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Media Makers
- 2,837
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Memberships
- 600,000+
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Revenue in 2024
- 18M €
Steady Charger
When your payment platform costs more than it delivers, it's time to take control.
The Story
Steady had grown to 600,000 accounts, but their off-the-shelf payment platform Chargebee had become a roadblock. Steady had grown to 600,000 accounts, but their off-the-shelf payment platform Chargebee had become a roadblock.
They decided to build their own payment system - and to work with bitcrowd.
A product for
Steady
The Challenge
The stakes were high: Steady acts as a financial intermediary, handling payouts to publishers and tax obligations to the state. Any billing errors would cascade into accounting problems and regulatory issues. They needed to migrate 600,000 users without missing a beat - but didn't have the team capacity to pull it off. Their backend developers were already overstretched - drowning in maintenance tasks with no capacity to tackle the migration they desperately needed.
The Journey
bitcrowd stepped in as the extended team Steady needed. Over multiple iterations from 2021 to 2025, we took ownership of self-contained work packages while collaborating closely with Steady's skilled in-house team. Throughout, we positioned ourselves to take pressure off Steady's backend developers - identifying requirements, scoping work, implementing features, and anticipating edge cases so their team could focus on their core application.
Project Timeline
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2021
Designed and built the core membership, billing & payments system - reverse-engineering Chargebee's behavior
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2023
Added support for trials, gifts, and enhanced features as Steady's business evolved
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2025
Implemented German-compliant invoicing and orchestrated the staged migration of all 600,000 accounts
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2025
Orchestrated the staged migration of all 600,000 accounts to the new in-house billing system
The Solution
Finally, we handed the final migration pieces back to Steady's team. The handover was smooth, the lights stayed green, and the SaaS fees are history.
Steady now has complete control over their billing infrastructure.
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Significant cost savings
No more SaaS fees on 600,000 accounts
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Flexibility
to innovate without vendor constraints
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An admin system
that their support team can actually use
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Legal compliance
built into the foundation
How bitcrowd Helped
We acted as the capacity your overstretched team needs. Rather than forcing Steady to choose between maintaining their core product and building critical infrastructure, we took ownership of the entire migration project - from requirements gathering to implementation to QA.
The result: Your team gets their capacity back while mission-critical projects get done. No hiring headaches, no knowledge gaps, no roadblocks.
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Autonomous execution
We didn't need hand-holding. We coordinated directly with stakeholders, refined requirements, and delivered finished work packages
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Risk management
We ran progressive migrations on staging (5 users → 500 users) to identify and fix edge cases before production
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Domain expertise
We reverse-engineered complex billing logic, navigated German tax law, and built robust systems that handle financial data correctly
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Smooth handover
We built for Steady's team to maintain, not for ongoing dependency
Have we got you interested?
If you have questions about the the processes behind this project, or have a similar project in mind, let's talk!