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Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

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Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#161

Post by Liron »

kurrik wrote: post #66

(I work on Stripe Billing). This is a question we raise fairly regularly internally at Stripe. The real, prosaic answer is because when we started working on Stripe Billing in 2017, Stripe had already built an internal billing system to bill its own customers. Stripe was 7 years old at that point. At the time, we got lots of feedback from the folks who had built that system. Our goal was to build a flexible billing s…

Love these Stripe HN answers. Seems no other big company has this ability to go on HN and answer a question.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#162

Post by nextaccountic »

0_____0 wrote: post #136

Whenever I hear about a US based payment processor, I feel compelled to mention UPI, India's Unified Payment Interface. Basically, with fairly modest investment, the Indian government put together a system to allow instant transactions between bank accounts. There are no transaction fees. We have so many companies (sometimes the same company with multiple faces - Paypal/Venmo, Stripe, Clover, Square, all of whom want…

Brazil also has one too, Pix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#163

Post by gms »

WanderPanda wrote: post #158
joshpadnick wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Stripe Billing and it's gone very well overall, but the biggest miss for us is that Stripe conflates "contract term" with "billing frequency." We sign up customers for annual contracts but bill them monthly, but Stripe Billing only understands the "bill monthly" part of that. Are there any plans for first-class contract term support coming?

This is one of the darkest dark patterns I'm glad they don't allow it

In B2B often the customer explicitly asks for this - no dark patterns in that case.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#164

Post by sturadnidge »

skissane wrote: post #159
sturadnidge wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people should be down voting you for this comment, but I imagine the reason why is because that's generally not how things work at large companies. Someone in product and/or sales might have made the same argument you have, but in my experience the business response to that argument is something along the line of "you can quantify the cost, but you can't quantify the value (i.e. sales upside) and there'…

I used to work for Oracle. I can recall Oracle sales reps telling me how important it was that we internally used the software we sold to our customers, because if we didn't trust it with our own business, why should they trust it with theirs? Maybe Microsoft doesn't think the same way? Of course, Oracle has so many different software offerings (duplication due to acquisitions, and lots of industry-specific offerings…

Agreed, it's definitely not one size fits all. The story of Amazon migrating off Oracle is probably in the same ballpark (if that story is true - I don't know one way or the other). To which point, again... it's a totally valid perspective that you have!

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#165

Post by gms »

joshpadnick wrote: post #110
kurrik wrote: post #66

(I work on Stripe Billing). This is a question we raise fairly regularly internally at Stripe. The real, prosaic answer is because when we started working on Stripe Billing in 2017, Stripe had already built an internal billing system to bill its own customers. Stripe was 7 years old at that point. At the time, we got lots of feedback from the folks who had built that system. Our goal was to build a flexible billing s…

We use Stripe Billing and it's gone very well overall, but the biggest miss for us is that Stripe conflates "contract term" with "billing frequency." We sign up customers for annual contracts but bill them monthly, but Stripe Billing only understands the "bill monthly" part of that. Are there any plans for first-class contract term support coming?

This is a major reason why we switched from Stripe Billing to Chargebee.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#166

Post by RockingGoodNite »

sturadnidge wrote: post #156
skissane wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but migrating from SAP would cost them millions and take a lot of time. Microsoft's annual revenue is almost US$200 billion. Even if the migration would "cost them millions", they can easily afford it, it would not make any material difference to their ultimate financial position. And, it would actually be justifiable as an investment in their own ERP suite – "eating their own dogfood" would send a signal to their…

I don't think people should be down voting you for this comment, but I imagine the reason why is because that's generally not how things work at large companies. Someone in product and/or sales might have made the same argument you have, but in my experience the business response to that argument is something along the line of "you can quantify the cost, but you can't quantify the value (i.e. sales upside) and there'…

>> Or perhaps more correctly, value is value.

So, Microsoft's own Dynamics offers no greater value than their competitor SAP, even within ... Microsoft.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#167

Post by throw_nbvc1234 »

Robotbeat wrote: post #157
Biganon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, same reason why Microsoft uses SAP instead of Microsoft Dynamics. They would use their own product if they were to start now, but migrating from SAP would cost them millions and take a lot of time.

Just personally, I value companies who "dogfood" their products a lot more than similar companies that don't. An example is 3D printers. Prusa makes fantastic 3D printers, and about half of the structural parts for their printers are printed on their own printers. So they have 600 of their own 3D printers printing 24/7 printing their own parts. That means they are forced to address long-term durability and reliabilit…

I shuddered a bit when i heard that some GCP services are just external wrappers over internal systems. Feels like a bad setup for everyone involved: customers, wrapper owners and internal system owners.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#168

Post by mcqueenjordan »

lazide wrote: post #94
neurostimulant wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Google Meets works flawlessly at Google's office (presumably a short hop away to their data centers via dedicated fiber optics link).

Google has invested heavily in sound management in their rooms, and issued noise cancelling headphones to everyone awhile back they got to take home. That might explain some things.

But isn't Google Meet's background noise cancellation far superior to that of Zoom's? Or maybe I misunderstood your comment.

EDIT: I see above that others have claimed the opposite, but my experience has been different. I simply cannot take a call from a cafe in Zoom without complaints, but Meets is regularly tolerable, according to those I meet with.

Re: Why doesn't Stripe use Stripe Billing?

#169

Post by conductr »

sturadnidge wrote: post #156
skissane wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but migrating from SAP would cost them millions and take a lot of time. Microsoft's annual revenue is almost US$200 billion. Even if the migration would "cost them millions", they can easily afford it, it would not make any material difference to their ultimate financial position. And, it would actually be justifiable as an investment in their own ERP suite – "eating their own dogfood" would send a signal to their…

I don't think people should be down voting you for this comment, but I imagine the reason why is because that's generally not how things work at large companies. Someone in product and/or sales might have made the same argument you have, but in my experience the business response to that argument is something along the line of "you can quantify the cost, but you can't quantify the value (i.e. sales upside) and there'…

It’s a major distraction even if they have money and resources. I am a CFO who has purchased/integrated multiple products from SAP/Oracle/etc (different companies). I’ve never once factored into my purchasing decisions whether they were dogfooding or not. If I was told they were dogfooding, I’d have placed zero value on that. That’s just me though.
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