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SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

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Re: SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

#21

Post by drm237 »

sachinag wrote: post #3

If you're concerned about credit card portability (as this blog author is), your only real options are Braintree's vault or Recurly. Chargify still stores the CC at the gateway level, so you have gateway lockin, which is no different than the PayPal/Amazon case the author bemoans.

Authorize.net also has a vault product.

Chargify still stores the CC at the gateway level, so you have gateway lockin

I don't understand this. Gateways that provide a vault for storing credit card information give you a way to get it out in order to process the transaction. So if you can get the information out, couldn't you just transition to a new gateway if necessary. Only sites like Paypal and Amazon really have lockin.

Re: SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

#22

Post by lsc »

drm237 wrote: post #20
lsc wrote: post #18

hm. how do customers feel about you changing the pricing without their input? I mean, it sounds like the guy is clear ahead of time, but if he thinks he will lose customers if he reminds the user that they are paying, uh, doesn't that mean that he is basically acknowledging that he is not providing a service the user values at full price? that he is just hoping they forget to cancel? It's related to something I've st…

how do customers feel about you changing the pricing without their input? I would assume they feel the same way anyone who has ever had phone, cable, or internet service feels. Outside of a contract, prices go up over time. You send out an email 30 days in advance, tell them it's going to happen, and then do it. If they want to cancel and get a refund, ok, no big deal. Virtually everyone is familier with recurring bi…

>I would assume they feel the same way anyone who has ever had phone, cable, or internet service feels.

If I treated my customers as poorly as comcast does, I'd be out of business, and I say up front that you should only be my customer if you can tolerate poor service.

Re: SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

#23

Post by jlarkin »

For startups looking for Subscription Billing, Aria Systems has two options. The first is our powerful & full featured Aria Billing Platform.

The second is Aria SubscriptionsPlus - this is Subscription Management on the PayPal platform. Unlimited customers, you can set up subscription / promotions / usage plans, the data is yours, and you can accept Credit Cards and PayPal. And yes, there is customer support. Pricing is free for the first 6 months, and after it's $40 plus any PayPal fees. More information: http://www.paypal.com/SubscriptionsPlus

Re: SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

#24

Post by jlarkin »

brianbreslin wrote: post #2

Chargify seems to be on the right path. I do think they could use some work on their flexibility though. Holding credit card data is always a bitch. Paypal website payments pro's API lets you issue coupons and discounts that are baked into the initial signup. However midcycle its tough to issue a discount. They also have some bugs in their API with their callback urls etc.

Actually, Aria SubscriptionsPlus for PayPal lets you manage discounts, etc. with the customer service tools.

Re: SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

#25

Post by joevandyk »

jasonemerick wrote: post #6

With Amazon's SimplePay subscriptions, you can offer a free trial or a promotional period at the start of the subscription contrary to the what the author of the post says. https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business/asp/subscript...

Pretty sure you didn't read closely enough.

Re: SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

#26

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

BRadmin wrote: post #8

From Braintree's site: To try and help address this problem, we created a Credit Card Data Portability initiative (press release). It's an opt-in community of payment providers that agree to allow a merchant to port credit card and other associated information if the merchant ever decides to move to another provider. http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/data-portabili...

I'm a huge fan of Chargify after talking to them a little, and they weren't taking any new Braintree customers. It had to do with Braintree API versions (v1 vs v2). I didn't want to wait, so I went with Authorize.net

Maybe Authorize over Braintree was a mistake, but switching to a different CC processor than Amazon was definitely the right move.

Re: SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

#27

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

texel wrote: post #17

It's interesting that the author didn't mention a third option– you can build your own subscription management and dunning code, and then foist the high-risk credit card related stuff onto a third party. I'm not sure I'd necessarily suggest doing this over going with a provider like Chargify or Spreedly (both look like cool services), but that's what we've done at Onehub, and while it was painful, it's worked extreme…

I did mention that option, and basically said it was a bad idea. I think that most SaaS apps are better served by offloading as much as possible onto third parties. Just like I wouldn't encourage someone to write their own web server, I wouldn't encourage them to write a subscription billing service. It's a pain. Pay someone else to handle that and focus on your core competency, whatever that is.

Re: SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

#28

Post by brass_cannon »

drm237 wrote: post #21
sachinag wrote: post #3

If you're concerned about credit card portability (as this blog author is), your only real options are Braintree's vault or Recurly. Chargify still stores the CC at the gateway level, so you have gateway lockin, which is no different than the PayPal/Amazon case the author bemoans.

Authorize.net also has a vault product. Chargify still stores the CC at the gateway level, so you have gateway lockin I don't understand this. Gateways that provide a vault for storing credit card information give you a way to get it out in order to process the transaction. So if you can get the information out, couldn't you just transition to a new gateway if necessary. Only sites like Paypal and Amazon really have…

The way most vaulting services work is, you pass through credit card details, and they store in their vault. They then send you back a token to reference for future transactions. In most cases, you won't have the ability to pull back the full vault entry (specifically the credit card number) from them. This is the lock in that's being referred to here. Most gateways who won't let you export the cc data yourselves, or to another provider will cite PCI compliance issues, but it's all smoke and mirrors. They just don't want you to leave.

And to be 100% clear, Chargify is not a gateway or anything like that, so they don't do any storage - they're a SaaS provider that has built their app to offer recurring billing on top of a bunch of other gateway's APIs.

Re: SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

#29

Post by MikeMacMan »

lsc wrote: post #22
drm237 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do customers feel about you changing the pricing without their input? I would assume they feel the same way anyone who has ever had phone, cable, or internet service feels. Outside of a contract, prices go up over time. You send out an email 30 days in advance, tell them it's going to happen, and then do it. If they want to cancel and get a refund, ok, no big deal. Virtually everyone is familier with recurring bi…

>I would assume they feel the same way anyone who has ever had phone, cable, or internet service feels. If I treated my customers as poorly as comcast does, I'd be out of business, and I say up front that you should only be my customer if you can tolerate poor service.

The point is that everyone is used to this pattern: free trial that will switch to paid subscription unless you cancel.

Re: SaaS Subscription Billing, or How to avoid getting your n*ts in a vice

#30

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

lsc wrote: post #18

hm. how do customers feel about you changing the pricing without their input? I mean, it sounds like the guy is clear ahead of time, but if he thinks he will lose customers if he reminds the user that they are paying, uh, doesn't that mean that he is basically acknowledging that he is not providing a service the user values at full price? that he is just hoping they forget to cancel? It's related to something I've st…

doesn't that mean that he is basically acknowledging that he is not providing a service the user values at full price?

Well, the users seem to like the service, and they're willing to pay full price. That's good enough for me.

long term, you are better off providing enough value that the customer is willing to take active action to stay.

Good luck with that. I take the stance of provide something of value AND make it easy to pay. I guess you could say I want to have my cake and eat it too.

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