What are folks using for charging users monthly in a SaaS?
I am working on a new project where I will have tiered plans to use the application on a monthly basis. I am most familiar with using Stripe, but my experience is with one time payments. It looks like Stripe Billing can handle all of the recurring pieces as well, https://stripe.com/us/billing, but requires that I build out the infrastructure to interface with the API (which is not different in terms of the one-off payment).
Just curious if others are using Stripe Billing or something else for their SaaS applications?
https://apility.io uses Braintree, but the reason why I chose it was due to the lack of support of Stripe in Estonia, the country where my company was incorporated.
My first choice was Stripe, but then I figured out that Stripe was still deploying its services in several European countries. Since I could not wait for Stripe to be ready in Estonia I tested 2Checkout and Braintree. I had worked with Braintree before so the decision was biased from the very beginning.
Braintree supports recurring subscriptions and can send “receipts”, but not invoices. So I had to implement a very simple invoicing system.
Stripe + Recurly was a great solution for us... Recurly handles the automation, coupons, reporting, invoicing and more.
Stripe (credit card, customers, subscriptions, etc) + MoonClerk (UI, emails, etc).
Yes, https://servicebot.io is built on top of Stripe billing to give you the infrastrucure and provide embeddables that you can embed on your website and SaaS. Removing the development layer from your end.
We happened to build Pabbly for our own needs and that is what we use for billing the subscriptions at our end.
Nowadays, some customers want to pay directly using their card and on the other hand, some customers want to pay through their PayPal account.
A good checkout form needs to include at least 2 different payment options and that is something we offer through the Pabbly Subscriptions platform.
https://www.pabbly.com/subscriptions/
But this is still an API that I have to integrate my own payment service with is that correct? It isn't built on Stripe is that correct?
Just wrapped up some work with Stripe Billing. The API is straightforward and pretty elegant. For creating subscriptions, it's really just a few calls (get the token, create the customer, created the subscription).
Did you leverage the StripeJs library as well for collecting the payment information, or did you roll your own form and then just implement the necessary APIs to call Stripe Billing? If you were to estimate, how long did it take you to build out your payment service using Stripe Billing?
I believe you have to use the Stripe JS library (b/c of security restrictions on touching the credit card number; if you do, you're subject to PCI compliance and such).
That said, I did do a "custom" form w/ Stripe Elements.
It lets you style the form elements, but not access the input elements directly or control the interactions on them.
The flow for creating a new subscription is basically:
-- Submit payment info to Stripe from frontend (with Stripe Elements, call
stripe.createTokenfrom the JS library)-- On the backend, using PHP library, create the customer (
Customer::create)-- On the backend, using PHP library, create the subscription (
Subscription::create)This guide was really helpful:
https://stripe.com/docs/recipes/subscription-signup
In terms of time, about 3 days.
Most of that was probably reading docs and getting a grasp on Billing and Elements. It's not a lot of code.
For Dependabot we're really lucky - GitHub introduced the GitHub Marketplace, which handle all payments for GitHub apps once you're in it. They take a hefty chunk (25%), but it drives a lot of traffic as well as making payments completely zero friction. I probably have 50 lines of code in Dependabot related to payment / the marketplace, which is pretty awesome compared to all the subscription management I'd need with Stripe (upgrades, downgrades, a UI to put their form in, etc.).
That said, I do take some payments for Dependabot through Stripe Billing and it's good. I haven't played with the API, as we only use it for a few folks who have unusual payment requirements, but knowing Stripe I'm sure it'll be great.
One final thought: if you're UK / Europe based then GoCardless might be a good option. It's Direct Debit, rather than card payments, which means you'll avoid churn due to credit card expiry. A nice to have if you don't need to worry about taking international payments.
Thank you for the in-depth response Grey. I'm not in the UK/Europe so Cardless probably won't be an option for me. GitHub is taking quite the chunk there.
I am trying to decide between creating all the overhead for my own payment service that integrates with Stripe Billing or using something like Plasso (https://plasso.com/)
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