Monthly subscriptions services, I have a question for you developers. | Hacker News Reader

Monthly subscriptions services, I have a question for you developers.

8 pointsstefpretty21 comments

Hey all, So I've got this little project that I've re-visited time and time again wondering if it's viable to monetize it for some pocket money. Now thats not the issue, the issue every time I re-visit it is I encounter the same issue.

The issue is dealing with subscription payments that can be upgraded and downgraded easily.

Let me elaborate.

I know of all the services: braintree, sagepay, recurly, etc etc

But all of them have a common denominator: They have monthly costs as well as percentage fees and some even require gateways if you're like me in the UK. And when trying to cut cost and minimise risk I don't like this as an option.

So I always conclude at this early stage I should test the theory using PayPal... but then this creates more issues.. I find it complicated and there are too many options & products almost. Every time I google the solution theres just more people asking the same questions as I am.

Now I just want to see if I'm the only one who feels the same about this.

So I have a couple of quick questions for you, if you don't mind sparing a minute:

1) If you were creating a monthly service would you also opt for PayPal for processing in the early days?

2) Is it just me and would you say the PayPal api for this scenario is overly complicated especially when dealing with upgrades and downgrades?

Thanks guys, I hope I'm not the only one!...

-Stefan

Personally, I'd use PayPal. However, if you're going to create a SaaS and are using PayPal, I highly recommend that you create a new account for the business (You are allowed 1 Personal and 1 Business account separately with PayPal[1]). The reason I say this is because, if you ever decide to sell your SaaS you cannot transfer the user subscriptions with the email to the buyer as, they are linked to the PayPal account - so you either have to give them the PayPal account or they're going to lose a lot of existing buyers (People sign up for these types of service and forget they're paying).

[1] https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-c....

Thanks for highlighting this. Would you say that the paypal api is overly complex and a bit of a headache with what im trying to achieve?

I wouldn't bother with the PayPal API because you can simply create a PayPal subscription button within PayPal and integrate PayPal's Instant Payment Notification (IPN) into your database - this is simpler than using PayPal's APIs IMO.

There's actually a useful tutorial/script here: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/using-paypals-instant-...

True but this doesnt make it easy or rather possible for a user to upgrade or downgrade themselves

You can actually create a button to "modify" subscriptions (allowing them to upgrade/downgrade packages).

There are more details here: https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/documentation-tools/payp...

Thanks for this but again, it's not the most convenient method as it waits till the end of the billing period and it doesnt appear to send an IPN update straight away, I've also read that it has a 20% price change limit somewhere else as well?

PayPal's billing changes take place at the end of the billing period. However, the 20% limit is wrong as PayPal’s own example highlights this further down the page on that link above.

The MVP version would be to use PayPal subscriptions, not any of their APIs. To create a subscription, you just give someone a link, and their account will push money to yours every month. If they want to upgrade or downgrade, either of you can cancel the existing subscription from your PayPal accounts, and your site gives them another link for a new subscription at the new rate. You can integrate PayPal IPN to record the payments in your database to have a billing history. All of this involves nothing more than copying some links and wiring up an IPN script someone else has already written for you -- under an hour.

Hi thanks for this, I am aware of these facilities but they aren't ideal as they require too much manual work for upgrades and downgrades, also not good for UX - what i'm looking for is a happy medium which handles automation of upgrades and downgrades, creation of subscriptions and failure or cancellation via paypal without the headache but not a solution which requires merchant accounts and or gateways which costs more money. thanks

You say you want that, but you also say you don't want to pay for the services that automate it for you, and you also think the APIs are too hard to do it yourself. You have to choose.

This "too much work and bad UX" got me my first 300 paying subscribers and really involved almost no work.

Fair play, I know what you're trying to say but what I'm trying to work out is if there is a service which simplifies the paypal subscription handling and rather than be free, just charge per transaction like paypal rather than monthly which holds risk

If you can work your way around WordPress and know how to integrate it with your project, I highly recommend the PaidMembershipsPro[1] plugin. It takes care of all the issues you've mentioned and it's free (if you don't want support) and dead simple. The only downside is you gotta know advanced WordPress.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/paid-memberships-pro/

I would (and have, in the recent past) opt for Stripe subscription billing: https://stripe.com/docs/subscriptions. Upgrading/downgrading plans for users is baked in (and you can even choose to prorate or not), plus, of course, it's an integrated service rather than something that sits atop another gateway and adds additional fees

I long for the day stripe comes to the UK... It's the one that makes most sense to me and I'm surprised no one has done this earlier...

Stripe is rumoured to come soon in the UK. There was a new recently about a beta launching and then indicating it was an error. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/14/stripe-uk-beta/

Have you checked paymill's offer ? https://www.paymill.com/en-gb/documentation-3/introduction/s...

I was never able to find any service that made for recurring billing but for variable amounts each month.

Ended up writing my own system- securely store the cc info yourself, get subscribers' consent, resubmit on a monthly cronjob.

It does require more maintenance (keeping a fixed monthly fee is very straightforward and well-supported by a number of providers) but it does work all right.

THanks for your response, yeh I can imagine the variable fee would be a nightmare. I think it's the upgrade and downgrade facility which is most complicated in PayPal, no easy way of doing it.

Check out Fastspring. They have a monthly fee though. However, since they are technically a reseller and not a pament provider you dont need merchant accounts, gateways and the like. Also integration is a snap.

Thanks for sharing but it seems pretty expensive in terms of transaction fees

chargify.com is the best I have used for something like this, and it didn't take too long to integrate. However, in the long run I would probably opt to manage it all myself for the flexibility.

Thanks for this but again it requires a monthly fee and a gateway as well

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