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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

#161

Post by cabalos »

pc wrote: post #149
cabalos wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that spinning this as a several-year grace period is a bit disingenuous. I'm a huge Stripe fan, but this is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Here's the exact notification that went out on April 6, 2018 in the dashboard: "As a user of Stripe Subscriptions, you will get all the functionality of Stripe Billing's starter plan with no change in price. You can continue using it free of charge on your existing Stripe…

You're right. It would have been a lot better if we'd made explicit that we weren't intending to make a permanent commitment. This is good feedback for the next time we do something like this. (Our actual thinking was that we'd iterate on the product for a few years until we were confident it was good and worth paying for -- with both large and small companies using and paying for it -- and then revisit.)

You're welcome; appreciate the response. For what its worth, I have yet to get an email about the increase and HN is the first I've heard of it.

I should have known something was up when Stripe sent out the email survey two days ago about subscription pricing. Very strange that you only sat on those results for a day before pulling the trigger on this. Interestingly, some of the survey answers included concepts of a free tier.

To me, the percentage makes little sense. You could be running 1,000,000 $10/mo subs, or 1,000 $1,000/mo subs and the cost is the same. This pricing model hits high value subscription companies significantly harder, even though Stripe's costs are lower.

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

#162

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #152
merlinbeard wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original title was way more accurate. That is the essence of the change, and the reason why people are so unhappy.

I know nothing about the intricacies of Stripe product offerings, so need to rely on others to come up with an accurate title, which is (as always) our intention. The submitted title implied that Stripe is raising its prices on all recurring charges. As I understand it, that's not true; therefore that title was misleading and needed to be changed. (Site guideline on this: " Please use the original title, unless it is…

[deleted]

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

#163

Post by jnwatson »

xyst wrote: post #94

We really need a way to facilitate money transfer between one or more parties. There are way too many middlemen (credit card processor, credit card network, bank fees, merchant fees, exchange network fees, ...) that artificially inflate the cost of products and services. This is likely worsened when you consider transactions between parties in different countries.

That was one of the hopes of cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, it hasn't panned out (yet).

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

#164

Post by mentos »

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…

Awesome, I setup subscriptions using Stripe for a website a few months ago for the first time and was so turned off by how convoluted the process was I was actually thinking about emailing Stripe to suggest they take a hard look at the process and how to make it easier. Glad to see that was already underway, great work!

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

#165

Post by driverdan »

nathcd wrote: post #23

Is there any downside (other than a little more work for the implementer) to just using their main payment processing API, and to implement subscription billing with a cronjob? This is what sr.ht does [1], at least as of a year ago. If doing it manually now means saving a bunch of money, seems like a no-brainer. [1] https://cmpwn.com/@sir/103074952842876982

The downside is that you have to write and maintain the code and infrastructure to do it. You have to do the math for your business to decide if those costs are lower than the 0.5% fee.

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

#166

Post by merlinbeard »

dabeeeenster wrote: post #21

We're very happy ChargeBee customers - I guess this doesn't affect us as we only use Stripe to store the card details - ChargeBee is the actual recurring billing engine. Not affiliated to CB - just a happy customer!

Do you pay CB the listed prices, or there is significant volume discount?

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

#167

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

tudelo wrote: post #17
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But of course, it ought to be, and there should be no need for the middle-men, certainly not ones that take 2-4% of the transaction.

Yeah but isn't that just the way of the world? Processes can become simpler but at a certain point the complexity of the process is inherent and it would benefit you to employ an expert (individual or entity). You can build a house yourself, with your own hands, but why? I'm not an expert on the whole domain of payment processing but it seems to me there is a lot of non trivial problems inherent with taking payments.…

I propose the governments require the infrastructure for zero-cost, instant transfers be made available to anyone, with open APIs. I don't care who runs the infrastructure.

If you want subscriptions/recurring payments, stored payment methods and all the "fancy" stuff contemporary payment processors offer, you pay for it. If you just want to move money from A to B, it should be easy and it should be free.

The only way for that to happen is for it to be socially provided service.

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

#168

Post by abfan1127 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #82
abfan1127 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're right in this case. I haven't looked at the problem in about 10-15 years (before Stripe had recurring). I remember there being a ton of end cases I had to deal with. We ended up going with Recurly due to it.

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

#169

Post by tallytarik »

Stripe still doesn’t support settling USD payments into a USD bank account on an Australian Stripe account, instead forcing their 2% currency conversion fee on top.

So my fee for every subscription charge is increasing to a an even more ridiculous A0.30 + 5.4%.

Our users have been asking for PayPal for years, and I had always put off integrating because of how frustrating their API was. But it feels like the Stripe developer dream is over. Fine, I’m adding PayPal support. :(

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

#170

Post by lubos »

0.5% is immaterial for subscription-based businesses where profit margins are typically the highest.

But... it adds up.

For example, just looking at the last $39 USD transaction in my Stripe dashboard which gets converted to $53.72 AUD (I charge in USD but receive AUD)

Stripe currency conversion fee: $0.88 Stripe processing fees: $1.69 Total: $2.57

That's 4.78% fee. Now add this new 0.5% and we are over 5% fee on transaction processing.

Is this expensive enough for me to consider alternatives? No.

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