Stripe: Why it's the most popular?
I've been doing research on Stripe and figuring out what implementing the API would look like. Could those who have used it or similar products share pain points, major benefits, how difficult the integration was and why you chose one product over the other? Thank you!
Stripe came around and surprised everyone because believe it or not in 2011 it was still messy to do payments as a developer. Stripe made it really easy for developers so it spread quickly. I worked with the PayPal APIs from around that time and it was really rough by comparison. For example, the first name for Stripe was actually /dev/payment, a reference for developers and other technical users to get.
Since then a lot of companies have also made it easy. For example, Braintree (now bought by PayPal) makes it pretty easy to integrate payments, etc.
There's no other tool in the space that comes close to Stripe with both product and community value. Stripe gives back a ton of value to the community and their tools are extremely intuitive.
+1 for their design chops too.
As someone still learning development. Implementation did not go well. I spent hours on it today and did not get anywhere.
All I want is to have a payment button for a recurring subscription. Can anyone point me in the right direction? 😣
For a recurring button solution, the easiest way is to use the built-in checkout button.
Copy the code snippet of the button,set the amount for the recurring fee you need, it produces a token that you send to your backend with Stripe sdk to process. Lemme know where you got stuck exactly we could go in together
I got the button added in my code but the rest is a mystery to me. The following code tells me to put in my server side code, but no idea what that means or where to get it?
form action="your-server-side-code" method="POST"
You mentioned it produces a token? Where? What token? What do I do with it? And what is the Stripe sdk? Haha sorry, I feel really stupid right now! I thought stripe was meant to be easy 😅
Hi collin sorry have you managed to solve the issue? Was wondering if we can proceed with problem solving? :D
Hi Gilbert, I didn't solve it yet. Gave up. No idea where to get this SDK and where to "install" it.
Okay. lemme help out .
<form action="/charge" method="POST">
<script
src="https://checkout.stripe.com/checkout.js"
class="stripe-button"
data-key="pk_test_6pRNASCoBOKtIshFeQd4XMUh"
data-image="/square-image.png"
data-name="Demo Site"
data-description="2 widgets ($20.00)"
data-amount="2000">
</script>
</form>
Then you also need a backend with a url endpoint. For this example we are using /charge but you can name it to anything you like.
Then set up your backend install any sdk of your favorite language. For this case I will use node.js
const stripe = require('stripe');
app.post('/app',(req,res) => {
const token = req.token;
stripe.charge({
// look at docs
}).then(() => {
res.send('charged succesfully');
})
})
But I can help you on backend and stuff if its still confusing
What you're experiencing has very little to do with Stripe.
All forms send data somewhere. In traditional forms like what you have in your example, the "action" is a URL where the data will be sent to. You'd have to set up your server to actually handle data being sent to that URL, which is getting into back-end coding, and I suspect you're more familiar with front-end (but I could be wrong).
For this specific case, Stripe's checkout will create and send a "token" (just a string) representing the user's purchase to your server-side code (specified by the form action). From there, you'd need to use that token to complete the checkout process, using one of Stripe's server-side SDKs, which are just convenient libraries you can use to cut down on the work.
You can start here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/HTML/Forms/Your_first_HTML_form#Sending_form_data_to_your_web_server
And here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/HTML/Forms/Sending_and_retrieving_form_data
It's the most popular because of its API, also I'm pretty sure you will find wrappers for pretty much every framework/language, it will help you kickstart your project.
However if you want to go the hard way and do everything yourself, you will understand why Stripe is so popular. The documentation of the API is the gold standard in the industry.
Easy to integrate thanks to a great documentation!
For one time payments it's not so important, but for subscription based services, Stripe holds the upper hand. We tried to introduce PayPal subscription payments via Braintree, and there were some blockers for us - namely it was not possible to change user's billing plan from monthly to quarterly/annual. Braintree suggested using third party service (but honestly, to us Braintree was already 3rd party service for PayPal subscription payments).
Last Mover Advantage
The level of thought and attention to detail put into the product and documentation was and continues to be unmatched by just about any API on the planet.
If Stripe is supported in your country, with no doubt it is the best billing system available. Its developer orientation nature is what makes it so easy to use.
Stripe provides you with robust APIs. You do need to integrate with the APIs, which means you have to design and develop the front-end components yourself. If you want an even easier approach, you can use tools that work with Stripe to provide the UI components and additional functionalities. Take a look at serviceBot.io . It sits on top of Stripe.
This is why I choose Stripe over any other Payment Gateway Provider.
✅ Application process is straightforward (onboarding).
✅ Hooking up the API is really simple. You don't need to be a genius at REST to understand the conventions Stripe uses.
✅ Stripe tells me when things are wrong (e.g.: Webhook non-200 responses).
✅ I don't need customer support to use Stripe. This is the biggest value for me, it doesn't require me talking to a human to get my first transaction in the door. I just want my SaaS products to work on their own, and Stripe does this.
My current complaint is how the docs load on Chrome. In other words, it loads like a potato. I always have to use Firefox (thanks Quantum) to render Stripe docs and to not have sh***y experience.
The super easy integration, if my memory serves me well.
Better than greedy PP, API is very easy to integrate. Hope it helps.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
This comment was deleted 7 years ago