
Ask HN: How do you handle billing for your SaaS product? - jonathanleane
Hey guys... just wondering if you&#x27;ve built a payment module from scratch or if chargebee, stripe, recurly, etc are worth it?<p>And if you&#x27;ve used one of these out of the box solutions, how much customization is typically necessary?<p>Some of the stuff I&#x27;m hoping it&#x27;ll deal with so I won&#x27;t have to mess with it myself...<p>Plan upgrades &#x2F; downgrades... I plan to use a &#x27;credits&#x27; type system where each plan has a number of monthly credits that reset every month.<p>Pay as you go option for people who just want to buy packs of credits and not sign up to an ongoing thing<p>Cancellations &#x2F; refunds etc, and whether these should be pro-rated etc<p>And obviously the core stuff like collecting payments, protecting against fraud, etc.<p>Any help would be much appreciated.<p>Thanks
======
scottybo
Billing and the associated subscription models is a problem that has been
largely solved, so there isn't much need to roll your own. Instead you can
dive straight into the 'fun' parts of your project.

I used Laravel Spark + Stripe for my SaaS and it works great.

However.. The downside is that if major changes happen (e.g. The new SCA
regulations) you could find the core modules used in a package such as the
Laravel billing package need to be upgraded, so you have a domino effect where
everything needs to be upgraded. We were left with a LOT of work as we had to
upgrade Laravel core to a new version, which meant upgrading from Bootstrap 3
to 4 (a huge job).

I wouldn't change our initial approach as it allowed us to quickly get a
product to market and see whether it was viable, but the reality is that we
will be rebuilding the entire system from scratch in the future to get rid of
the legacy inefficiencies.

------
seanwilson
For my paid Chrome extension
[https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/), I use Paddle. They take
5% + $0.50 for each transaction - the big plus for me compared to say Stripe
is Paddle take care of the sales tax for you so I can sell worldwide without
having to do any complicated tax forms or dealing with EU VAT.

Can anyone that deals with sales tax themselves as a solo founder comment on
how much time it takes them a year to deal with sales tax and EU VAT?

------
billconan
I would use [https://paddle.com/](https://paddle.com/)

because sales tax is too complex to handle myself. paddle is a reseller who
can handle it for me.

~~~
sergiotapia
What's Paddle's pricing? I can't find any information online. I want to bill
people for a SaaS for example, using Paddle.

~~~
alamaslah
Incase you didn't see the other comment.

They take 5% + $0.50 for each transaction. Seems pretty high to me, guessing
that is why they're effectively hiding this information. Interesting
conversion technique.

------
clintonb
Disclaimer: I work at Stripe.

I use Stripe Billing. I opted to use Checkout so I don’t have to build the UX
for subscribing/checkout. Stripe handles the payment collection and fraud
protection.

I opted to prorate cancellations to simplify the customer experience. I built
the cancellation UX on my own since Checkout doesn’t (yet) support this. I
haven’t yet built the UX to change plans.

For your specific case, it might make sense to track your internal credits
separately from payment. When payment is made, add credits to the user’s
account. Remove credits when a refund occurs.

~~~
ablekh
Quick question about Stripe Billing. Is it possible to create a subscription
plan that would combine a Per Seat model with a Usage one? (see the "Building
blocks for billing" section)

------
sergiotapia
We use Stripe for charging members, and Tipalti to disburse to our private
contractors.

------
trez
I use GoCardless for collecting payments. Airtable and a python script for
billing.

------
buboard
And how do you handle accounting/taxes? Esp if you are in Europe?

------
anandnair
Try Chargebee. They support multiple payment gateways as well.

