Beyond Legacy Billing: How Shadow Transformed Operations to Launch Products 3x Faster and Enter 5 New Markets

Shadow provides cloud-based virtual machines accessible from any device, serving both gamers and professional users like architects and video makers. Shadow's mission is to provide a seamless and scalable cloud computing experience for both B2C and B2B users.

The Challenge

Legacy Billing Creates Bottlenecks

Shadow was at a crossroads. With ambitious plans to expand both its user base and product offerings, it faced a significant obstacle: its existing billing system simply couldn't keep up.

"Our previous setup presented real challenges for our growth objectives," Riaz Hatia, Engineering Manager at Shadow, explains. "We were using Stripe Billing and our in-house product catalog, but without a properly structured system, introducing new offerings became increasingly complex. Our team was managing manual subscription updates and dedicating valuable development time each month to ensure billing accuracy."

The reality was clear. The pricing portion of a new product launch required weeks of development time. Expanding into new markets meant navigating complex tax compliance and billing configurations with limited automation. Meanwhile, Shadow’s development team spent 8-10 hours monthly addressing subscription issues, instead of focusing on core product innovation.

One particularly challenging task was sending out invoices. While the in-house system could generate invoices automatically, the aftersales team still had to send them individually. This wasted a significant amount of time and prevented the team from focusing on higher-value work.

Shadow recognized it was time for a billing solution that could scale with its ambitions.

The Solution

Finding the Right Path Forward

Shadow knew they needed a change. After carefully evaluating several subscription management platforms, they found their answer in Chargebee.

"We were looking for something purpose-built for subscription billing that would work effectively without extensive configuration," explains Riaz Hatia. "Our primary requirement was a solution with robust API capabilities that would give us the flexibility we needed."

Chargebee stood out from the alternatives by offering exactly what Shadow required. The platform provided a centralized product catalog, allowing the team to manage pricing and availability from a single source of truth. Its built-in tax management functionality addressed one of its most significant pain points for international expansion. The comprehensive API coverage meant Shadow could create a customized implementation that aligned perfectly with their business processes, while the automated subscription lifecycle management drastically reduced the need for manual interventions.

With Chargebee as its strategic billing partner, Shadow was positioned to transform its subscription infrastructure and clear the path for ambitious growth.

The Results

Transforming Billing from Bottleneck to Growth Engine

3x Faster Product Launches

Shadow's new billing system quickly proved its value across multiple areas of the business. Product launches that once took weeks now happened in less than three days—a threefold improvement. This efficiency came from giving product and marketing teams self-service tools to create offers without engineering help.

This flexibility has also positioned Shadow to implement usage-based billing for its upcoming GPU-as-a-service offering. They've worked closely with the Chargebee team to design this new billing model, leveraging the platform's capabilities to avoid building custom invoice calculation systems internally.

Effortless International Expansion

Shadow rapidly expanded its global footprint after implementing Chargebee. Within just months, it successfully launched in five new countries: Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and Spain—an achievement that would have been technically challenging with its previous system.

"After launching our new platform with Chargebee, we expanded into five new countries," Riaz shares. "This international growth, which would have been technically challenging before, happened efficiently. Chargebee removed the barriers slowing our market expansion."

The platform's built-in tax management simplified one of the hardest parts of entering new markets.

With Chargebee, we expanded into five new countries—something that would have been challenging with our previous solution. Chargebee significantly accelerated our international market launch timeline.

Riaz Hatia, Engineering Manager, Shadow

Operational Excellence

Before Chargebee, Shadow struggled with invoice inaccuracies and VAT compliance challenges across North American markets. Chargebee's automated tax calculations solved these critical operational pain points, freeing developers from manual billing processes and ensuring precise financial reporting. Support teams gained better visibility into customer accounts, improving their ability to provide timely service.

What started as a technical upgrade became a competitive advantage that positioned Shadow for faster growth.

Looking Ahead

Building on a Solid Foundation

With Chargebee powering its billing infrastructure, Shadow is exploring usage-based models that enable customers to pay for actual consumption rather than fixed subscriptions.

Chargebee's automation capabilities have enabled Shadow to accelerate its European market expansion strategy. In the near term, Shadow plans to launch in multiple countries.

Ready to harness the power of subscription billing and management to drive revenue growth for your subscription business? Get a demo