Memberful: Sell Digital Goods with Stripe | Hacker News Reader

Memberful: Sell Digital Goods with Stripe

memberful.com

24 pointsgarrettdimon16 comments

First of all, nice product, seems intuitive and easy to set up.

I'm wondering how Memberful distinguishes itself from the competition. I'm talking about https://sellfy.com/ (also supporting Stripe, http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/18/look-who-called-sellfy-scor...) and https://gumroad.com/ (http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/07/gumroad-7-million-series-a-...).

I think Gumroad has been around for a while and is doing really great. They also pay you directly.

Could you elaborate on how Memberful is different? Just trying to sort things out in this field. Would people prefer payment through Stripe instead of directly?

Thanks and keep up the good work.

I don't know much about the ones you've listed, but I've talked to the guys that made Memberful, and I have a couple thoughts as to what might make theirs different:

1) Recurring payments. I don't see anything about recurring payments on the links you provided. I know Memberful will be offering subscription / recurring payment offerings.

2) Simple integration with WordPress. These guys are behind Theme Foundry, a WordPress theme shop. So a priority for them is to make it really easy to integrate Memberful with a WordPress site. Since WordPress has such a huge marketshare for self-hosted CMS based websites, that's a big plus. Site owners won't have to worry about PCI compliance, SSL, etc.

For me, the biggest difference was that Gumroad only offers to pay via PayPal, as opposed to running payments through Stripe. I've heard way too many horror stories to trust PayPal when selling things online.

This is Drew with Memberful. Good question. Here's how we're different:

* Integrate with your Stripe account. You get to sell with a processor you love (Stripe) and we act as a nice layer on top of that. This means you don't ever have to worry about us touching card data or storing that type of information.

* We're not venture funded. We built a real business on this software (see http://thethemefoundry.com). We depend on it everyday. We plan to build this service the right way (even if it takes a little bit longer) and stick around for the long haul.

* Completely customizable. Memberful uses Liquid templates and a theme editor to give you total control over the checkout and account screens. You can tightly integrate the design with your own site (again see http://thethemefoundry.com) and customers will have a completely seamless experience.

* Recurring billing / subscriptions. Sell monthly or yearly subscriptions quickly and easily. Customers can view their account, update their card, cancel / renew their subscription, etc.

* Simple WordPress integration. We built a WordPress plugin to sit nicely on top of our API and provide point and click integration with WordPress. Customers are automatically signed in to your WordPress site and your products and subscriptions are synced up with WordPress and ready to use. Protect specific content or entire posts and pages.

* Use your own email service. We'll send emails for you by default, but you can use your own SMTP server or service (Postbox, Mandrill, etc.). Emails come directly from you, giving your customers an even more consistent brand experience.

Hopefully this helps. Happy to answer any other questions!

Looks pretty good. I have a similar project at: https://bngal.com

I think some screen shots on your home page would help a lot.

In a broader sense, with Stripe being so easy to setup, this space is going to get a little crowded. I think the winners will differentiate themselves by focusing on a niche/segment first.

Also, Gumroad has raised a lot of money, so (some would say) that gives them a bit of an advantage.

Good luck.

Competition is good. I'm excited to see what happens.

That's a super slick front page (for bngal). Nice work!

I've been wondering when someone would build a nice service like this on top of Stripe. Hope to see more, Stripe is a pleasure to work with.

I see that you don't support other payment gateways. Check out Spreedlycore.com if you want to easily add more.

A consequence of only supporting Stripe is that this service is US only, which is a shame.

Stripe is also available in Canada: https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-in-canada

We intentionally aren't supporting any other payment gateways and have no current plans to change that.

Gotcha. Why did you intentionally make that decision?

Simplicity. Stripe Connect allows us to integrate that processing layer in a really customer friendly way. Putting more balls in the air introduces more complexity into the service and the underlying software.

Nothing against Spreedly Core though, it looks fantastic.

No wasn't meaning it in reference to Spreedly Core. Thanks for the kind words. Was just wondering why you mapped to just one though. Stripe's fantastic to work with for this type of thing.

Good stuff. Similar to Spacebox.io

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