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Comment by nextworddev | Hacker News Reader

What alternatives do you recommend?

I’d cautiously use Stripe in a way that allows you to switch to another payment provider if/when needed.

For SaaS applications, I think Lago is pretty neat, for example: https://www.getlago.com/ (open source, YC S21)

And for ecommerce, there’s so much solutions that I don’t know what to recommend. If you’re looking for something headless, I’ve heard good things about Medusa (open source): https://medusajs.com/

Lago is not a payment service provider. You cannot charge credit cards through them.

Note the GP's first sentence:

> [...] use Stripe in a way that allows you to switch to another payment provider

You can still use Stripe via self hosted Lago, and replace it with something else if they ban you.

This exactly. Start with Stripe, swap them out if problems arise (or your MRR is high enough for you to be able to negotiate a lower % with other providers etc).

For one time payments, like in e-commerce, it's relatively trivial for even a small business to implement.

For subscriptions, achieving portability is much trickier.

Use an agnostic payment vault like spreedly or hyperswitch and send transactions to whichever gateway you’d like. Every processor wants vendor lock-in, terrible for a business. I’m not sure there’s a great option for small ecom businesses with no dev team, though.

I would store my data in a database that I control, so that it cannot be disconnected or altered by a service agreement change, or an API "upgrade".

I would ensure that any payment processing can be done through a range of processors, so that if any one of them becomes unavailable my store is not affected and I can continue taking payments.

I would also route payments through the processors dependent on cost. Some rails are more expensive for particular transaction types or countries, etc. Being able to switch between them at will is extremely useful.

You understand the complexities and risks involved in maintaining the setup you’ve described?

It’d be unreasonable for most folks who just want to sell regular products and deal with marketing and sales. Those become the biggest tasks once they start getting traction (ask any relatively successful indie hacker). Paying the processor’s fee is worth it for most

I agree, which is why most people just use Shopify and make all this their problem.

Snipcart?

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