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Show HN: Subscription Billing for Developers and Startups

billforward.net

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Re: Show HN: Subscription Billing for Developers and Startups

#12

Post by diminish »

billforward wrote: post #10
dan_bk wrote: post #5

If I understand correctly, the deal here is "get a higher level 'Stripe', pay an additional 1% transaction fee" (above $10K+ total transactions).

thats correct, BillForward offers a deeper subscription stack making it easier and faster to start billing and handling upgrades, downgrades, switch plans etc....

I m currently trying to integrate stripe subscription api, for my soon to be launched service. Could you tell me why I should consider you instead of them?

Re: Show HN: Subscription Billing for Developers and Startups

#13

Post by lostpixel »

jv22222 wrote: post #7

Nicely executed, but as a developer I don't understand the value proposition. Especially when it's so easy to do all this stuff. Maybe it's for non developers?

Hi, thanks for the feedback on messaging.

What we are trying to do is enable companies to have a single billing platform that grows with them from simple flat priced subscriptions all the way up to subscriptions which have multiple components and pricing strategies.

For example some of our customers sell their subscriptions with 3 or 4 components, for example international calls, local calls, 4g usage, 3g usage etc. Inside each of these units they give discounts the more you use. For example up to 100 minutes of X is $1 a minute, whereas anything above 100 minutes X is charged at 75c a minute.

Re: Show HN: Subscription Billing for Developers and Startups

#14

Post by billforward »

joshmlewis wrote: post #9

What does it do? I'm confused. Do I get a form or do I still have to build that? You should answer these questions.

Hey, we provide a hosted out of the box subscription checkout for users who do not want to build. We also support you building your own checkout via our API

Re: Show HN: Subscription Billing for Developers and Startups

#15

Post by lostpixel »

diminish wrote: post #12
billforward wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats correct, BillForward offers a deeper subscription stack making it easier and faster to start billing and handling upgrades, downgrades, switch plans etc....

I m currently trying to integrate stripe subscription api, for my soon to be launched service. Could you tell me why I should consider you instead of them?

As pointed out by dan_bk we provide a bunch of features above the plan based subscriptions Stripe offer.

If you think you are going to be selling your product with usage based pricing, or want to use tiered pricing then we can add value from what you get with Stripe. Feel free to drop me an e-mail at ian AT billforward . net and can talk through you use-case.

Re: Show HN: Subscription Billing for Developers and Startups

#16

Post by nacs »

owenversteeg wrote: post #8

Aside from one major flaw [0], I really liked the website. Great use of humor, great pricing, cleanly designed, and I can see clear benefits over other products. Then I went to sign up and it all came apart. Firstly, I didn't get the email that I was supposed to (even after waiting a while.) Then, I went to sign in, figuring that I didn't need the email anyway. Once I did this, I was greeted with a confusing screen:…

I had a similar experience after signup.

First, Billforward tells you to check your email after you signup which I waited a few minutes for then found it contained no activation link or anything (it just contains some "see our docs" type message). So you let me signup successfully then have me exit your site to read an email that is not required to then come back to the site to login? Why not just log the user in right after signup? Or at least send the user to the login page after signup. This round trip from signup to useless email to login was a waste of time.

I then logged in to see a message telling me to setup a unit of measure. What that is supposed to be I have no idea. The tooltips on the units of measure modal offer no real help. Why not just do a "Create a billing plan" wizard or something similar. Also on the sidebar, there is a link that says "Dunning" that contains no helpful text and just another empty table. If I have to Google a word and read a wikipedia entry to figure out what it's for, you've failed in your mission to 'simplify'.

For a site that is supposed to make billing easier the site is incredibly confusing and unintuitive.

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