
Software as a Service Rails Kit - pius
http://railskits.com/saas/
======
jdg
This is really great stuff. I've had a few interactions with Benjamin in the
past and he's a real pro.

While I haven't seen the actual code in the SaaS kit, I imagine it's top
notch.

Billing is one of the trickiest things to get right. It's also a big time
suck. $249 is nothing compared to the number of hours you'll spend writing,
testing and re-writing your billing code. Believe me, you don't want to mess
up your billing infrastructure.

(* Not a paid advertisement or a happy customer, just someone that has written
billing systems over and over, and never been happy with the result.)

~~~
webwright
Agreed. I've worked with Ben a bit as well (he actually did some tradeout work
for RescueTime) and he's an absolute star. Great combination of talent and
work ethic.

And he's probably done dozens of rails e-commerce implementations, so I can't
imagine someone more qualified to build this than he is.

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ericb
I wish this site showed more of what is involved. 250 bucks might be
reasonable, but I would want more reassurance that my time isn't going to be
spent learning an interface whose limitations may haunt me or that is nearly
as involved as writing the braintree code myself. I might buy something like
this, but I would want to be convinced it would reward me for giving up
flexibility, so I know the time savings would be real.

~~~
matthewking
Perhaps a demonstration of some of the UI parts, such as account
creation/management and some diagrams of how the billing procedure works, to
throw more light on if the system is going to work for us. A demonstration of
how we can customise/integrate the system would also be beneficial.

Looks exciting though, but I've never heard of BrainTree - perhaps that's just
me! Anyone care to share some thoughts on them?

~~~
jdg
Braintree is great to work with.

A few weeks back I hadn't heard of them either. My client was going to use
TrustCommerce originally, but they couldn't get their act together and decided
to not return phone calls or be very responsive. Responsiveness is SO
important, especially on the web.

For example, I signed up for a demo (developers) account with TrustCommerce. 5
days later they have a sales lackie call me and ask me if I still needed an
account. wtf? 5 days? No way. My client had started getting their application
together etc before _Christmas_ and was still waiting on various things from
them.

By the time TrustCommerce called back, I'd already found Braintree (it was on
the list of supported ActiveMerchant gateways). Submitted some feedback via
their Contact Us form on their site, received an email less than an hour
later. Then after a few back and forths, the CEO (without ever mentioning that
he actually was the CEO, I put that part together later after I found him on
LinkedIn) calls me to hash through things on the phone rather than back-and-
forth via email.

They've been super great to work with so far. Their developer documentation is
a work in progress, but anytime I've needed something (which hasn't been that
often at all) I received a response within a few hours from someone on their
side.

They have a _great_ recurring billing API, it's extremely flexible, and also a
way to get that data back OUT using their query API. They have a 'vault' that
you can literally check anything into (jpegs of drivers licenses, whatever) -
not just credit card numbers.

In short, their shit just works. The web interface they have isn't all
web2.0ish, but it's concise and easy enough to navigate. I'd rate their site
10 out of 10 when compared with any other payment gateway out there. Plus,
they blog. I mean, how many gateways do you know of have a blog? ;-)

~~~
matthewking
After further investigation, looks like you can only use Braintree if you're
in the US (you need a US bank account and address).

Which also means the billing code from railskits is no good for people in the
UK.

:'(

~~~
stympy
If you can point me at a non-US-friendly vendor that does stored transactions
like Braintree's Vault, I'd be happy to work in support for that vendor.

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callmeed
I've worked with Ben as well (actually working with him currently on a
project). This is going to be a great kit.

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dmix
Thanks for the heads up.

I'll be buying this for my site in a month or so.

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dawie
Is it a once off Payment of $249?

~~~
stympy
Yup, it's a one-time payment for use for one application. If you want to build
more than one application using the same codebase as a starting point, it's a
one-time payment of $999.

