91–100 of 167 posts
We have about 35 customers in Chargify, and growing steadily, but $99/month will eat almost half our monthly revenue. Really disappointed.
You should get out NOW so you can settle on a different company's services -- one that treats its customers better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a note that Recurly did this exact same thing several months ago, though they've since changed their prices again. We were literally 1 day away from launching on Recurly when they changed prices. Spooked by the sudden price hike, we spent a good deal of time re-writing our ecommerce on Chargify. And now this. Maybe it's time to just bite the bullet and roll our own solution. Spreedly doesn't provide the same fun…
If you can at all afford it get your own merchant account and work with an IPSP directly, keep control of your own data as much as is allowed and make a deal that if they go belly up that you will get access to your accounts for a one-time migration to another IPSP. Otherwise you're just setting yourself up for big trouble down the road. Middlemen in the payment business have a habit of going down when you need them…
Seems like a reasonable amount to pay for removing all the pain of recurring billing.
http://grasshopper.com/email_assets/chargify-bootstrapper.ht...
With Patrick, I guess I understand the screams of pain on the unlooked-for price hike, but, even at the lowest non-developer level, you're only paying $0.20/month per customer. Assuming you're charging your customers at least $5/month, that's only $.04/customer/month, or less than 1%. Seems like a reasonable amount to pay for removing all the pain of recurring billing.
Full disclosure: I run Spreedly, an earlier to market but much less funded competitor to Chargify. Here's the dirty little secret that Spreedly discovered about 18 months ago, and that I'm sure Chargify - like Recurly before them - has now found out for themselves: there are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costin…
That's not exactly news, that's why you try to get a good grip on the life-cycle of a cross section of your potential customers before you set a pricing scheme.
A free customer should work out at any level of scale and any life cycle that that customer can go through, the fact that there are 'many of them' or that the distribution is not what you expected points to a lack of research of your prospective customers.
Bait-and-switch by accident or by design makes no difference to your customers.
> Note that Chargify paired this price increase announcement with two other significant announcements that have largely been overshadowed by the hullabaloo: PCI Level 1 compliance, and 24/7 phone support.
Wait until they start getting in to more and riskier transaction volumes, they'll have to add up to 30 cts per transaction worth of fees for various services to help with scrubbing the bad stuff from the good stuff to keep the chargeback rates in check.
Otherwise they'll be spending a lot of money on airline tickets to warm and sunny places trying to get merchant accounts from banks that mere mortals would rather not deal with just to stay in business.
> they should've unilaterally grandfathered all of their existing clients, and quietly given the grandfathered plan to anyone who was already integrating but not yet launched as well.
100% agreed on that one, I really can't fathom with they decided to shoot themselves in to both feet at once like that.
Do you guys do segregated merchant accounts (one merchant account per customer)? If not how will you deal with a merchant account issue once your volume is larger and you start to attract 'bad apples'? (like everybody else that ever did multiplexed merchant accounts)
Full disclosure: I run Spreedly, an earlier to market but much less funded competitor to Chargify. Here's the dirty little secret that Spreedly discovered about 18 months ago, and that I'm sure Chargify - like Recurly before them - has now found out for themselves: there are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costin…
> here are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costing more than they ever bring in. That's not exactly news, that's why you try to get a good grip on the life-cycle of a cross section of your potential customers before you set a pricing scheme. A free customer should work out at any level of scale and any life cycle…
Not trying to justify, just inform.
> Do you guys do segregated merchant accounts (one merchant account per customer)?
We don't do merchant accounts at all - that's pretty much a constant across everyone in this space. Businesses plug in their own merchant accounts - Spreedly just handles all the billing logic.
Full disclosure: I run Spreedly, an earlier to market but much less funded competitor to Chargify. Here's the dirty little secret that Spreedly discovered about 18 months ago, and that I'm sure Chargify - like Recurly before them - has now found out for themselves: there are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costin…
> here are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costing more than they ever bring in. That's not exactly news, that's why you try to get a good grip on the life-cycle of a cross section of your potential customers before you set a pricing scheme. A free customer should work out at any level of scale and any life cycle…
The merchants bring their own merchant accounts. Chargify doesn't give you a merchant account; they use the one you bring.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> here are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costing more than they ever bring in. That's not exactly news, that's why you try to get a good grip on the life-cycle of a cross section of your potential customers before you set a pricing scheme. A free customer should work out at any level of scale and any life cycle…
> Bait-and-switch by accident or by design makes no difference to your customers. Not trying to justify, just inform. > Do you guys do segregated merchant accounts (one merchant account per customer)? We don't do merchant accounts at all - that's pretty much a constant across everyone in this space. Businesses plug in their own merchant accounts - Spreedly just handles all the billing logic.
That means you don't have all your eggs in that one basket.
Do you do scrubbing / anti-fraud ?
(bin checks, geo-ip checks, black list checks etc ?)
Or does your upstream service take care of those?
Wow, really? Chargify just lost its position as the best choice for subscription management. Extremely glad we didn't launch yet with Chargify... Here are some Chargify alternatives that we are looking at: Recurly, http://recurly.com/pricing/ at 200 transactions and 500 users $29/m - Spreedly, http://spreedly.com/info/pricing/ at $19/m + $0.20/transaction or 2% per transaction if less - CheddarGetter, https://cheddar…
Last time I looked, Spreedly's API and functionality wasn't even in the same ballpark as Chargify's. I've worked on integration projects with both, and Chargify is much better and more configurable. Spreedly may have improved, it's been a while.