Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

Spreedly provides the logic, Paypal the gateway. It works, it took vanishingly little time to get working eight (a few hours, total), it is fairly inexpensive, and it didn't require a real merchant account, which would be difficult to get for my business. ("You live where? I see. And your business does what exactly? I see. And you have five figures in yearly sales? I see. Thanks, we'll pass.")

We use Braintree's vault, and we use ActiveMerchant to access it. We wrote all of the recurring/billing/invoicing logic ourselves. Beyond the initial implementation, we've done one sweeping overhaul of the logic to make some improvements and simplify things after learning a lot from the first pass.<p>We built it in late 2008, and either the companies that handled recurring stuff didn't exist when we were building it, or we weren't aware of the ones that did. Otherwise, it's unlikely that we would have gone down this route. However, now that we have it, it is pretty nice to have control over every detail of how it works.<p>When we made the enhancements, we briefly considered switching to a provider for handling it, but given our existing infrastructure, it was actually easier for us to improve our own instead of migrating to another provider.

I hate the construct that you must be a business in order to make money. Not only that, but you must be a reasonably-successful business. Talk about a chicken and egg problem.<p>I'm trying to bootstrap a product that charges between $10-40/mo per user. Right now I have no users, but I hope to get a few over the next couple of months. What are my options?<p>Do I have to incorporate in order to get a merchant gateway? Do I cut my losses by using Chargify or Recurly and pay $30-40/mo while I am making less than half of that in revenue?<p>If I'm to remain economical, I'm forced to use Paypal (or Amazon's SimplePay, or Google Checkout) until I graduate to a better position with more customers.<p>I imagine a more efficient economy someday in the future when peer-to-peer transactions are commonplace and streamlined. Everyone should be able to provide a service or product in an ad-hoc nature before having to invest in incoporation, etc.<p>As much as I love to hate Paypal, I have to appreciate their forward thinking.

We're using Spreedly on top of Ogone and Atos Worldline. The notable thing about our setup is that we're based in the Netherlands and it took us 6 months of painstaking research and headaches to figure out the combination of services that would allow us to accept subscription payments. I wrote a blog post about the ordeal last week; I recommend it to anyone in a similar situation (eg. non-UK Europe): <a href="http://blog.quplo.com/2011/01/looking-back-on-the-quest-for-payments/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.quplo.com/2011/01/looking-back-on-the-quest-for-...</a>

I recommend trying PayLeap (<a href="http://www.payleap.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.payleap.com</a>) They're both a gateway and Credit Card processor. They're also very developer friendly, have the best rates around and have FREE recurring billing. We just switched after meeting them at a developer conference and are very happy with them. Here are their base rates:<p>$29 Monthly Processing Fee<p>Transaction Fee: $0.25<p>Credit Card Rate: 2.15%<p>No Annual Fee<p>No Monthly Minimum Fee<p>No Monthly Gateway Fee<p>Free Reporting and API<p>Free Recurring Billing

We keep the credit card numbers on file (yes, fully complying with PCI) and handle the recurring billing ourselves.

I use Paypal's recurring billing API directly. It's not an ideal solution, but being based in the UK without a merchant account it's the only one I have available. I use ActiveMerchant and some extensions to talk to the Paypal API but I've had to write the logic to handle recurring billing myself. I'm trying to extract that logic into a gem and make it more robust. I'd like to eventually release it and possibly save some headaches amoung small developers who just want to get up and running quickly.

I'm planning to use Paypal Adaptive Payments for a site I'm building. Can anyone save me?<p>I'm building a Ruby site and will charge my users automatically on a monthly basis, based on their usage, so their charge varies. They agree to a billing agreement when they sign up, and their charges will vary mostly between $0.25 and $5.00.<p>I need a payment service that:<p>(1) enables me to automatically charge my users varying amounts (without them approving each time),<p>(2) has a decent micropayment fee structure ($0.05 + 5% for less than $10),<p>(3) allows my users to pay with any credit/debit card without requiring a proprietary login (e.g. Amazon), and<p>(4) can store my users' billing info so I don't have to be PCI compliant - I just do an API call to charge them.<p>The only service I've found meeting my needs is Paypal's Adaptive Payments API. I've had some bad experiences in the past with Paypal and I'm wary based on others' feedback (e.g. "Paypal is the Anti-Christ"), but I don't see any other option.<p>Does anyone know of a good alternative?

