
Show HN: Snappy Checkout – Stripe Checkout with full-featured dashboard, admin - singer
https://www.snappycheckout.com
======
singer
Since March 2013, I've been working on building a payment system to sell
products for my business. It started out as a modified version of Stripe
Checkout. And, from there, I bolted on a full-featured back-end to manage the
checkout and collected payments.

I named my payment system "Snappy Checkout". Here's an example of how I use it
on one of my websites:

[https://www.snappycheckout.com/pay?E13DZ319DJ1SJCNDH2JDP1](https://www.snappycheckout.com/pay?E13DZ319DJ1SJCNDH2JDP1)

After adding a few lines of JavaScript, the checkout can also be launched
directly from any website that uses HTTPS.

Here are some differences from other checkouts I've used:

\- Both Stripe and PayPal payments can be accepted. I prefer Stripe over
PayPal (API-wise), but I didn't want to switch soley to Stripe because a lot
of people still like paying with PayPal.

\- When a payment is received, a number of checks are run to determine if it's
possibly fraudulent. I'm using the term "possibly" because it's hard to
programatically determine a payment is fraudulent at 100% accuracy. So far
though, I've found Snappy Checkout's detection to be accurate when scanning
payments that I've received.

\- If selling digital products, files are stored in your own Dropbox account.
I suppose there could be pluses and minuses here. But, I prefer to allow
people to control their own files.

\- Snappy Checkout offers a variety of payments -- including one-time
payments, discounted payments, subscriptions, subscriptions with a trial
period prior to the first payment, and the option to split a payment over
several months.

\- Both Stripe and PayPal payments can be viewed, searched, and refunded from
the Snappy Checkout dashboard.

\- The cost is 2.9% + 80¢ per sale. Most people are charging a percentage of
the sale price on top of the credit card processing fee.

I think others will find this can work for their business too. What do you
think?

~~~
the_watcher
Whoa, this looks pretty fantastic to me. Have you thought about integrating
with Shopify? It has a lot of trouble with recurring payments, and Chargify is
a pain to use and adds an additional $60/month charge on top of the Shopify
fees (it is still worth it, but Shopify having simpler recurring payments
would be amazing). This looks like exactly what I was looking for about a year
ago when I add recurring payments to my store.

EDIT: After signing up, I see integrating with Shopify isn't even necessary.
Do you plan to compete with them? Or potentially be a feature to work with
them?

~~~
singer
Isn't Shopify mostly targeting people who want to sell multiple items via a
shopping cart and/or host their product website at Shopify?

~~~
the_watcher
It's targeting people who want to be able to put together a store very simply
and quickly (at least that is why I used it). It definitely has a weakness on
recurring payments (pretty much the only thing Volusion does better, in my
opinion), but other than that it is pretty fantastic in terms of
connectability and ease.

------
patio11
Really nice to see some innovation in this space. I have used a particular
provider since 2006 and eventually ripped out 98.5% of their system to replace
with my own, but am familiar with the offerings you're competing with. Most
are _godawful_. They're largely bubblegummed-together, the reporting is
atrocious, they're virtually unusable by the (surprisingly) non-technical
people who have to work with them, they have UXes which actively discourage
customers' customers from spending money (!), etc etc.

I would not be surprised if the market eventually pushed you into handling
fulfillment, by the way. For many of the early adopters in this space that's
as simple as "proxy a download link and send two emails" but it's a really
important part of the puzzle for them.

~~~
singer
Snappy Checkout does have an API (just some basic calls right now) & webhooks
that can help with digital fulfillment. For my own business, a webhook
notifies me of a new sale and I use the Snappy Checkout API to verify that the
sale is legit -- which basically allows me to verify that the paid price
matches the expected product price.

If you meant non digital fulfillment, I don't know much about that. I'm
interested in improving Snappy Checkout to help in that area if at all
possible.

~~~
nhebb
If you're going to start adding features, you might want to add a feature
request page to help prioritize them. I sell desktop software and the most
requested features in that space would probably be license key fulfillment,
discount codes, product bundling, and interfacing with CD fulfillment
services.

~~~
singer
License key fulfillment can be done now using the Snappy Checkout API &
webhooks. This process is undocumented right now... but, I'm working on it. In
the meantime, I can help anyone get it going via email.

------
notwhyships
Am I the only one who thinks 50 cents per transaction (in addition to the
Stripe/Paypal) fees is still an awful lot?

For the typical $5/mo SaaS subscription, that's a full 10% just to pay for
your checkout system (not including the payment system).

