

Ask HN: How do you bill your clients? (for your app) - perezd

We are building a software service that will be paid for based on a monthly subscription model. We are not really interested in reinventing any wheels and writing a billing system, and are interested in what you all are doing for your applications.<p>Do you create bridges to other third party billing system? If so, which ones do you recommend to integrate with (we are a ruby on rails application).<p>If you think its a bad idea to use a pre-existing billing system, could you give reasons why you feel that way?<p>Thanks for the advice!
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callmeed
If you're doing it in Rails, I'd recommend the ActiveMerchant plugin and a
gateway/merchant account from Braintree.

That's what we use on our main Rails app (as opposed to PayPal on our other
main subscription-based offering). It works great. The only hangup has been
accepting international currencies (we're having to work with a different
company for that).

The transaction fees are low, too–which actually makes a difference when you
start getting a lot of subscribers.

<http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/> <http://www.activemerchant.org/>
<https://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf>

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bradgessler
Braintree actually doesn't work very well for recurring payments since you end
up writing your own biller. They offer some sort of a subscription billing
system, but since their API only works 1-day (Data-in, no data-out) so its
damn near impossible to keep your system in synch with theirs.

Also, be careful with that peep-code PDF; their design isn't really the best
so keep that in mind when reading through it and take their content merely as
a suggestion. They couple their Orders with Transactions in a funky way.

Another thing, when dealing with BrainTree, be sure to pester them about how
much the SecureVault costs. They came to us 6 months after we started using
them and demanded that we pay $0.10-$0.15 anytime we touched a customer in the
SecureVault. After a few back-and-forth's via email, they finally waived these
fee's because they neglected to bring it up when we negotiated our rates.

In technical terms of payment gateway APIs, I liked Google Checkout's the
best. They had a nice asynch RESTful XML API that made a lot of sense;
although I didn't really like that fact that we had to send users through the
Google Checkout screens. We had to move away from GCO because they didn't
support recurring billing.

Has anybody used the Amazon Flexible Payment System?

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Braintree_Jamie
I'd like to clarify a couple of the topics discussed here regarding our
(Braintree's) services. The recurring option within our gateway is designed
for straightforward recurring billing needs. It's simple, reliable and a good
tool. Merchants that need greater flexibility and/or prefer to manage the
billing logic on their end, find our API's and processing quite accommodating
and straightforward. All transaction data (including all custom information
passed to us) is easily accessible using our Query API. Merchants can use it
to pull data back into their applications, create custom reporting and manage
reconciliation.

Regarding Brad's comments about our pricing, we've discussed this directly
with him and agree that the specific communcation with him could have been
done better. At the same time, we've expressed to him that we didnt' think the
tone of his statement was fair or accurate. We always offer complete
transparency in our pricing and do not use bait and switch tactics that are so
commonly used in the industry.

@callmeed - thank you for your comments. You guys have been great to work
with.

~~~
bradgessler
I would like to add that BrainTree our Vault situation well; they did honor
they said on their website.

Another great thing about these guys is that you can actually email or call
them and a person will pick up the phone. Good luck doing that with GCO,
PayPal, or AFPS.

Also, as Jamie said, they offer an API to query payment data; while this isn't
an asynch API like what Google offers, it at least opens up the possibility of
writing a batch process that reconciles data between your application and
Braintree.

Overall BT has been very responsive to our needs and, as a result, I have
recommended them to many of the YC Summer '08 companies, along with many other
companies I've talked to outside of YC.

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wave
Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198502>

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jasonlbaptiste
check out zuora. if youd like an intro drop me an email:
jason[at]publictivity.com

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perezd
This looks very promising, but its sort of off-putting that they don't
explicitly define their pricing. Is that a sign that its pricey?

I was also looking into blinksale and its API integration, thoughts?

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lux
I spoke with someone at Zuora a couple weeks ago. They said it was a minimum
$1,000 US / month to use their system, and I think it was around 2% as a
transaction fee beyond that minimum. A bit pricey for most bootstrapped or
self-funded startups I'd say. I guess they're after the big boys first...

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swombat
Sounds like a great opportunity for someone to fly underneath them....

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cbrinker
You can integrate your system with Quickbooks. They have an API. I don't know
if you want to deal with their software, though.

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josefresco
I can understand why you were modded down (boo Quickbooks) but for a lot of
small business owners it's a tempting strategy. And with people out there
pushing carts that integrate with QB 'out of the box', it makes building
something custom for people a harder sell.

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netcan
What boo Quickbooks? It's what people use. It's a bit rich expecting
businesses to switch bookkeeping software (which their accountant/bookkeeper
recommended & uses) because your cart has a better idea.

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jcapote
Try railskit or servicemerchant.org

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justinkelly
i use Simple Invoices - <http://www.simpleinvoices.org> to bill my clients for
freelance work

cheers

justin

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nextmoveone
billingcircle.com ? ariasystems.com ?

