Poll: How do you bill recurring payments? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#61

Post by asnyder » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:24 PM UTC

I recommend trying PayLeap (http://www.payleap.com) They're both a gateway and Credit Card processor. They're also very developer friendly, have the best rates around and have FREE recurring billing. We just switched after meeting them at a developer conference and are very happy with them. Here are their base rates:

$29 Monthly Processing Fee

Transaction Fee: $0.25

Credit Card Rate: 2.15%

No Annual Fee

No Monthly Minimum Fee

No Monthly Gateway Fee

Free Reporting and API

Free Recurring Billing

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#62

Post by techsupporter » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:25 PM UTC

shazow wrote: post #43

I hate the construct that you must be a business in order to make money. Not only that, but you must be a reasonably-successful business. Talk about a chicken and egg problem. I'm trying to bootstrap a product that charges between $10-40/mo per user. Right now I have no users, but I hope to get a few over the next couple of months. What are my options? Do I have to incorporate in order to get a merchant gateway? Do I…

Intuit's GoPayment[1] service is a real merchant account and they take unincorporated sole proprietors. The basic service is free (it's positioned as a competitor to Square) and there's even "an app for that" on iPhone and Android. Their user interface leaves a little to be desired, but it is functional and there's a place for recurring payments to be handled (as long as you have authorization from the cardholder, of course).

My relationship with GoPayment: The co-op I help run uses them as an alternative to Square because GoPayment actually accepts EINs for incorporated entities. I'm just a satisfied customer.

1- http://gopayment.com/

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#63

Post by dan335 » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:28 PM UTC

Recurly. Chargify's prices are a little steep when you're only charging a few dollars per month.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#64

Post by seanharper » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:37 PM UTC

These results are very biased by the early-adopters that frequent hackernews.

There are WAY more people out there are using the recurring functionality of the gateways (ex. Auth.net, Braintree, Linkpoint / First Data Global Gateway) than one of the standalone recurring billing systems (recurly, chargify, etc).

However using those legacy solutions is a SHAME because they are in general quite horrible. They are certainly cheaper, and may seem like the path of least resistance, but they don't do the job well enough for serious companies.

You want something like Recurly, Chargify, Zuora, CheddarGetter, if you are doing either recurring or metered charging of your customers. It will make your life easier and is worth the expense.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#65

Post by moklett » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 5:01 PM UTC

bobx11 wrote: post #41

I use chargify but I don't want to vote them up

If you're willing to share your reason, I'd love to know. I work on Chargify.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#66

Post by Travis » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 5:13 PM UTC

PonyGumbo wrote: post #48

I use Authorize.net with CIM, but handle the recurring billing piece myself.

Same here. I do both recurring (over a time period, recharge) and on-use (essentially saving their cc info, but without storing the cc number...)

I think if I did it over, for the time-based recurring payments I would use chargify or one of the others mentioned in this thread.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#67

Post by jbhelms » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 5:17 PM UTC

I use the Google Checkout recurring payments. I think it is still in beta, but it hasn't failed me yet.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#68

Post by dschn » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 5:18 PM UTC

Paypal Adaptive Payments for chained payments which allows splitting of proceeds at a percentage between one or more partners. When it works most of the time it's great, but there is no recurring API forcing you to use preapprovals and those have a lot of restrictions and caveats. Amazon FPS is only other provider I'm aware of that provides similar functionality.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#69

Post by noodle » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 5:30 PM UTC

marketer wrote: post #50

shazow wrote: post #43

I hate the construct that you must be a business in order to make money. Not only that, but you must be a reasonably-successful business. Talk about a chicken and egg problem. I'm trying to bootstrap a product that charges between $10-40/mo per user. Right now I have no users, but I hope to get a few over the next couple of months. What are my options? Do I have to incorporate in order to get a merchant gateway? Do I…

I think Cheddargetter is friendly to bootstrappers - they have a free plan for up to 20 customers.

not that friendly. i applied to their special branded merchant account and was denied due to low volume.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#70

Post by sammcd » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 5:43 PM UTC

ollysb wrote: post #9

patio11 wrote: post #2

Spreedly provides the logic, Paypal the gateway. It works, it took vanishingly little time to get working eight (a few hours, total), it is fairly inexpensive, and it didn't require a real merchant account, which would be difficult to get for my business. ("You live where? I see. And your business does what exactly? I see. And you have five figures in yearly sales? I see. Thanks, we'll pass.")

The spreedly FAQ implies that you need a merchant account. "How does Spreedly pay me? Spreedly never touches your customers' money - it goes straight into your merchant account." is this not the case?

Paypal covers both Merchant and Gateway bases. So do Braintree and a few others.

If you have your own merchant account you can use paypal for just the gateway, but I don't think this happens very often.