That said, our team is likely not Snappy Checkout's audience as we're devs who
can integrate Stripe/Paypal ourselves.

~~~
qeorge
I'm not sold on this product yet, for other reasons, but the transaction fees
are very compelling to me.

 _For the typical $5 /mo SaaS subscription_

This is the problem. Typical Saas subscriptions are significantly more than
$5/month, at least if you want to stay in business. $50/month (as a starting
tier) is more normal and could actually be sustainable.

If you're charging only $5/month for your SaaS, then you will be unlikely to
have enough margins to pay for any external services (and possibly your rent).

For reference, Gumroad charges .30 + 5%. So on a $50/month subscription that's
going to be $2.80, whereas with Snappy Checkout its only going to be $1.95.
More importantly, as you charge more (e.g., $200/month), the gap would widen
even further.

We currently process about $3k/month through Gumroad and e-Junkie, so we're
just about at the point where it makes sense to look at other options. If we
can move to something like this as opposed to rolling our own, I'm very
interested.

~~~
notwhyships
We could argue about what's a "typical" SaaS monthly fee, but I'm pretty sure
your $50/mo is for the SMB/Enterprise space where my $5/mo is for consumer.

~~~
qeorge
As you say, I see SaaS as primarily a B2B product. I have trouble naming
successful B2C SaaS products, outside of perhaps Dropbox (although I still
think Dropbox is primarily B2B, at least in terms of revenue).

But we probably agree on this: if you charge $5/month, this product is not for
you. If you charge $50/month, the fees are negligible.

------
mpclark
It's great, the functionality is good and the price is fair.

I could only see USD hardcoded as the currency, though, and there is the old
euro VAT problem -- businesses in Europe need to be able to charge customers
VAT depending on where the goods will be delivered and what type of goods they
are. It's all pretty complicated stuff, but without it a checkout system is
useless to most Europeans :(

It has always seemed to me that anyone who can build a checkout that handles
VAT properly would have the whole of Europe beating a path to their door.

~~~
nclx
"It has always seemed to me that anyone who can build a checkout that handles
VAT properly would have the whole of Europe beating a path to their door."

Totally agree with this!

------
bhouston
This looks really nice. We are looking for something to integrate into
[http://Clara.io](http://Clara.io) (our online 3D modeling + rendering tool)
so we can start accepting payments. We are looking at Stripe of course, but
things on top of stripe that make life easier are always welcome.

Q: Can I migrate from this to something else (stripe.com directly) if it
proves to be insufficient or it doesn't have longevity? How much of the
customer information is locked in this versus stripe?

Q2: On a separate question, how easily can I move my subscribers away from
Stripe.com for whatever reason? Will I need them to re-enter in their payment
data? That would be killer for us.

Q3: How do other websites handle this these types of issues of potentially
switching payment systems?

~~~
singer
Let me know if there is anything preventing you from using Snappy Checkout. It
does a lot right now, but I'm willing to make it better if it won't work for
your business is-is.

~~~
bhouston
I did ask three questions via an edit. I suspect you missed because I only
added them after the fact. We are seriously looking at Snappy Checkout.

~~~
singer
I did miss them. Sorry :(

A: When accepting Stripe payments via Snappy Checkout, all of your customer
data is still available in Stripe. If you left Snappy Checkout to use
something else, the only thing that would not work is subscriptions. I don't
use Stripe's system for subscriptions -- that is all handled in Snappy
Checkout. And, if it really proves to be insufficient, I'd like to make it
work for you if possible.

A2: Snappy Checkout creates customers in Stripe's system. So, you could still
charge existing customers if you found another 3rd party system that allowed
that. I don't think it's possible to charge existing customers from Stripe's
admin right now.

A3: Good question. I'm not sure though -- a possible import process maybe? I
suppose that would be tough since Stripe/PayPal hold all of the credit card
data. My goal is certainly not to push people away when a roadblock is
encountered. I'd like to make Snappy Checkout work for anyone.

Correction: For existing Stripe customers, you can create new
charges/subscriptions from the Stripe admin.

~~~
yahelc
> I don't think it's possible to charge existing customers from Stripe's admin
> right now.

I don't think this is correct. Stripe (and the Stripe Admin UI) gives you
enormous power to charge/upgrade/downgrade/enroll existing customers.

