Suggestions for a better payment provider?
I used to love Stripe: I've created a few (failed) products in the past that used Stripe and implementing the whole flow was fast and easy — up to a point that we built and released a product in a weekend!
Now that I started to build Magic Memos I defaulted to Stripe, but their product offering is pretty complex nowadays and it's not that easy to integrate with a SaaS as it used to be.
I did a prototype with Stripe, but pivoted to use Paddle which was pretty easy to integrate, although their documentation was lacking. But their verification process took two weeks to complete with several points where I had no idea what I should do next.
Is there any better alternatives today for using Stripe or Paddle for SaaS products?
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I have tried many different solutions but stripe still ends up being the easiest. Seeing that your pricing model is one price billed monthly it would probably be best to make a stripe check out link and just embed that and than a simple callback to handle the status. There are a few guides that are simple and to the point about this kind of flow: https://vercel.com/guides/getting-started-with-nextjs-typescript-stripe
I too have used Stripe for a few platforms with recurring payments. I have been very happy with the documentation.
In my case, I used JS (NUXT) + PHP.
If you need some lines of code I am happy to share.
I've never used it, but apparently Gumroad may be able to do SaaS payments
You can try checking out https://www.lemonsqueezy.com
I've tried to use it for my newest sass and it seems fine.
I've not used but I've heard lots of people recommending Lemon Squeezy (https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/) which I am looking at moving to from Stripe. I'm mostly looking at moving to them because they are MOR so they look after tax compliance.
Can you say a bit more about your struggles w/ Stripe ? What stack are you developing on? Used it in my latest product (WhisperBot, with Ruby on Rails) and damn it did save me some time, especially with their new Pricing Tables feature. + Well document IMO
PayPal looks pretty promising, I have no idea why founders avoid using it. The documentation is a bit confusing but pretty doable. I implemented it in my previous project and gonna use it again.
Yeah, PayPal should bring additional trust to the checkout process if any (compared to a plain credit card form).
I've implemented their old payment button once, back when they had that horrible 1990's UI. That's probably why I still shrug it off, although nowadays Paypal has a much better payment UI.
Oh, their UI is much better now. I only experienced the issues with setting up because their documentation is confusing sometimes but UI is totally fine these days.
I believe there's been issues with integrating PayPal with nocode tools at least. Don't have personal experience but Scott Keyes from Scott's Cheap Flights said on a podcast that they had some issues with PayPal.
But this is the problem with those no-code tools, they maybe didn't provide the right ways for integration. Without concrete examples, it's hard to say for sure what was the source of the issues.
Yeah that's completely true
I have done SaaS and also write about Micro SaaS every week.
Because Paddle is a kind of reseller, they will have to do more checks before the allow the products using Paddle. It's kind of they are selling the product for you so the legalities will be more on their side.
LemonSqueezy is coming an alternative but not yet a perfect SaaS fit.
LemonSqueezy looks good! Why's it not yet a good SaaS fit?
i've been using stripe a lot, their product is great, no friction, easy to create a new account when building a new product.
I've tried paddle, seems nice too but the process is way slower. They need to verify lots of things before letting you open an account.
I've tried lemonsqueezy too, fast integration, zero friction, it was easy to open a new account.
I am super happy with LemonSqueezy so far. Documentation and examples were a bit thin on how to integrate it with a frontend, so I wrote up this: https://www.felixvemmer.com/blog/lemon-squeezy-nextjs-payment-integration-guide/
As a long time Paddle user, I cannot recommend them in 100%. They are okay but not perfect. The worst things that you don’t see now are coming…
To change the email address to which invoices are sent must be done manually by you in their web app, and in some cases you cannot just change it. You need to notify success manager to make the change because customer used Paddle in past for some other service and their accounts are now colliding.
From time to time, I’m getting emails from customers that their payment failed. Then I need to contact Paddle (because I don’t see reason why the payment failed) and after 24hours I get information that it was a bank issue (yeah right).
I don’t like that Paddle support can just literally switch into your account to do changes.
I had a few issues in past with their options.
I use Paddle overlay checkout pop up. I really hate that users cannot figure out how to add their VAT number.
Unfortunately, the web app looks like abandonware. Incorrect links, inconsistent UI, weird integration with ProfitWell, UI bugs, super slow interface. But they are working on it, I see new features and I know that at some point they will fix it.
If users wants to change his company details including VAT, you need to cancel his subscription and ask him to subscribe once again with the correct company details.
15% of time at my startup, I spent on tasks like this that I must do manually.
Don’t get me wrong. Paddle is okay, but it’s not perfect. I didn’t test other solutions, so others may be even worse.
Not quite relevant to the topic but since I'm building a tool and I don't like SaaS and subscription model, I'm looking to use lemon squeezy and its license key feature specifically.
https://docs.lemonsqueezy.com/help/licensing/generating-license-keys
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.