I worked at Kagi around 2006, and it was a very odd operation. They still were using Mac quadras for business logic and Win NT4.0 for many servers. They were struggling hard then too.
Farewell Kagi
41–50 of 64 posts
Re: Farewell Kagi
#42As I posted on the other, stillborn, HN thread[1] about this: I had been selling through these guys continuously for the past 19 years. Back when I set Kagi up to handle sales of my apps for Newton OS (1997), they were one of only a few companies offering that kind of thing, and were a familiar name to anybody who bought shareware back then. But, for me, well, I guess the Newton OS gravy train[2] is finally over! :-/…
Perhaps a phoenix-type situation is in order. I'm surprised when anything works for more than a year without incident, these days.
Re: Farewell Kagi
#43I am a current Kagi supplier, and this unexpected closure has me in a bad place. It took a few days to code my system to interface with theirs and to generate licenses automatically for each purchase. I suppose I need to redo all that. I appreciate Kagi for their years of friendly and comprehensive service as well as the next person, but why didn't Kee Nethery support us better during the closure? No migration path t…
Avangate and BlueSnap are two other full service options, I'm using both at the moment as I don't like to have all my eggs in one basket.
Re: Farewell Kagi
#44Kagi was 22 years in business and they write this: > We are sorry we failed you. Kagi, you did not fail. You provide an essential service for what was then called Shareware when it was really hard to do online payment processing.
I used Kagi as a customer (never a vendor) many times in the late 90s and early 2000s and have a lot of appreciation for what they brought to the Mac shareware scene. But I would consider it a failure to shut down an established business with what seems to be absolutely no notice (see other comments here and on Twitter).
Re: Farewell Kagi
#45As I posted on the other, stillborn, HN thread[1] about this: I had been selling through these guys continuously for the past 19 years. Back when I set Kagi up to handle sales of my apps for Newton OS (1997), they were one of only a few companies offering that kind of thing, and were a familiar name to anybody who bought shareware back then. But, for me, well, I guess the Newton OS gravy train[2] is finally over! :-/…
Wow, people were still actively using Newtons? AND spending money in it's ecosystem? Well, will wonders never cease. That's incredible. I guess some folks stick with the things they like when they find them. More power to them!
> AND spending money in it's ecosystem?
Well, it is an Apple product.
Re: Farewell Kagi
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't mind do a bit of coding: * Stripe * PayPal. (You want the "Express Checkout" workflow) (Hint: for increased sales offer both. Stripe is a developer's dream; adding PayPal adds perhaps 30% more sales, although YMMV) If you want someone else to take care of all the details in return for higher commission: * FastSpring (full service, heavyweight) * Paddle (streamlined, focused towards Mac and towards digita…
> Stripe is a developer's dream Unless you're using the JVM. Their Java API is so awful that it feels like you're just shelling out to cURL.
(I'm a developer at Stripe who helps maintain our language bindings.)
+1. The original system was designed to be as flexible as possible and had the advantage of being able to support many different integrations that were straddling many different versions of the Stripe API, and all from within a single version of the Java library.
Its major downside of course is that the same flexibility somewhat compromises the developer experience, and the choice hasn't mapped well onto languages like Java where the expectation is that most functionality should be discoverable by the type system.
If it's any consolation, we're certainly aware of the problem and have a rough plan/roadmap on how to address some of the more appalling blemishes in usability.
Re: Farewell Kagi
#47What did they do? Never heard of them. Edit: Ah, they were like an old-school Amazon? webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GSePr0KJAvoJ:krm.kagi.com/about/ Edit: Why is this post downvoted? There is nothing discriminating here, not even an opinion. Just someone asking what Kagi is. Instead of downvoting you should simply answer the question.
Downvoted because: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+kagi
Re: Farewell Kagi
#48Sad to see. A friend and I developed a niche Mac pro-audio software tool in 2002 and Kagi was pretty much the only turnkey payment solution available. Primitive by modern (post-Stripe) era standards but we processed a few thousand dollars a month through them for several years without issue.
Re: Farewell Kagi
#49I started using Kagi in 1996 for Vestris.com. I was too young to incorporate in Switzerland, so I bought a BVI offshore. Kagi was the payment processor, helping me sell my shareware and sending a check, reliably. You were awesome! I would go to a bank in Geneva to get cash. Sad to see it go, but shareware is no more.
Re: Farewell Kagi
#50I can only echo all the sentiments echoed here – thank you for those reflections.
Kagi allowed me to get started as a developer, and my company has grown a lot since that fateful day in 2002 when I sold the first copy of my software Isadora. In all those years, they were never late with a payment until this month... a payment I suspect will never come now. (Or for which I will be offered pennies on the dollar. Guess we'll have to see.)
Customer support was pretty great; you always got a person who knew what was actually going on and who was super friendly and chill.
Well, farewell. One of those "end of an era" kind of things.
-- Mark