Chargebee
How many of you have setup recurring billing through something like Chargebee?
In the past I've done my own lightweight UI for Stripe, but looking to avoid that overhead from now on so would appreciate if anyone has tried out Chargebee or an alternative and can recommend one, thanks!
Hey @AlignmentApps we're using Chargebee. The last company I was with used Zuora, which was a nightmare. The Chargebee implementation was a lot easier but still an engineering lift. I would recommend it because it makes managing multiple rate plans easy, and we need this because we've got a significant number of rate plans.
We use it with Stripe, and we use the Chargebee API instead of their management portal (just for UI consistency). If you can use their out-of-the-box management portal it could save you some work.
One thing I'd recommend is planning your timing carefully. You can start on their $49 plan, but need to move to $299 a month to get their prod environment. You might still need a couple months of dev once you are on the $299 a month plan, which eats a fair amount of cash.
Thanks for the detailed reply - particularly around the timing part. My plan is to use it with Stripe also. Our recurring billing is pretty straightforward so I'm hoping Chargebee can essentially mean I can just drop in the billing system and get on with other more interesting parts.
One other thing to remember with Chargebee (and other subscription management): You don't change the price on plans. If you want to change prices, you create a new plan and make that what new users sign-up for. Existing users can be left on their current plan (grandfathred) or migrated. You probably know this...but I forgot it once so just mentioning here.
Also, I chose Chargebee after a pretty thorough evaluation of other options like Chargify. It was the best option from a features standpoint, but they also had the best integration options with third-parties.
Hey Glenn! I'm a product manager at Stripe thinking about something in this realm -- would love to learn more about what you're looking forp. If you're open to it, shoot me an email at theodora@stripe.com and would love to see if we can help!