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Moonclerk is great for easy integration but does look a little more outdated (not hugely so).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 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 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 @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
Hi Lynne,
I'm a big fan of keyvalues! It's a really great idea: i think it may even be considered a purple cow. It feeds into the conscious living trend, and the fact that many start-up seek to distinguish themselves based on their unique culture/brand.
I would be cautious about paypal: they have a well documented tendency to freeze acounts or hold funds for arbitary reasons - that can take sometime to resolve. I would really not sleep comfortably, if my entire business funds were managed by them. For consumer facing companies, paypal matters (i.e you risk losing sales without it) - but not for B2B.
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.
Lynne,
Some years ago, my partner and I sold second-hand clothes on eBay here in the UK. At the time, it kept the wolf from the door.
We have personal experience of the arbitrary and downright rude behaviour of PayPal. Basically, their attitude is that you should feel bloody privileged that they allow themselves to take your money in fees.
We suffered two account freezes, neither of which were justified and both of which put us in a very awkward financial situation. If I were you, I would add more payment gateways (you can have more than one on your website at the same time but note that Paypal demands you do not display other gateways more prominently than PayPal itself and you must not use words to suggest that payment via other gateways is preferable even if it is).
By doing that, you immediately reduce your exposure to a single payment processor - which is good business sense anyway. You want to eliminate all SPOFs that you can.
The second piece I would give to you is that you clear down your PayPal account every morning so that, in the event your account is frozen, your financial exposure is limited to a single day's takings while you resolve whatever problem may arise.
Oh yes : and if you do find yourself on the wrong end of PayPal's arrogance, disable that method of payment immediately so you don't have more money than is unavoidable frozen until such time as PayPal deigns to treat you like a decent human being again rather than a low-life crook.
SPOF : Single Point Of Failure - a person, process, infrastructure or other dependency which, if not available, causes your entire business to fail.
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 !
All in the distant past now! And we survived, despite them.
But there's a reason you hear so much hatred about PayPal. They can destroy businesses and their mantra that the customer is always right can really hurt.
What my partner and I have discovered is that too many members of the Great American / British / [nationality of choice] Public are anything but great. There are plenty of thieves and rogues out there who have far too easy a ride because PayPal's default position is to believe them over the retailer.
Having also experienced eBay, I would say 95 out of a 100 people are honest: it's a few bad eggs.
Hi Lynne,
I edited out some of the original comments, as they were off-topic - though I'm glad you found them helpful.
Work is a necessity, but when it has meaning - that's what makes life worth living. Combine work which has meaning with a group of people you love - and that's close to heaven. In this sense your company and brand can really provide some increadible value by aligning these things.
You know how dating sites use success stories for marketing, I would really love to read about how some eccentric programmer found their perfect environment or tribe using keyvalues.
Source for paypal comment is an article by @amyhoy, the relevent section is "Paypal still matters":
https://stackingthebricks.com/anatomy-jfs-cyber-monday-bundle/
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.