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Stripe migrates Stripe Subscriptions users to more expensive Stripe Billing

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Re: Stripe migrates Stripe Subscriptions users to more expensive Stripe Billing

#81

Post by vmception »

edwinwee wrote: post #29

Edwin from Stripe here. It’s worth distinguishing between charging money on Stripe (for which you incur payments pricing) and using Stripe Billing (which is a separately-paid product). Stripe Billing has had this pricing for a few years. For some longtime users of Subscriptions, we originally didn’t change their pricing but are doing so now. We think charging a separate fee for our Billing product is fair, given comp…

> Payments is a low-margin business and our customers are (quite reasonably) very price sensitive.

Thanks for tackling a low margin business!

I always look at people like they have two heads when they pitch something like that.

Re: Stripe migrates Stripe Subscriptions users to more expensive Stripe Billing

#82

Post by candiddevmike »

abfan1127 wrote: post #74
candiddevmike wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it should be no more difficult than sending recurring emails. You should have all the data (PaymentProcessorCustomerID, LastBillingDate, etc), run it like you would a email with a retry queue.

its more than that. The "What ifs" get out of control pretty quickly. Prorating, canceling, expired/canceled cards, tend to create a ton of end cases. For instance, a person pays for Feb 15 to Mar 14, the card expires March 1, then the person requests a cancellation Mar 7 and wants a refund. Its not impossible, it just takes a lot of time and effort to weasel out all of these end cases.

In the example you gave, how would stripe billing solve that? This seems like you'd need some kind of manual interaction regardless?

For all the end cases, you manually handle them until they happen with enough frequency to require automation. A simple recurring billing system is absolutely fine for most businesses, and as you scale you can add more bells and whistles to it.

Re: Stripe migrates Stripe Subscriptions users to more expensive Stripe Billing

#83

Post by pixiemaster »

edwinwee wrote: post #29

Edwin from Stripe here. It’s worth distinguishing between charging money on Stripe (for which you incur payments pricing) and using Stripe Billing (which is a separately-paid product). Stripe Billing has had this pricing for a few years. For some longtime users of Subscriptions, we originally didn’t change their pricing but are doing so now. We think charging a separate fee for our Billing product is fair, given comp…

Well, if you start comparing yourselves to chargebee, they have a far more complex product - and really impressive traction in terms of new features being released regularly - combined with a really super support. I have not even seen a single company that deliver on the same level as chargebee does.

Re: Stripe migrates Stripe Subscriptions users to more expensive Stripe Billing

#84

Post by Loughla »

whimsicalism wrote: post #78
sigwinch28 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An extra 0.5% is going to cost you "tens of thousands of dollars"? You're literally moving millions of dollars a year through your billing platform. That's not a little bit of money. That's a lot. Own it. You're not a hostage. You're deeply integrated through nobody's fault but your own.

> You're literally moving millions of dollars a year through your billing platform. That's not a little bit of money. That's a lot. Own it. Nobody said it was a little bit of money? Where is this comment coming from?

I think OP's point was, if you're moving that much money, you shouldn't be relying on a third party vendor; doing so shifts the blame from them, to you, for not controlling your own payments. That's what I read in that post.

I have no idea if it's a good point or not.

Re: Stripe migrates Stripe Subscriptions users to more expensive Stripe Billing

#85

Post by john_minsk »

onassar wrote: post #36
edwinwee wrote: post #29

Edwin from Stripe here. It’s worth distinguishing between charging money on Stripe (for which you incur payments pricing) and using Stripe Billing (which is a separately-paid product). Stripe Billing has had this pricing for a few years. For some longtime users of Subscriptions, we originally didn’t change their pricing but are doing so now. We think charging a separate fee for our Billing product is fair, given comp…

Thanks for jumping in here so quick. I'm sure it'll be a tough thread, but something about this response rubs me the wrong way. It doesn't seem like it's really addressing the change (eg. why is it worth _existing_ customers to be paying an extra 0.5%? The fact that Stripe added features for new customers doesn't really impact those of us who have been with you for 5-10 years). Additionally, I don't recall getting an…

Careful. They might want to develop one more dashboard - showing you structure of the fees and their changes. Brace yourself for another 0.5% fee to pay for it

Re: Stripe migrates Stripe Subscriptions users to more expensive Stripe Billing

#86

Post by TAForObvReasons »

Gaelan wrote: post #67
tebbers wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a pricing increase? It's just their pricing for Stripe Billing. It's been 0.5% since at least 2018 which is when I started using it. I'm not sure why this has suddenly exploded on HN.

IIRC, Stripe used to have a "subscriptions" API at no extra cost. A few years ago, when they launched Billing (with the 0.5% fee), they moved everyone over to that but grandfathered in the old pricing. Now they're making everyone pay for it.

They've been chipping away at the grandfathered accounts this year.

What bothered me the most was earlier this year when they stopped refunding fees when issuing refunds. They rolled out a feature during the early days of the pandemic, and in the same week they started charging older accounts for refunds https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22371330

Re: Stripe migrates Stripe Subscriptions users to more expensive Stripe Billing

#87

Post by tschellenbach »

This is particularly annoying since Stripe Billing was initially free, you start using it and now it suddenly costs 0.5% * revenue. Which can be quite substantial. The more frustrating part is that it's currently at best a beta quality product. Reporting and interface for the finance side of the company leaves a lot to be desired. Anyone know any solid alternatives?

Re: Stripe migrates Stripe Subscriptions users to more expensive Stripe Billing

#88

Post by texasbigdata »

loceng wrote: post #38
edwinwee wrote: post #29

Edwin from Stripe here. It’s worth distinguishing between charging money on Stripe (for which you incur payments pricing) and using Stripe Billing (which is a separately-paid product). Stripe Billing has had this pricing for a few years. For some longtime users of Subscriptions, we originally didn’t change their pricing but are doing so now. We think charging a separate fee for our Billing product is fair, given comp…

The economies of scale that Stripe is now benefitting from doesn't make your reasoning sit with me very well.

Yeah I mean, maybe being larger as a financial institution has some costs also. Primarily that it sucks. I interviewed at a hedge fund that had to submit (something) to (some regulatory body, don’t remember) because it was too systemically important. But they required dedicated staff to handle the regulatory burden. Given how tightly staffed that place was it was actually a meaningful portion of headcount measured as a percentage.

Maybe some of those economies of scale are only 80% realized if you’re a financial institution. And rightfully so.

Don’t have a horse in the game here re: Stripe, just hoping the damn kids will go on someone else’s lawn.

Re: Stripe migrates Stripe Subscriptions users to more expensive Stripe Billing

#89

Post by raiyu »

paxys wrote: post #44
candiddevmike wrote: post #35

In my opinion, no one should be using recurring billing for any provider. If you do, you've basically tied yourselves to them--if you ever decide to move, you need to somehow get the subscription details for every customer migrated into your app! Instead, view your payment processor as just another PaymentProcessor enum. Own the recurring subscriptions yourself, or be willing to pay for someone to do it for you.

That is easier said than done. Managing recurring billing is a significant engineering problem, and getting tied in with a provider and paying a surcharge is still worth it over maintaining an entire in-house dev team to do it.

I guess now it's as simple as checking whether cost of a dev team to do recurring billing is < 0.5%
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