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Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

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Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#51

Post by SaltySolomon »

Thaxll wrote: post #29
tiffanyh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twilio is the same. They use Zoom & Slack internally, not their own video and chat offerings. Dogfooding is a good thing. You’d be surprised how few companies actually do it (which is terribly shocking).

This sounds terrible, it shows a lack of confidence in your own product, imagine if Google internally would use Zoom... I can tell you that devs that use their own product deliver better quality.

I mean, it also creates a circular dependency, if you have an issue with your own product and trying to fix it then you can suddenly not communicate.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#52

Post by crazygringo »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #35
tiffanyh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twilio is the same. They use Zoom & Slack internally, not their own video and chat offerings. Dogfooding is a good thing. You’d be surprised how few companies actually do it (which is terribly shocking).

"Dogfooding is a good thing" That gets repeated a lot but I have observed the opposite when you have a diversified company dogfooding an internal product that isn't strategic in their portfolio, or is targeted at a market segment that the company doesn't belong to. I have seen companies hamstring themselves by using a product that isn't the best offering for them or a poor technical fit, only because it is their own…

Yup.

The idea behind dogfooding is that you get more/better feedback and more internal pressure to fix problems.

But the product team should already be getting feedback from a diverse set of customers. And if they're not, that's what needs to be fixed.

Dogfooding can also result in overprioritizing only your own company's product needs, and at worst the ultra specific issues that one particularly vocal VP is having, to the detriment of the overall customer base. (I've seen it happen way too many times.)

Companies should use the best tools for the job, not necessarily the ones they make themselves. If those are the same, then great. If not, then also great.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#53

Post by culturestate »

nulbyte wrote: post #41
MichaelCollins wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the system happened to break in a way that was opportune for the employer but ripped off the employee, it's better to point fingers at Oracle than your own company.

Doesn't the company face the same risk with its clients?

Corporate liability to customers and corporate liability to employees are two very different things.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#54

Post by traceroute66 »

Xero is the same and it really pisses me off.

In Xero you've got something called a "Xero Network ID", which is an ID that you can give to other Xero users and they can link it to your contact record on their account, which means that invoices they raise are automatically posted in your Xero account without you having to lift a finger.

Now, you would have thought that Xero would do the same for their subscription invoices (i.e. automatically post them to your Xero account).

But no.....

Instead they send you one by email which you then have to post manually onto your Xero account. And they do that every ... single ... month.

If you ask them "why ?", you get an arrogant reply that along the lines of "we're too big to use Xero, so go away you silly little person".

But that doesn't answer the question. Xero is their dogfood. So even if they use Sage or whatever internally, surely it is not that difficult for them to build an integration so they can post their damn invoices to the customer's accounts.

Rant over. ;-)

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#55

Post by devmor »

This article comes at a welcome time for me. I've been building out a usage-based B2B product and have wracked my brain on how to properly implement billing (without having to pay large upfront fees or integrate a more complex gateway that I don't really need).

I'd never heard of Lago before but I think I'll give it a try.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#56

Post by loriverkutya »

bombcar wrote: post #39
tiffanyh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twilio is the same. They use Zoom & Slack internally, not their own video and chat offerings. Dogfooding is a good thing. You’d be surprised how few companies actually do it (which is terribly shocking).

It makes sense to me - if Twilio undergoes a massive outage, do you want them to be unable to communicate as they try to fix it? So they use Zoom and Slack.

They could use staging. Or the solution they have in place in case they have a video conference system outage while they are fixing their own outage.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#57

Post by throwaway5752 »

pseudostem wrote: post #48
throwaway5752 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Dogfooding is a good thing" That gets repeated a lot but I have observed the opposite when you have a diversified company dogfooding an internal product that isn't strategic in their portfolio, or is targeted at a market segment that the company doesn't belong to. I have seen companies hamstring themselves by using a product that isn't the best offering for them or a poor technical fit, only because it is their own…

Fanboy Alert! (I may be biased). Not a company, but OpenBSD dogfoods exclusively. And they do deliver a good product.

OpenBSD sure does - also a fan - and dogfooding can be a really good thing. But one has to approach it critically and sensibly.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#58

Post by marcosdumay »

randomdata wrote: post #23
willio58 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah most of the time I hear conflict of interest I don’t believe it at this point. Conflict of whose interest? If you used your own product wouldn’t you learn some issues that exist within it?

> If you used your own product wouldn’t you learn some issues that exist within it? Isn't that the worry? Say a bug in your timekeeping software underreported hours worked and that lead to workers not being paid their agreed upon rate. When it goes to court you now have to prove that you didn't maliciously introduce the bug to save on employment costs, whereas if it is a third-party providing the software it's their…

>"Conflict of interest" is ultimately just another way to say "I don't want to assume the liability when things go sour".

No, it's not.

It's "malice is not a reasonable explanation for things going wrong". It only changes liability when it follows malice, what is much rarer than you seem to think.

It is also a way to assure people that you won't do something bad.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#59

Post by sjtgraham »

Thaxll wrote: post #29
tiffanyh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twilio is the same. They use Zoom & Slack internally, not their own video and chat offerings. Dogfooding is a good thing. You’d be surprised how few companies actually do it (which is terribly shocking).

This sounds terrible, it shows a lack of confidence in your own product, imagine if Google internally would use Zoom... I can tell you that devs that use their own product deliver better quality.

Then why does Google Meet suck?

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#60

Post by edwinwee »

First off, yes, Stripe uses Stripe to bill our own customers. In fact, for our larger customers who have negotiated complex pricing plans, we're currently migrating much of our manual billing to a system that's inspired by Stripe Billing.

Second, this article seems to miss the point of Stripe. It seems to want to build a platform, which is what Stripe Connect is designed for.

For example, charging a percentage fee is just one line (https://stripe.com/docs/api/application_fees):

` $application_fee_percent = 5`

Slack, Atlassian, and Notion have all built their B2B billing on top of Stripe. But we don't target just B2B or B2C ecommerce in case a business has multiple revenue streams (which many businesses are increasingly adding). In fact, we designed Billing so it can flex across any business model—per-seat, usage-based, tiered, or even graduated.

This is the point of Stripe. A single stack that flexes with your business as it grows and pricing that's public.

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