These results are very biased by the early-adopters that frequent hackernews.<p>There are WAY more people out there are using the recurring functionality of the gateways (ex. Auth.net, Braintree, Linkpoint / First Data Global Gateway) than one of the standalone recurring billing systems (recurly, chargify, etc).<p>However using those legacy solutions is a SHAME because they are in general quite horrible. They are certainly cheaper, and may seem like the path of least resistance, but they don't do the job well enough for serious companies.<p>You want something like Recurly, Chargify, Zuora, CheddarGetter, if you are doing either recurring or metered charging of your customers. It will make your life easier and is worth the expense.

[full disclosure - I am a co-founder of Recurly] I'll do my best to be objective and help frame an inclusive approach to the answer.<p>First - you need to decide what kind of billing mechanics your business needs. (simple X$/mo or advanced- multiple plans, upgrades downgrades, add-ons, coupons, dunning, multi-currency support etc) - this is typically the first step in the build vs. buy eval.<p>Secondly - you need to evaluate your own available time/resources. Most eng. projects require 2x original estimate...you can easily apply 5-10X for billing since even the most talented developers don't get it 'right' the first time (add PCI and ongoing customer support + gateway recourse to your total estimates). The best developers can usually 'get it working' - but then realize they end up spending tremendous time to 'get it working well'.<p>Third - [Assume now you're buying vs. building] You need to choose a service that gives your business room/flexibility to grow. Many businesses decide to change gateways at some point - when new business needs emerge - [multi-currency support, better rates, customer support]. Don't hem yourself in by choosing a service that doesn't store your card data, and let you easily switch gateways. Numerous horror stories exist on this topic - won't cover here. Also important, don't choose ANY service that won't commit to returning your customer credit card data if/when you decide to leave them. [Braintree was a leader in this area, and Recurly fully supports the Data Portability Standard as well].<p>Compare core feature capabilities AND 'high frequency use' capabilities of available recurring providers. Core features might be: add-on support, upgrade downgrade + proration, customizable emails, API documentation + API behaviors, Push notifications for sync to your systems, free trials, coupons etc. 'High frequency use' aspects include reporting, data exports, third party integrations, account dashboard + common customer support functions (can you easily credit, refund, charge, modify info, upgrade/downgrade) from any customer account page. This is a critical aspect and most evaluations fail to consider what it will be like to actually 'live with' a vendor's solution.<p>Lastly, the payment processor options + combinations. Merchant Bank Accts - (We really like FeeFighters.com for helping entrepreneurs to choose a merchant bank).<p>Payment Gateways - Your payment gateway decision should be made not just on fees alone, but also consider the kinds of error fidelity you will receive (How many error/decline messages and what type of info is returned). Another important consideration is multi-currency support. Does your business need to accept many different kinds of currencies from around the world? (Dramatically improves conversions if you don't force your customers to pay in $USD). PayPal does a better job with currency conversion than just about any other gateway (For US companies). Some gateways will require you to be incorporated in each country you would like to accept currencies from..<p>Most importantly, talk to customers from your prospective recurring billing provider. The 'Net promoter score' opinions are very palpable across vendors. Don't just take the 'reference' customers provided by the vendors, but do your homework and you'll find quickly where the raving fans are.<p>Hopefully this was helpful, balanced, fair and objective.<p>-Dan

Switched from Amazon FPS to Amazon SimplePay to Chargify. Although very pricey, Chargify is much, much nicer. I really cringe when I see the bill, but I cringe more when I think about how much things sucked before we made the switch.<p>I talk more about it here: <a href="http://peachshake.com/2010/06/15/saas-subscription-billing-or-how-to-avoid-getting-your-nts-in-a-vice/" rel="nofollow">http://peachshake.com/2010/06/15/saas-subscription-billing-o...</a>

I've used CheddarGetter (<a href="http://cheddargetter.com" rel="nofollow">http://cheddargetter.com</a>) for a few projects and I've been extremely happy with their service.<p>* API is reasonably nice to work with (wrote a Python client called Sharpy <a href="https://github.com/saaspire/sharpy" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/saaspire/sharpy</a>) * Lots of options to control exactly how and when your customers get billed. * Support for a bunch of payment gateways * Tools for handling tracked items and one-off charges (e.g. discounts or fees) as part of your subscriptions. * Fantastic support - I don't think I've ever waited more than a few hours for a response and their support team has been very helpful.

