"We wanted to stop having billing be a project. With Schematic, building new features doesn't require refactoring billing every six months." - Miguel Oller, CTO, Makeswift

Customer Overview

Makeswift is a website builder designed for teams that need to create and manage websites quickly and efficiently. Leveraging a no-code platform, Makeswift enables users to build and customize websites without extensive technical knowledge, making it an ideal solution for businesses of all sizes.

Before Schematic

Before implementing Schematic, Makeswift's pricing and packaging was tightly coupled with their billing logic. They relied on a cumbersome setup using Stripe metadata to control entitlements, which made it challenging for the sales team to manage what customers should have access to independently. This complexity diverted significant engineering resources to maintain and delayed product initiatives.

Challenges

Makeswift faced several challenges that drove them to seek a new solution:

• GTM Dependency on Engineering: The existing system made it difficult to introduce or adjust product features, so the sales team needed to engage engineering to manage customer entitlements or introduce new plans frequently.

• Technical Debt: The tightly coupled billing and packaging logic resulted in an accumulation of technical debt across the application.

• Frequent Billing Projects: Engineering frequently needed to take on time-consuming billing projects, which diverted attention from core product initiatives.

• Scalability Issues: More customers required more maintenance and more custom exception management in the application. 

Solution

Makeswift selected Schematic to address their challenges after realizing the benefits of decoupling billing from packaging and allowing business users to manage entitlements independently. The implementation was structured into a sprint-long project, with most of the time dedicated to refactoring their legacy billing system. Once refactoring was complete, integrating Schematic required minimal code changes, primarily involving configuring the application to replace Stripe metadata with Schematic flags.

"The trade-off between feature development and packaging doesn't exist anymore. Using Schematic allows us to manage entitlements efficiently and focus on core competencies." - Miguel Oller, CTO, Makeswift

Outcomes

Deploying Schematic at Makeswift led to several positive outcomes:

• Autonomy for GTM: The GTM team is able to modify customer entitlements without involvement from engineering, especially for custom configurations that are common for enterprise customers.

• Reduced Technical Debt: By decoupling billing logic from packaging, Makeswift has significantly reduced the amount of code that must be maintained in the application.

• Increased Engineering Capacity: Unlocked engineering capacity for faster product velocity.

Value Delivered

By implementing Schematic, Makeswift enabled GTM team members to manage entitlements and freed up engineering resources for core product development. The solution reduced technical debt and eliminated the need for frequent billing projects, resulting in cost savings and higher product velocity.