Build quickly a website that sells a subscription
I'm looking for a service where I can quickly create my simple website in which I sell one (and one only) digital service via subscription model.
It's an oversimplification but imagine I would sell the access to an API, so there's not much interaction required other than a form with a couple of parameters.
Something along the lines with https://carrd.co/ but that supports Stripe (or similar) for the recurring payments.
Shopify seems a bit overkill (and pricy) for just one product and I'm not sure how is their support for selling APIs.
The build-it-yourself alternative is to develop a simple website hosted on amazon Amplify and include the Stripe integration. But I wonder if there's a quicker option.
My background: I'm a developer with several years of experience, so the implementation is not a problem. But I would love to know if there's something quicker where I can skip the nitty-gritty details for now and observe the users' response to validate my MVP.
Would something like this work for you?
https://checkoutpage.co/
Thanks for the plug @Hallsy!
@Rocinante Hi! I'm the founder of Checkout Page and am happy to help you set things up. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.
This seems exactly what I was looking for 😀 (And it's Stripe based, so Kudos for that).
I'll dive into their website.
Thank.you.so.much!
No worries pal. Best of luck 🤞🏼
Gumroad?
https://observablehq.com/@tomlarkworthy/saas-tutorial
I LOVE observable but this is one of the things I would NOT do with it.
Could you explain why?
it's great for visualizations (great for research, like a notebook), not so much as a landing page. that's kinda like posting on medium rather than your own blog, you're just a guest and you mingle within every other link there (seems not serious). minus the income from medium. you want your own dedicated web page, even if it's on another (maybe free) hosting platform.
Yes I agree with you...
that's why I built a static site exporter https://observablehq.com/@endpointservices/netlify
In general, I think: as Observable is a Javascript IDE, it does not make sense leaving the platform to "deploy a Javascript lambda". So my business is a Serverless runtime for Observable. Do serverside things without leaving the notebook environment!
https://observablehq.com/@tomlarkworthy/serverless-cells
Stripe Checkout maybe? Subscriptions are tricky depending on where your customers are located thanks to the new SCA regulations, even with dev experience it's probably something you want to avoid like the plague.
Stripe is something I would love to integrate anyway, it covers so many steps (like the ones you described), that even with a custom solution I would use their checkout.
maybe Pay Here (based on Stripe)? https://payhere.co
I've received tremendous help from this community so far, so I really want to thank everyone for the nice suggestions provided.
Because I have a day job it took me a while to figure out the best approach for my configuration, and also 😃.
I found https://payhere.co/ really great, the folks working behind it were super nice and answered my questions very quickly.
In the end though, I used my skills as a developer and invested some time studying the Stripe APIs so I built the subscription process myself.
I have to say I'm really impressed with carrd.co, they offer a great service if you don't need a complex landing page.
Once I gathered all the knowledge I needed, I built the landing page for my project 👉 https://routergram.com a subscription based Telegram bot to stay in touch with your Telegram community.
I'd love to receive feedback, do you like the landing page? Is it clear enough? What do you think about the monthly price? Is there anything you don't like? What would you change?
Thank you.
Shameless plug, my team are building an a-la-carte style subscription management software. If it's something you'd like to try out, please feel free to check it out here: https://leteflow.com
Install and set up WordPress site with nice theme. - 30 minutes
Create Product Page with good content - 60 minutes
Create Product in stripe and get the checkout page Url. This can support recurring payments as well - 10 minutes
Add this Checkout page Url to the above product page with Buy Now button - 10 minutes
Final round of corrections - 60 minutes
That's it in 3 hours you will be up and running
Have you seen the latest release of Laravel Spark? They make it really easy to do SaaS subscription/billing/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wAmFagQSzI
With wix.com you can have members and sell paid-plans, all without code.
AFAIR the basic-business plan, which is needed to charge customers is around $17/month. There's a 50% sale almost every month, if you can just wait for the right timing.
Disclaimer: I work there
Interesting. So is the idea that this website just acts almost as an access layer? It sells the subscription, and exposes users who have bought the subscription via an API, so your main application can consume it?
Correct 😀
That sounds really interesting. Going to add it to my bucket list, maybe ill take a crack at it :)
Did you look into convertkit? https://help.convertkit.com/en/articles/4199330-convertkit-commerce-creating-a-product
After more research I've also discovered https://www.subbly.co/ and https://memberful.com/.
Didn't have the time to check all the details, but I'll make sure to follow up if one of them can be a good match.
Make sure you check what fees you'd pay to platforms like this (on top of Stripes usual transaction fees) — if that's important to you.
It reminds me of this, where an indie hacker built a shop to sell one item:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-sold-my-tiny-website-c0b5c6a88f
I would love a Carrd for subscriptions.
If you do build something I would request that you support the ability to report/calculate taxes for us Europeans. So many startups don't do that and it just makes things so complicated to get started.
I was just looking into payment integration just this week. I went with Paddle instead of Stripe in the end because Paddle handles taxes out of the box. A "Carrd for subscriptions" could just hook into Paddle in the back end and have taxes covered.
Paddle looks promising, and it seems they specialize exactly on subscription for digital products (that's great). I was not able to find their pricing tough 🤔. Am I missing the link or they're hiding it on purpose?
Yeah, it's annoying that they don't have pricing on their website. They charge something between 5% - 7% + a per-transaction fee, and the actual number depends on your specific business. You can get a quote at https://paddle.com/pricing. (I'm still waiting to hear from them for my quote).
They're definitely a bit more expensive than Stripe though, but you get more for it.
Basically when you use Paddle, you're hiring them as the payment intermediary between you and your customers. Technically, your customers pay Paddle, and Paddle pays you. This is why they can handle things like taxes automatically for you.
This is the reason I'm going with Paddle for now, so I don't have to deal with tax headache at this stage!
Farez
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.
I remember reading that post, it was great. But I think the creator was only doing one off sales.
What are the differences for EU taxes? (aside from the amounts)
The need to charge people different tax amounts depending on where they are located, and also collecting two points of data (or something along those lines).
So for the country and then smaller jurisdiction/municipality?
Pardon my American example but, tax-A for people in the US, and tax-B for people in the state of New York inside the US. Sort of like that? Or is it more specific than the equivalent to a state/provice/etc?
Hi 👋,
glad to meet another fellow European. Yes, that would be helpful.
I've explored Carrd and they support embedding third-party widgets, that would give the Stripe integration, but I think it does not include subscription.
I'll ask them directly.