How should I charge companies?
I want to bill companies for 6- or 12-month subscriptions, but I don't want to waste a lot of time on setup right now. Should I use Paypal invoicing? Should I use one of these Stripe invoicing things? Or something else entirely?
Hi Lynnne,
Try taking a look at Memberful.com, Moonclerk.com, Plasso.com - they all hook up to Stripe (which I find much better than PayPal). Might be handy.
Best of luck!
I'll second Moonclerk.com. Been using them for a couple years now and have loved it. Easy to setup, simple API to grab customer/payment/etc details if needed, and the payment form is customizable with your own CSS so it's easy to match the look and feel of your site and brand.
Wow, lots of options here! Thanks so much for your suggestions. Have you tried / used all of these before?
Yup, I’ve used all 3! I’m currently using Memberful for Prumio.com as you can integrate it (easily) as a widget pop up when users click to purchase. Feel free to test it out by going to prumio.com/early-access and clicking the ‘Select Plan’ buttons.
Moonclerk is great for easy integration but does look a little more outdated (not hugely so).
Plasso is the best design but I’ve never embed the payment form, I’ve used their hosted payment pages.
Let me know how you get on!
Hi Lynne,
I would suggest avoiding PayPal. It's extremely difficult to set up and makes everything so unnecessarily complicated. The only situation in which I'd recommend it were if you were selling to consumers, who often prefer PayPal. But because you're selling to companies, I'd recommend to avoid them. If you want to get a brief glimpse at the pains I had to go through to set up PayPal for subscriptions, see here: https://fman.io/blog/paypal-for-saas-99-problems/
Cheers,
Michael
Hi Lynne,
I love the idea of Key Values. As an engineer and a founder, I think it's an excellent idea :)
I think you could easily use my product, Trolley - https://trolley.link - for your subscription payments. Trolley works with Stripe, takes 2 minutes to set up, and would let you simply add a couple of buttons to your website (any website, any tech) - one for a 6 month subscription, and one for 12 months.
We've only just launched, and it'd be awesome to work with other IndieHackers members - please email me on rg@trolley.link if you're interested.
Good luck with Key Values!
Can anyone recommend an alternative to PayPal that works in South East Asia (specifically the Philippines)? Stripe does not work in a lot of countries not located in Western Europe or North America!
Hi Lynne 👋
Key Values looks like a truly amazing resource for software developers and the UX for the site is 💯! You've definitley tapped into a much needed area that serves the interests of so many!
With Plasso, you'd be able to create recurring invoices on a flexible basis. Whether bi-annually or annually, your customers can easily make changes to their payment information and update it if necessary.
If you're looking to take a membership-based direction in the future, you can also embed our modal into your site that would handle the subscription as well as the user authentication. No wasted time on setup 😀
Also, thanks @JamesWalsh for the shoutout! We appreciate you giving Plasso a whirl and are excited to release our new features soon 💫
Use Stripe, it's straightforward and will handle subscription renewals for you. It'll also send out receipt emails and help you avoid fraudulent payments and you can use any of the many invoicing addons to send invoices directly.
Also, you can customize the subscription period to be monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual depending on what you need.
It's quick and easy to setup. Little fuss.
Hi @lynnetye Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but have you tried Wave Apps? I use them for my other business and it's very simple.
I have not! I'm honestly so surprised by how many variations and options exist. Just goes to show that you can build a business in an already crowded space!
How did you decided to use Wave Apps vs. the (many) alternatives?
I just went on Google and started researching. I love their interface and simplicity. Best of all, it's free. That's pretty much the reason why I chose them.
Can you tell us a bit more about the nature of the invoice @lynnetye ?
I'm assuming you are charging B2B and payment will be made (bi)annually?
Is the fee the kind of thing you can stick on a company credit card? Or are we talking $1500+ ?
As a very general answer, I'm a big fan of chargebee.com - they are based on Stripe and are easy to work with.
Yup! B2B charging (bi-)annually, and we're talking $1500+.
Thanks for suggesting Chargebee! Looking into it right now :D
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Thank you so much for your incredibly kind words! 🙏🏼❤️
The questions you've asked are things ones I've been thinking a lot about for the last many months. I actually think one of the mistakes I made early on was describing Key Values as a job board. I wanted to make it easy for people to understand (check!), but by categorizing it in this way, it ended up pigeon-holing my vision for what Key Values actually is and why I started building it in the first place.
Re: PayPal, man. People really hate on PayPal, but so far, it seems like the easiest way to get off the ground and send an invoice. My general hesitation about it is what led me to post in IH asking for alternatives.
^^ Thanks for this comment. Helpful.
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Wow, I'm so sorry to hear that you're personally experienced such awful service! I think PayPal is good as a quick fix, but I've decided after getting all of the amazing advice and feedback from the IH community that I should go w/ Stripe and potentially use a third party on top of it.
Thanks as always @thomasm1964 !
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I'm working on it!!!
And that was an interesting read. Thanks for sharing it. People still use PayPal despite the horror stories. I've learned so much in the last 30 hours haha.