Authorize.net's CIM to store the payment data, and a nightly cron job to charge whoever's monthly subscription fee is due. It's not <i>that</i> hard, everyone managed before these subscription-as-a-service companies popped up in the past few years.

We use PayPal. The solution we found was to cancel the subscription and create a new one. Sure this isn't atomic but we haven't had anyone drop mid flow yet.<p>It looks and feels atomic to the user.<p>PayPal could go a long way to document their API better. The number of customers with PayPal accounts is large enough that we're willing to deal, especially since setup is a one time cost.<p>PayPal does not support monthly recurring billing between Germany and United States. Thats no good.<p>I think someone can displace PayPal but not enough payers are comfortable using services other than PayPal, especially on a startup site.<p>Hope this helps someone.

We use PayPal Adaptive Payments. It's far from perfect: all paying customers must have a PayPal account and (in Europe) payments can be set up only for a year in advance. The term "preapproval" is also likely to frighten some customers.<p>Adaptive Payments was chosen as the standard recurring billing API doesn't allow us to automatically manage subscriptions, which becomes an issue if you have multiple plans. However, we had to implement billing scheduling ourselves. PayPal was for us the only option which didn't require us to store CC information on our servers.

I use freeSide; not sure I'd recommend it, but hey, open source and it handles things like service credits much better than most of the webapps I've tried. I use paypal and/or checks for actual billing<p>I'm considering switching to one of the webapps you kids seem to like, but most of them seem more like payment processors than billing systems, really, and if I have to maintain my own separate billing system, what's the point?<p>I am very interested in what other people's experiences have been with the webapps, though.

We just selected MetraTech for all of our billing needs due to the complexity of our pricing models. However there are lot of great less expensive services if your needs are simpler. A few that come to mind are Zuora, Vindica, Monexa and Aria. If you are pre-revenue Zuora may be a good choice because they have a pricing model that charges a percentage instead of requiring a significant upfront investment.

We're using CheddarGetter, they have their own gateway as well. Any positive or negative comments would be appreciated as we're just getting underway.

Freshbooks with Authorize.net as the payment gateway.

We use Braintree's "Vault" for card storage and have a custom-built set of methods for handling the rebilling. Like jpallen, I'd like to release our logic as a gem, as it took us longer than it should to hack it together. They offer a rebilling service, but I really want to know <i>how</i> my billing system is working, so that if it breaks somehow, I know what's going on with it.

Paypal Adaptive Payments for chained payments which allows splitting of proceeds at a percentage between one or more partners. When it works most of the time it's great, but there is no recurring API forcing you to use preapprovals and those have a lot of restrictions and caveats. Amazon FPS is only other provider I'm aware of that provides similar functionality.

Authorize.net, though we don't really like it. The API is ugly and we can't update a recurring bill (so if someone changes their plan we have to ask for their payment info all over again). It's not enough of a priority to change it right now, because most of our clients pay us offline anyway, but eventually we'd like to move to something a little more modern.

I use the basic version of PayPal for subscriptions, but I've had issues with canceling customers' subscriptions without their explicit request, and the PayPal support is horrendous.<p>The fees are a little higher than some of the other services, but it integrates fine, so if you're okay with a clunky but easy to set up service, you might find it useful as well.

I use chargify but I don't want to vote them up

Any comment from Australian devs as Im about to go through this myself. PayPal is the anti christ, not an option for me.

Question: It's a bit out on the horizon, but in the not too distant future we're going to be implementing a payment system that charges a % of the transaction to us. For example: $110 payment in, $100 to seller, $10 to us.<p>I've had a real problem finding a recurring billing company that allows payments to be split like this. Any suggestions?

We use a few different approaches, thought we're consolidating:<p>- Authorize.net + CIM + ActiveMerchant<p>- Authorize.net + Reoccurring Billing<p>- Authorize.net + Freshbooks

We use BillingCircle.com, which I see hasn't been mentioned yet. It's good. We even wrote them a testimonial. However, we also use PayPal and it would be so much better if all the reporting ended up in one place. They said that feature was coming, but that was over a year ago.<p>John.

