I never got around getting the true value prop of recurring solutions such as chargebee etc when used on top of stripe. Stripe already provides excellent recurring subscription payments api out of the box, so why use any of these services. Am I missing something ?
Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda
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Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda
#32This is what people are missing on Lambda. It's pay-to-play, and for 90% of the sites out there, they're paying too much in comparison. If you're running server instances 24x7 for an application that is doing serverless.io is a decent framework to get started (allows for local dev and testing, manages deployment) and is agnostic in terms of deployment target: AWS, IBM, Google coming soon, etc. The only reason we're n…
Did you mean serverless.com? serverless.io is a parked domain...
Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda
#33I never got around getting the true value prop of recurring solutions such as chargebee etc when used on top of stripe. Stripe already provides excellent recurring subscription payments api out of the box, so why use any of these services. Am I missing something ?
Sometimes they offer this: UI on top of API, generated invoices (PDF/email).
Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda
#34I never got around getting the true value prop of recurring solutions such as chargebee etc when used on top of stripe. Stripe already provides excellent recurring subscription payments api out of the box, so why use any of these services. Am I missing something ?
We transitioned from Stripe to Chargebee importing our Stripe stuff. It was a solid 2 man-months of engineering (of our 4-person company) and we questioned the cost through the process, but it has really paid off. Stripe was a great starting point for us to collect direct payments, but as we grew Chargebee has proven very worthwhile.
The main value is central customer and subscription database, which muxes multiple payment methods: Credit Card (via Stripe), Amazon payments, and Paypal. This alone has doubled our monthly paying customer growth.
Next it allows us to create invoices, subscriptions and customers data to put in the same database for customers from other channels -- mostly this is our iOS users who have to subscribe via iTunes (due to Apple TOS) -- now we can manage their data in the same place.
It is also an integrated coupon management system, hosts custom styled payment/subscription management pages (as opposed to just a tiny payment widget like Stripe), supports more flexibility like trial periods, switching between subscription plans, adding credits to a user's account.
We've moved all our non-iOS customers to Chargebee for about 6 months now, and really happy with it.
Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda
#35This is simple and cool.
You'd still need some way to authorize subscribers on your website, no? Therefore, you couldn't create a serverless subscription blog/website... unless I'm missing something.
Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda
#36~3%, dirt cheap?! Why are so many of you so happy to throw so much cash away to process money? I know Stripe is lovely to integrate but as a business you have to shop around. In the UK (and EU) card processing is much cheaper. Stripe is closer to 2% but if you shop around, you'll find somebody who'll offer you 0.8-0.9%, give you free terminals and no monthly contract fees. Edit for those asking: Worldpay and Handepay…
Would you mind sharing those companies? I'm especially curious since Stripe is not supported in my Country.
I'd suggest Pineapple Payments. They are a new company based upon the CardConnect platform, which was just acquired by FirstData.
FirstData is one of the primary companies in the market, and the rates you get from Pineapple are "interchange optimized". Means you pay 2.9% for AMEX, but ~1.5% for VISA, Discover, etc.
For B2B and even B2C, it's a fantastic savings if you're willing to do just a tiny bit more legwork than Stripe requires.
Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda
#37~3%, dirt cheap?! Why are so many of you so happy to throw so much cash away to process money? I know Stripe is lovely to integrate but as a business you have to shop around. In the UK (and EU) card processing is much cheaper. Stripe is closer to 2% but if you shop around, you'll find somebody who'll offer you 0.8-0.9%, give you free terminals and no monthly contract fees. Edit for those asking: Worldpay and Handepay…
Currently it is legal for companies in the EU to ask the customer to pay the processing fees, some call it surcharging.
EU seems to want to get rid of this practice, I wonder if it becomes a company expense, that we will see companies caring more about the processing fees.
Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.paydoo.com/pricing is one example, > starting at 0.59% + £0.20 adapted to industry type and risk level
That's really interesting. Do you have more examples? Thank you for the suggestion. Stripe is only the best known and is well integrated with other systems. When you use something like Paydoo you have to write e.g. your invoice email system yourself (and for stripe there are third party services which can handle that for you). So Stripe has benefits regarding the ecosystem around it. Edit: Seeing there is also a curr…
Many —I'd perhaps even stretch to "most"— processors have at least the basic functionality like email receipts and, to at least some degree, recurring payments. They're staples of e-commerce.
But yes, there is work involved in implementing each provider. Stripe has some but it is generally nicer to use. £100k of volume and you'll probably pay for that additional development time in Y1.
But also consider that you shouldn't irrevocably tie yourself to a single processor. Don't rely on them to do your business for you. Sometimes they're dicks. I know that applies more when we talk about PayPal and much less in the "real" merchant processing world, but it still happens. Having the ability to switch out processors is objectively useful so (eg) tying your basket UI into Stripe's checkout js lib looks nice, is super easy... But what happens if they start withholding funds? If all your emails are tied into their system, it's weeks of development to stop using them. Do business-critical stuff yourself and you're much more flexible to do sensible things in the future.
Regarding international rates, these are hard to compare because their claims are apples to oranges. Stripe say they go off their "banking partners'" daily rates and that those are approximately 2% above mid-market levels. Paydoo says they're 2.49% fixed above market levels. I suspect they're pretty close in practice. Stripe does let you accept multiple currencies (for free) if you have the bank accounts for it though. Not sure if Paydoo allow the same. Their wording suggests not... But if that's the deal-breaker, talk to them about it.
Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you mind sharing those companies? I'm especially curious since Stripe is not supported in my Country.
https://www.paydoo.com/pricing is one example, > starting at 0.59% + £0.20 adapted to industry type and risk level
Looks great, maybe even too good.
> Highest level of processing uptime (99.9%)
It's not that high...
Also, it says about 10 years of experience, but site is seems to be really working only since 2016. And SSL certificate is just "let's encrypt", which is fine for most, but for payment processor I'd expect something more serious.
Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda
#40~3%, dirt cheap?! Why are so many of you so happy to throw so much cash away to process money? I know Stripe is lovely to integrate but as a business you have to shop around. In the UK (and EU) card processing is much cheaper. Stripe is closer to 2% but if you shop around, you'll find somebody who'll offer you 0.8-0.9%, give you free terminals and no monthly contract fees. Edit for those asking: Worldpay and Handepay…
re worldpay - they may be cheap, but you get what you pay for. Their backend still does not support SNI for payment callbacks. I had to debug once my client's integration with their hosted payment form (the one under https://mms.cardsaveonlinepayments.com) - and during debugging I have seen things like this: http://hiciu.org/2016-02-06-010735_1920x1043_scrot.png http://hiciu.org/2016-02-06-010743_1920x1043_scrot.png.
I believe you still can break their hosted payment form if you provide your telephone number with leading zero.