Stripe implemented

Today I finally implemented a major feature: payments via Stripe. Here's the text from the blog post:

Running Keepthescore.co costs around 171 USD each month, whilst the revenue is close to zero (we do make a little money by building custom scoreboards now and then). This is an unsustainable situation which needs to be fixed – we hope this is understandable! To put it another way: Keepthescore.co needs to start making money to continue to exist.

As of today, we will be attempting to make some money. Some principle we will try to uphold are:

• there will always be a free tier that can make use of all of the features (e.g. setting custom colours). We don’t believe in “premium features”.
• If you cannot pay, write us an email explaining why and we will upgrade your scoreboard for free!

“Upgrading” Scoreboards

Scoreboards can now be “upgraded” via a button at the top. An upgraded scoreboard remains upgraded forever. The cost of the upgrade may vary because we’re doing some testing to find the optimal price. It will be somewhere between $0.60 and $4.00.

If you scoreboard has more than 15 players, you need to upgrade it to be able to share the public version of the scoreboard (click the link to see an example).

If your scoreboard has less than 15 players, you don’t need to upgrade it.

Payment is handled by Stripe and currently only credit card payments are available. But Apple Pay and Google Pay also work. If you’d prefer some other way of paying, let us know!

Another reason for upgrading is that you won’t see ad banners on your scoreboard. See next section.

Ad Banners

In the very near future, we will also begin showing ad banners on some scoreboards (again, this is being tested). We will be doing a fair bit of experimentation to find the optimal setup for this.

Ad banners will only be shown on scoreboards that are not upgraded, so if you want to be certain that you won’t see ad banners on a scoreboard, then upgrade it!