I'm curious, why did you choose to implement your own subscriptions, instead
of utilizing Stripe's? This is a much more appealing option if its a clean
integration that simply leverages all of Stripe's features (MoonClerk does
this well).

~~~
singer
Stripe did not offer subscriptions when I built that feature in Snappy
Checkout.

------
owenversteeg
Hmm. I really like this, and I'm definitely going to use it when I finish my
service. However, I have two small problems and one large problem with it:

\- It's impossible to go back and select another payment option once you click
one of them.

\- You can't style your payment dialog. (This may be a good thing
[consistency], but I think it'd be nice to be able to add custom CSS to the
pricing dialog.)

My large problem is that the price is crazy; your 50 cent per transaction fee
means that for all transactions under $7 you collect more in fees than Stripe
does. With a $5 payment - very common for services such as the one I'll
release soon - I'm paying 20% to you. With a $1 payment, I pay a prohibitive
83% in fees. That's a really large cut compared to using the Stripe API
directly, and I think that for anyone looking to increase their profits it's a
no-brainer to cut Snappy Checkout out of the equation.

To give a personal example, my service will be primarily receiving $5
payments. For the first 1000 payments or so, I'll probably stick with Snappy -
the $500 I give up isn't worth the time I would've spent rolling my own
solution. However, as soon as I can see that there's a clear market for my
product, I'll roll my own with Stripe - I clearly wouldn't want to give up 20%
to payment processing alone.

Meanwhile, Frank is selling antique vases on Facebook for $1.5k each, and he
pays 50 cents a transaction to you.

However, if you were to switch to a flat fee + a percentage (say 1.5% and 15
cents), as Stripe does, you would probably retain my business for a lot
longer. Suddenly, I pay a 4.5% cut to you as opposed to a 10% cut, which is
quite reasonable. At the same time, Frank the antique vase seller doesn't
really care about a 1.5% fee: a win-win situation.

tl;dr I recommend that you change to a percentage of the total sales: sellers
of cheap items will use your service and sellers of expensive items won't
care. There's a reason why Stripe, Visa, and every other payment processor
everywhere ever does this.

~~~
singer
It seems someone loses either way. Charge a flat fee and small transactions
are more expensive. Charge a percentage and large transactions are more
expensive. I suppose you could do some combination of both, but that would
make the pricing more complicated to understand.

I don't know about everyone else, but I would care if I was being charged X%
to sell a $200 item -- even more so if there were options to pay a flat fee.

~~~
owenversteeg
There's a reason why every other payment processor I can name and probably
hundreds I can't name charge a percentage - it strikes a balance between
fairness for large and small payments. Almost no company I can think of would
blink at a 0.25% fee - a sign your fees are too low. Meanwhile, nobody would
want to pay 80% of a $1 purchase in fees. I really encourage you to rethink
your fee model. Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, etc. all use a percentage. There's a
reason why almost every payment fee in the last 50 years has used a percentage
- because it works.

Personally, I just discovered Gumroad and I'll probably be using that instead.
With them I pay 10% of a $5 transaction in fees. With Snappy I pay 20%. It's a
no-brainer.

Finally, I don't think a flat fee plus a percent is too hard to understand.
Stripe and Gumroad use it, and probably many more but I can't think of them.

[edit] I just found out I can't use recurring subscriptions with PayPal. I'm
going with Gumroad. That said, you have a really nice looking product and I'd
love to use it, but 20% in fees is ridiculous.

~~~
singer
Every other payment processor charges a percentage -- agreed. So, it seems
people have no choice right now. They are going to pay a percentage no matter
where they go.

I'm open to pricing suggestions. I was just trying to do what I thought was
reasonable.

If you (or anyone else) want to work out some kind of X% for less expensive
transactions, then send me an email and we can work something out. I'm willing
to discuss matching whatever Gumroad or anyone offering similar checkout
products is charging.

------
stickhandle
Love innovation in this area and will play with this a bit. HNers interested
in this might find happiness with Snipcart
([https://snipcart.com/](https://snipcart.com/))

------
callmeed
This is one of the better looking implementations of "checkout on top of
stripe" that I've seen (I've seen a lot).

