151–160 of 167 posts
Full disclosure: I run Spreedly, an earlier to market but much less funded competitor to Chargify. Here's the dirty little secret that Spreedly discovered about 18 months ago, and that I'm sure Chargify - like Recurly before them - has now found out for themselves: there are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costin…
But with this pricing change, they're off the list. Sorry. So far it looks like Spreedly will be getting our money.
Some Chargify alternatives: http://cheddargetter.com http://www.spreedly.com http://recurly.com http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com
Just a note that Recurly did this exact same thing several months ago, though they've since changed their prices again. We were literally 1 day away from launching on Recurly when they changed prices. Spooked by the sudden price hike, we spent a good deal of time re-writing our ecommerce on Chargify. And now this. Maybe it's time to just bite the bullet and roll our own solution. Spreedly doesn't provide the same fun…
You can use it with Braintree and have complete control over how the billing runs.
Wow thats a real bummer, I was about to integrate it into an app, but I certainly don't want to blow $99/mo on something that may or may not earn me a small fraction of that Has anyone used Spreedly or CheddarGetter etc? Thoughts? Are there any robust open source self-hosted solutions? (For Django, Rails, PHP?) Considering its just a subscription management wrapper for Authorize.net, shouldn't be too hard to cut out…
Shameless self-promotion, yes, but it's actually relevant. :)
Full disclosure: I run Spreedly, an earlier to market but much less funded competitor to Chargify. Here's the dirty little secret that Spreedly discovered about 18 months ago, and that I'm sure Chargify - like Recurly before them - has now found out for themselves: there are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costin…
Not a fan of their phone support
We have about 35 customers in Chargify, and growing steadily, but $99/month will eat almost half our monthly revenue. Really disappointed.
Really? Almost half your revenue is $99 off 35 customers? You charge your customers marginally more than $2.80 a month? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here with the pricing, but this sounds more like you're getting hurt because you're trying to take micro payments which typically isn't a solved problem (yet).
Not sure how you got that. I'm not taking micropayments via Chargify. I don't think you understood me.
We have about 35 customers in Chargify, and growing steadily, but $99/month will eat almost half our monthly revenue. Really disappointed.
Really? Almost half your revenue is $99 off 35 customers? You charge your customers marginally more than $2.80 a month? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here with the pricing, but this sounds more like you're getting hurt because you're trying to take micro payments which typically isn't a solved problem (yet).
Guys, if this upsets you, you are not in the target market. (Much love, but the real world spends real money on revenue drivers.)
As much as Chargify's new prices are a turnoff, I understand their reasoning. I also understand the outrage. Any uptick in pricing is going to result in unhappy chatter on the Internets.
As someone working on a SAAS project, I'm doubly interested in this news.
1 - for keeping an eye on the competitive landscape for companies like Chargify and Spreedly.
2 - for looking at the side effects of pricing changes and the negative marketing impact
I have this feeling that when I finally release my product, I should price it slightly higher than my gut tells me to ensure that I reduce the risk of any price hike negativity resulting from unforeseen operating costs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a fan of their phone support
At Spreedly we rarely do any phone pre-sales or support, and that's a very intentional choice. As noted above, good phone support is expensive to provide, and one of the ways we've decided to keep costs down (at least for now) is by sticking to email. For those who want phone pre-sales and support, Chargify's offering looks like it could be a good option.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any experience with Braintree's subscription payment service? How does it compare?
The recurring payments capabilities of gateways, such as Braintree, Auth.net, etc. typically are not as robust as the recurring payments capabilities of the companies that specifically focused on that capability such as Chargify, Recurly, Zuora, etc. If you just need to charge the same customers exactly the same amount on exactly the same timeframe, then the capabilities of gateways such as Braintree may be ok for yo…
-Jen (Braintree)