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

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#21

Post by SeanOC » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:40 PM UTC

I've used CheddarGetter (http://cheddargetter.com) for a few projects and I've been extremely happy with their service.

* API is reasonably nice to work with (wrote a Python client called Sharpy https://github.com/saaspire/sharpy) * Lots of options to control exactly how and when your customers get billed. * Support for a bunch of payment gateways * Tools for handling tracked items and one-off charges (e.g. discounts or fees) as part of your subscriptions. * Fantastic support - I don't think I've ever waited more than a few hours for a response and their support team has been very helpful.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#22

Post by maayank » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:52 PM UTC

locusm wrote: post #20

Any comment from Australian devs as Im about to go through this myself. PayPal is the anti christ, not an option for me.

Anti-christ because of things done in the past that you are generally afraid will affect your startup or because of a general sentiment of them being "evil"? If the latter, then not evaluating them because of it sounds like bad business mojo to me...

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#23

Post by epynonymous » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:53 PM UTC

failed to list cybersource, zuora, and netsuite.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#24

Post by holdenc » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 1:05 PM UTC

Amazon Simple Pay is quite good and easy to set-up as well. There are no monthly fees and you get a lot of control over the subscriptions, but the payment experience is hosted by Amazon unfortunately.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#25

Post by locusm » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 1:09 PM UTC

maayank wrote: post #22

locusm wrote: post #20

Any comment from Australian devs as Im about to go through this myself. PayPal is the anti christ, not an option for me.

Anti-christ because of things done in the past that you are generally afraid will affect your startup or because of a general sentiment of them being "evil"? If the latter, then not evaluating them because of it sounds like bad business mojo to me...

Bad experience at both the merchant and user end. Spreedly who I had never heard of till this post integrate with 2 Australian payment gateways so that will be worth checking out I think.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#26

Post by El34 » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 1:10 PM UTC

locusm wrote: post #20

Any comment from Australian devs as Im about to go through this myself. PayPal is the anti christ, not an option for me.

Paypal website payments standard is your only option here. Unless you want to bill in AUD, you can't really use a merchant account in Australia. It's technically possible to use NAB to acquire in foreign currencies (ie. USD), but it's not feasible for small startups due to cost and complexity and the bank not actually knowing how. I lost my real HN account because I'm an idiot or whatever, but send questions to wtfaustralia@soundfolder.com if you want to hear about our various failed attempts at recurring cc billing.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#27

Post by milan_cvejic » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 1:21 PM UTC

mutru wrote: post #16

ceslami wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if PayPal has issues with canceling subscriptions, has horrendous support, is clunky, and has higher fees, why do you still use it?

Unfortunately PayPal is pretty much the only option, if you're based in Europe and want to do recurring payments. I agree with all the points above: the support is worst I've ever experienced, the user experience is horrible and hasn't improved over the years, and the recurring payments clearly don't belong to the product.

Well, you can always try 2checkout. They work for europe too :)

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#28

Post by patio11 » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 1:27 PM UTC

rlm wrote: post #14

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.")

Are you using the Payments API or just the "regular" Spreedly functionality?

Both. Payments to have a totally on-brand signup. The regular "redirect them to Spreedly" to do account upgrades, etc, to save me a day of programming that wouldn't sell accounts.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#29

Post by patio11 » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 1:27 PM UTC

rlm wrote: post #12

ollysb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I assume the "merchant account" is a PayPal account in this case.

Pay pal Website Payments Pro, yeah.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#30

Post by to » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 1:35 PM UTC

we do recurring offers since years and i dont even know what chargify, recurly and spreedly is but just because of their names i wouldnt want to use them. besides that they probably just give you a nice frontend and a nicer API on top of one of the real creditcard processors, which you could use yourself.