Ask HN: this is core business for YCombinator startups, why isn't it solved? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: this is core business for YCombinator startups, why isn't it solved?

9 pointsandrewstuart18 comments

Is there a SAAS handling user registration, oauth signin and Stripe subscriptions?

I don't want to write all that stuff yet again.

I'm not enthused about http://www.signupasaservice.com/ since their login link leads to a dead page, not inspiring confidence.

EDIT: why isn't this a solved problem by all the ycombinator genius folks? Remember - build something people WANT.

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My 2 cents on this.

You need to think ahead a bit on how you might use the user management layer down the line. Even if you decide to move away from XYZ service that you started with, you need to at some point replicate all the functionality that made you want to go with them in the first case. Ideally, your best bet is to use this kind of service for as long as you can to minimize service disruption to your users. As you pointed out, "A dedicated third party company is going to do this better than me."

A better approach, IMO, is to go for an authentication service that is flexible for a longer term and satisfies your core requirements today (ie user management functions). The payment stuff is anyway custom (as the nature of your plans are unique to your business) and can be easily achieved a 3rd party platform where the user layer is integrated via OAuth.

One simple approach here is to use Wordpress with WooCommerce (ready packages exist) as your "sales" layer + an integration module to Stormpath/Auth0/etc to sync the user auth layer. This is a solved problem for Wordpress sites, and you just need to link it to an OAuth layer that does what you need. I get that you don't want to write any code, but no two businesses are alike especially in the subscriptions game, and you're better off spending a little time to get this setup the way you want, instead of having to live with what someone else gives you.

We just went through a similar exercise, and this is the understanding we arrived at. We're using Auth0 (www.auth0.com) instead of Stormpath as we plan to deploy quite a few micro-apps linked to a single login, and we don't want to be charged by the number of apps we have, but by our user volume. Otherwise, the service feature-sets are quite similar.

Hope this helps.

P.S We're using ChargeBee (www.chargebee.com) to handle our subscription billing management and we're writing some minors scripts to automate our user layer based on the payment status.

My personal view, is that the cons significantly outweigh the pros in a situation like this. I know your pain, as I recently went through the subscription hell (confirm emails, error checking, change credit card, valid_until, webooks, accounting stats, etc), but this is the core of your company and it needs to be right. Stripe was actually the easy part, it is all the scaffolding around it to make subscriptions work, which is extremely painful. If this out-sourced saas goes out of business tomorrow, you are royally screwed, has a security issue, screwed, hardware failure with data loss, screwed, bad service, customers are screwed, you are screwed, etc, etc. There needs to be a better way I know, I'm just not sure this is the answer, and it is just way to risky.

Having said all that, I think https://www.ccbill.com/ does something close to what you are looking for.

I just want to get a subscription product out there fast, not spend three months building yet another user registration database with oauth and payments.

What I really need is something like shopify - but allowing subscription payments via Stripe. I also need Shopify to provide an API so I can query my user database and do stuff with it.

I want someone else to be taking care of user interface stuff. I should be able to pay and get a gorgeous looking site that works well on mobile and desktop, facilitates user signin via oauth, allows me to set up products and prices, lets people purchase my services on a recurring basis, doesn't try to own my user base and lets me write code to access all the relevant user and account and product data.

I do agree that there is a level of risk of the provider going bust but I'm willing to take that risk at least in the initial stages of a project. To offset risk I need to be able to get backups or replication of my user database out of the Shopify system.

Surely it's an opportunity for someone.

Here's what needs to be melted together:

-- Shopify

-- Stripe

-- StormPath

-- oauth.io

-- and maybe something like Strikingly or Squarespace.

Put it all together and you basically get a digital subscription goods business in a box. I could immediately get going writing code to provide my digital service, not wasting my time building shops and user databases and login systems AGAIN.

Preaching to the choir ;) If someone reputable built it, I would also highly be interested, as it is such a pain re: subscriptions. It would be nice if Stripe just had a spinoff that handled all this as there is major overlap in skills required.

>> this is the core of your company and it needs to be right

A dedicated third party company is going to do this better than me. There's ALOT to do if you want to cover all bases, mobile, desktop, visual design etc.

Yeah, that could definitely be true. It took me about 3 weeks of full-time work to get it to the point where I felt safe with it. Tons of test transactions, error checking, dummy accounts, etc. If you were not a programmer, and wanted to configure some type of subscription service, I literally have no idea how you would do that w/ stripe. This is not for everyone and there should be a turn key solution like Shopify. I 100% agree. This was basically time that I blew, working on something people almost never see, when I could have been building my product.

Can I ask what your product is?

Sure, the site is https://sysadmincasts.com/. I do a weekly screencast about sysadmin topics.

Looks good.

So you're a systems guy - even us techies don't want to be writing the same stuff over and over again.

Are you getting many people signing up?

It's only been ~3 weeks or so since I started to accept subscribers, so it is still too early to really say, but there are a few. My plan is it build it up over the next few years.

Hi, co-founder of OAuth.io here. We have a full OAuth.io + Stormpath integration already

https://oauth.io/home/user_management

and the set up is quite straightforward if you go in our User management API documentation.

http://docs.oauth.io/#user-management-api

We are built on stripe so we could do something there to fulfill your need.

Thanks for your feedback and hope this helps,

Nice to see you in person commenting on this!

To help you understand the background. I have built a web service that I want to sell.

Unfortunately I'm now faced with writing a whole bunch of code that is not my core business. I can do it and have done it before many times but it's really just a time consuming barrier to getting my product to market.

I really need a "business in a box" and I really don't want to write code. Here's the requirements:

--> Website

users need to be able to come to a gorgeous looking site (or at least clean and professional anyway) - must work well on mobile. The website is a very substantial part of the requirements. It should look like my website and not show any signs that it is actually constructed using something else. No "powered by Shopify" or anything on it.

--> Authentication

users to be able to sign in and create an account using whatever the common signin services are (i.e. oauth)

--> Authorization and user management

the back end must save the user data into a database and should handle all the crap involved with sending out confirmations, password resets etc. the back end must provide me with an API. the back end must provide me tools for backing up my user and account data cause I don't trust that they won't go out of business one day the back end company must exude the sense that it's my customer base, not theirs. if I get the sense that I don't trust them then I'm outa there.

--> Commerce

the website must allow me to set up a very simple schedule of service levels and present it in that well known pricing table format that almost all websites seem to use

--> Payments

MUST allow me to do subscription payments through Stripe - nothing else will do here

--> integrated

all the above must be nicely integrated.

--> API

stripe have shown everyone how to do API's well. Must be incredibly thoroughly documented with lots of practical examples and wide language support. Python 3 please as well, not just Python 2.

--> Setup and configuration

hard to see why it should take me more than half an hour in an admin interface to set up all the above.

Seems to me that various companies are "best in class" for each of the above areas, but nowhere is it all integrated into the smooth end to end complete experience that I want. That leaves me needing to write code and damn I really don't want to - it's completely pointless to be writing all this stuff yet again.

And how much would you pay for that? What would be your prefered model? per number of users? per number of API calls? a % transaction fee on top of existing stripe fees? Something else?

As someone else looking for the same thing, I'd pay a monthly subscription on a per number of tiers. I'd likely pay around $10-15 for every 1,000 users, probably a little more. I wouldn't ever do a "% of revenue" or a fee on top of existing transactions.

You should work out the price - asking customers what they want to pay tells you nothing valuable.

https://www.dailycred.com/

I think this is exactly what you need: https://www.userapp.io/

WHMCS? Hostbill? Clientexec?

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