more information, see the Kaui User Guide.
Why should I choose Kill Bill over a SaaS alternative?
Using a SaaS solution (for example, Zuora or Chargebee) seems like a smart business decision. These types of SaaS billing solutions have been around for several years, know their clients’ needs, and often give the impression that they can solve all of your billing problems.
But just as there are benefits to using a SaaS billing solution, there are also disadvantages, and they aren’t minor. The largest disadvantage is if you work with a SaaS billing provider, all of the data associated with your revenue is in their hands – not yours. That precious data can even be difficult to access at times, believe it or not.
Before you lock yourself into a SaaS subscription billing vendor, consider the following:
- Restrictions in integrating with existing business software (accounting, CRM, etc.)
- Limited feature sets
- Limited choices in third-party providers, such as for payment processing, tax calculation, fraud detection, etc.
- Issues with testing (limited number of sandboxes at a high cost)
- Inadequate analysis and reporting solutions (i.e., holding your data hostage)
To read more about this, see our article, The Pitfalls of a SaaS Billing and Payments Solution.
Do you have customers in [country name] or in [specific industry] that are using Kill Bill? Can you put me in touch with them?
You can certainly contact us to ask, but Kill Bill users we’ve worked with in the past often restrict us from disclosing this information. We recommend you post this type of question on the Kill Bill Community (mailing list), which is quite active.
Can I see a list of companies that use Kill Bill?
This image from our website displays logos of just some of the organizations that use Kill Bill. We know that the number of Kill Bill installations numbers in the thousands. However, the businesses that use Kill Bill prefer to keep that information private because they view Kill Bill as a competitive advantage.
What kind of support do you offer?
Our main support is offered via the Kill Bill Community (mailing list). We monitor it regularly, and it’s suitable for relatively simple problems.
If you need a short-term consultation, you can sign up for that here. Offered via Slack, these four-hour consultations are intended to help to solve a difficult problem with Kill Bill, discuss if Kill Bill can fulfill your requirements, and discuss topics of that nature.
In addition to the above options, we offer three more levels of support. Two levels are available through a GitHub sponsorship, The other level is enterprise-level support with a service level agreement (SLA); if interested in that, please contact us.
How robust is Kill Bill?
Kill Bill is robust enough that Groupon uses it to handle transactions and payments, with a global revenue of about $967 million (USD) in 2021. In the first quarter of 2022, Groupon processed 22.2 million transactions (Statistica).
We’re very confident that Kill Bill can handle the demands of most businesses. To read more on this topic, check out our blog posts here and here.
Questions About Kill Bill’s Features
What is a plugin?
A plugin is software written on top of the Kill Bill platform that interacts with the system. You would use a plugin to implement a specific feature or behavior that’s not part of the core Kill Bill system. See the Plugin Introduction.
Can I use Kill Bill to send email notifications to customers about their account?
Yes, you can use the Email Notification plugin to send emails regarding late payments, failed payments, and other events that affect customers’ accounts.
Does Kill Bill work with multiple currencies?
Yes! To use multiple currencies, you would define each currency in the catalog. You would also define a currency for those customer accounts that don’t use the system’s default currency. For more advanced currency topics, see the Analytics Guide and Payment Control Plugin Guide.
Can I use Kill Bill to communicate with customers in their native language?
Kill Bill supports translations in the catalog, emails, and invoices. To read more about Kill Bill’s international features, including time zones and currencies, see the Internationalization Overview.
What kind of analytics can Kill Bill provide for my accountants and finance teams?
You can use the Analytics plugin to create reports and view them in real-time with Kaui. The plugin also supports the ability to create reports against external databases.
Questions About Getting Started
I’ve tried to install Kill Bill and/or Kaui, but I got stuck. What should I do?
Make sure you’re familiar with the installation instructions in our documentation. If you’re sure that you’ve followed the steps correctly, you can post a description of your problem on the Kill Bill Community (mailing list). We monitor this list regularly and can usually help you get unstuck.
What’s the quickest way to get up to speed with Kill Bill?
To quickly get an idea of what Kill Bill is and its feature set, read What Is Kill Bill and watch our short overview video. Of course, our website is also a great reference to better understand Kill Bill.
You can then sign up for a self-driven demo. This is a read-only experience in Kaui, our back-office user interface, that demonstrates both Kaui’s and Kill Bill’s capabilities. (We have a short video that explains Kaui as well.)
Next, you can install Kill Bill and Kaui and get familiar with creating a tenant, account, catalog, subscriptions, and more, either via Kaui or API calls.
If you’re having trouble, make sure to double-check the documentation (guides and API). You can post your questions to the Kill Bill Community.