I use Paypal, Authorize.net, and First Data, and we use their built in recurring payment options. It is torture. For First Data, I have to maintain a screen scraper because they don't even have a Reporting API.

I use Authorize.net with CIM, but handle the recurring billing piece myself.

Amazon Simple Pay is quite good and easy to set-up as well. There are no monthly fees and you get a lot of control over the subscriptions, but the payment experience is hosted by Amazon unfortunately.

Out of out-of-the box solutions like listed in the Poll, CheddarGetter has by far the best pricing for any bootstrapper.<p>Our European startup is using Adyen, a Dutch company.<p>I also use Amazon Payments for a subscription service I have.

I send out invoices through Freshbooks and get paid by snail mail. I've tried to move clients over to subscription billing, but I get major pushback each time I try.

Recurly with PayPal gateway is a scalable solution for startups through large transaction levels. API approach and extreme ease-of-use key to their strengths.

I've used Netbilling's recurring payment API before (patched support into ActiveMerchant a while back), but now I'm using Recurly with a PayPal gateway.

a general question. Do any of these seem to handle out of band payments? e.g. if one customer wants me to send a check, is that even possible?

For an all-in-one subscription management system (merchant account, gateway, order page merchandising, VAT, etc.), there's FastSpring.

I use the Google Checkout recurring payments. I think it is still in beta, but it hasn't failed me yet.

Recurly. Chargify's prices are a little steep when you're only charging a few dollars per month.

How about Paypal + Freshbooks API?<p>- None of the major Indian gateways support recurring billing.

Braintree

PayPal and WorldPay

failed to list cybersource, zuora, and netsuite.

2Checkout.com.

Hey folks, an opinion from the cofounder at BluSynergy, the customizable billing provider. Depending on your requirements and your desire to stay focused on your core product:<p>1. Rolling your own with a gateway like Paypal or Authorize.Net is often the easiest entry point (for US based startups at least), provided your requirements are not too complex. Especially if you are just getting started with an uncertain revenue prediction, there's little justification in trying to take on more sophistication. Do what's easiest for you - sling code or outsource to a SaaS billing provider. Unfortunately, the underwriting process is controlled by the credit card companies and tends to be cumbersome. No shortcuts there.<p>2. Once you've got a customer base, then you get the feel for the issues. Some examples: Mid-month upgrades/downgrades, chargebacks (customers disputing the charge directly with their credit card issuer), orders expiring, corporate customers wanting to pay by paper check, adding 1 time service charges to monthly bill, house credits or refunds, early termination fees, etc. Then you start thinking stuff like, gee, if I could notify my annual customers in advance I'd reduce a good deal of chargebacks and automate a lot of renewals...and so on... At this point you definitely want to consider either a SaaS billing solution or buying a platform and running it in-house (ya, we do both). And, now that you've got some volume, you'd want to switch CC processors for better rates. Let's hope you can get YOUR data back...<p>3. If your growth has continued past the above stage, then you want to be able to customize. Typical examples we see: commission and affiliate payouts, master billing (one consolidated corporate bill, a la your corporate telco+internet bill), custom payment retry logic (eg. ACH when paychecks are most likely to hit the bank), customer segmentation tactics (e.g. coupon codes for VIP customers to entice renewals), advanced billing models (eg. peak concurrent usage, or annual averaged billing), blacklisting bad cards, etc. The founders of BluSynergy spent two decades doing this kinda stuff for the big guys. Our specialty is that we designed the system from the ground-up to easily implement this level of customization (often less than a week) while still running in a cost-efficient multi-tenant model. And it's not just for the big guys anymore :)<p>Now see if any of this applies to your revenue strategy. For many, #1 above is still the best bet if your requirements are simple. There will be a migration effort when you get to stage 2, but at that point it's a "good problem" to tackle.<p>more rambling thoughts: <a href="http://blusynergy.com/features/compare-alternatives" rel="nofollow">http://blusynergy.com/features/compare-alternatives</a><p>We love to work the challenging cases, give us a call. We are especially eager to work with companies contemplating mobile/"in-app" purchases.

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