How HouseCanary Cut Billing Time by 90% and Unlocked PLG Growth

The Challenge: Broken Billing, Manual Headaches

HouseCanary offered a mix of subscription and usage-based pricing, but their legacy billing stack, centered on Zuora, was not built to handle usage data at scale. Each month, engineering had to manually reprocess historical usage data by re-uploading records, fixing mismatches, and re-running billing jobs in order to generate accurate invoices.

As they prepared to launch a new product line with self-serve sign-up, it became clear that the billing system would not cope with higher volumes. Support costs would balloon, and engineering would remain in a billing fire-fight instead of focusing on customer growth.

Why m3ter for usage-based billing

HouseCanary evaluated several usage-based billing platforms with a clear set of requirements: support for both enterprise and self-serve motions, robust Salesforce and NetSuite integrations, and the flexibility to handle a wide variety of usage-based pricing models.

They also seriously considered building a solution in-house. With a strong engineering team and prior experience compensating for gaps left by the billing provider in their existing solution, the idea initially seemed feasible. In fact, they had already built a significant portion of what a custom system would require — ingesting contract structures, allocating usage, and generating billing logic in their own code.

Instead of repeating that investment and accepting ongoing maintenance overhead, the team went deep on evaluating external platforms. They created test environments with real-world plans, replayed usage data, and validated how each platform handled their billing scenarios.

m3ter stood out for its usage-first architecture, flexible plan modeling, and excellent developer experience. It was the only platform that allowed them to configure and operate both self-service and enterprise billing models without rewriting core systems.

Implementation: One-Time Tax, Long-Term Freedom

Although the broader billing overhaul included Salesforce CPQ  and associated quoting systems, the technical integration with m3ter was fast. Usage ingestion, webhooks, and billing automation were described as “set it and forget it.” Once these components were integrated and configured, they required little to no ongoing manual effort.

They used m3ter’s data tools to replay months of usage and validate accuracy before launch.

Flexibility and Growth

Before m3ter, making changes to billing plans or launching new features was too costly and time-consuming. Today, pricing changes can be implemented by Sales Ops or Product without Engineering involvement. This allows them to iterate, experiment, and expand more rapidly across customer segments. With m3ter, they can easily adapt usage-based pricing models to fit different customer needs without requiring engineering support.

Self-serve customers get instant access with sign-up and billing via Stripe and m3ter, while enterprise contracts flow through Salesforce CPQ to m3ter and NetSuite, all with full automation and data integrity.

Looking Ahead

For HouseCanary, m3ter didn’t just fix a broken billing process. It unlocked a fundamentally new way of operating. What was once a drain on engineering time is now a streamlined, scalable system powering both enterprise deals and PLG self-serve growth.

They’ve gone from reactive billing fixes to proactive monetization. New pricing models are launched faster, sales ops have real control, and customers get real-time visibility, all without needing a developer involved.

If your team is spending more time reconciling invoices than scaling revenue, it may be time to rethink your billing architecture, just like HouseCanary did.