Ask HN:With the talk of Chargify recently ... | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN:With the talk of Chargify recently ...

11 pointsjbhelms10 comments

There are several products like Chargify, but now Google checkout is about to start recurring payments and subscription billing. It is currently in Beta, but I am integrating it into one of my sites, and it seems nice. Google is well trusted by people, so it may be better than a company like Chargify that most people probably haven't hear of. it also allows for item purchases at the same time as a subscription. So a customer can order Widget 1, and a 1 year support subscription for Widget 1.

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My only hesitation with going to Google with this is how notoriously difficult it can be to reach a real support person if you have a problem. There are all sorts of horror stories on the internet of people who had their accounts frozen or other issues and were unable to find any way to contact a human being. I dare you to try and find a contact phone number for support, unless its changed recently you won't be able to. IMO this isn't acceptable for someone who's handling my hard-earned money. If I have a problem I should be able to call them up and talk to a support person about it.

Agreed 100%. I spend a lot of time on the Google Help Forums, and I feel terrible for the people who need immediate access to something stored in Google, and have no way of getting help.

Imagine a customer of your company experiencing a billing problem that can only be solved by Google. Their lack of responsiveness could be interpreted as YOU being unresponsive. Until Google offers you dedicated support, I would be wary of selecting them.

Disclaimer: I work for a recurring billing provider today, but I've had a lot of experience dealing with different billing solutions.

I wonder if they could pull off a paid support subscription. You pay like $100 a year or something and get live phone or chat support.

Not to hijack the thread but I also ran across http://www.opengateway.net/ , an installable (as opposed to SaaS) recurring billing solution. Was wondering if anyone had tried it or had feedback.

I asked the same question on both of the chargify threads but was unfortunately only met with deafening silence...

Edit: I started an "Ask HN" on this => http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1792799

Google is definitely a trusted source, however, they're a monster in size and that sometimes leads to the inability to contact them should something come up.

I had a pretty severe Gmail problem once and I remember trying to contact someone or report the issue, a nearly impossible task. All I found were static help documents. Of course, that was ~4 years ago. And their support for Google Checkout may be handled entirely different from that of Gmail, but it's still something to consider.

Then again, I got burned by the Chargify pricing hike recently, so I can't really advocate to go with the smaller "Chargify-ish" companies, either.

You could also try PayPal's website payments standard which offers similar recurring payment functionality and identical transaction pricing. Customer's aren't required to have a PayPal account to purchase through it either.

Both of these services only offer checkout capabilities. They don't offer product/subscription management or other advanced features like dunning which gateway wrapper services like Chargify, Recurly, Spreedly and ChettarGetter offer.

If you want to not worry, can spend a week cooking it up and testing it, using a service like braintree (or the like, I have enjoyed only braintree), is the only way to go.

Google checkout is about to start recurring payments and subscription billing

Source?

http://code.google.com/apis/checkout/developer/Google_Checko...

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