I'm not sure of your target market but the best advice I can give is to make a
WordPress plugin to go with this. Website integration (easy for us, I know) is
probably daunting for most people. That's why SquareSpace is so
attractive–it's all built in. But if you went after the WordPress market with
this, it could be huge.

~~~
singer
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll look into it.

------
lingben
From a purely usability point of view I don't see the advantage of having the
choice of payment (credit card via stripe vs. paypal) be offered after the
user clicks on the payment button.

The more efficient option is to show pay with credit card and pay with paypal
right off the bat.

This implementation means the user clicks PAY, then is shown a modal window
and from there clicks, paypal and is then redirected to paypal.

Instead the user could click pay with paypal from the payment page and be
taken to paypal with the unnecessary intermediary step.

Same goes for credit card payment: click pay with credit card and the modal
window opens up and they enter cc details.

I know, it is just one click or interaction but still, this is the stuff that
UX cares about!

This is especially true for check out processes. If you aren't extremely
critical of your check out process from a UX/UI view you're leaving lots of
easy money on the table.

The implementation is nice and I don't mean to offend but I just don't
understand what benefit it can offer. Especially when it has this usability
failing outlined above

:/

------
notwhyships
Apart from Paypal support, what does Snappycheckout provide over just using
Stripe directly? And for the extras it does offer, are those likely features
on Stripe's roadmap? Just trying to wrap my mind around your service.

~~~
singer
It allows people to setup a checkout without knowing how to use the Stripe
API. And, for those that do know how, not everyone wants to invest the time to
do so.

I don't think most of what Snappy Checkout does is on Stripe's roadmap. Unless
they are planning on building a full-featured checkout system.

------
gotrythis
I've been waiting for stripe + paypal, as half my payments come from paypal,
stripe is such a simple checkout process, and needed one admin for both.
Fantastic!

Questions:

1) Will metered billing on subscription services be supported?

2) Not sure if this is feasible, but any plans to allow PayPal payments
through PayPal Payments Pro, so they fill in their details in the form on our
site instead of being redirected to PayPal?

Thanks!

~~~
singer
I'm in the same boat -- the payments I collect for my products are split
pretty evenly between Stripe & PayPal.

Answers:

1) As in being able to change the subscription price each month? Snappy
Checkout does allow you to manually change the subscription price. But, I
suppose making that change via the API would be the better way to go. If
you're interested in digging into this some more, please send me an email with
some more details on how you envision this working.

2) I've thought about this, but haven't tried it yet. If I could integrate it
into the checkout window, then I agree it would offer the best flow. And,
there is always the question of how many people are using PayPal Payments Pro
and have the need for something like Snappy Checkout.

------
ktrgardiner
This looks great. I've already signed up as I've been looking for a
replacement for Gumroad for awhile now. Their UI just isn't suited to physical
subscriptions. This looks much better.

Found an error: My login date under sessions is "Sat, Dec 30, 1899 @"

Feature request: product variants ie. shirt sizes, phone types, colors, etc.

~~~
singer
Thanks... and noted. Custom checkout fields are on my to-do list.

------
mperham
Mike, I signed up and the admin area looks great. I don't see any info/docs on
how to actually sell product though. I'm currently using SpaceBox.io for
hosted checkout. Do you offer something similar or do I have to host the
checkout page on my site?

~~~
singer
After adding a product in the "Products" section of the admin, click the link
icon to the right of your product to see the available linking options. You
can add a link to your website or link your customers to your checkout at
snappycheckout.com.

------
uladzislau
I love the pricing - only 50¢ on top of Stripe/PayPal fees.

From the quick look, digital download protection based on IP address and
storing files in Dropbox? That makes me uncomfortable and I see tons of
potential issues here.

Also what does automatic fraudulent payment detection involves?

~~~
singer
What kind of issues do you see with the downloads?

My system keeps track of failed payment attempts (e.g. a declined credit card
OR invalid card code). When a successful payment is made, I look through the
history of failed payments to look for patterns that can determine a possible
fraudulent transaction. An example of a pattern would be an IP address that
tried to use X number of credit cards over the past X hours.

------
eriktrautman
The messaging on the site reiterates that you can accept payments and sell
product any time "day or night". Is this a problem with existing solutions? Or
is this geared towards people who currently have a fully manual fulfillment
process?

~~~
singer
It is a problem if you have a manual fulfillment process. But, not too
important if you're currently using a checkout system elsewhere.

------
quaffapint
Could it do things like offer a yearly subscription with a starting price of
$x and a recurring price of $y? Basically, like an ongoing maintenance - buy
the product at $x and then pay $y for yearly upgrades/support.

~~~
singer
No. But, I could add this type of payment option.

This would only work if paying with Stripe though. When paying with Stripe, I
create a Stripe customer via their API. So, I can come back later and charge
that customer again whenever.

Edit: With some manual work, you could really do this as-is right now. After a
subscription is created in Snappy Checkout, you can edit the subscription
price, next payment date, or customer's name/email. This certainly would not
be a good temporary workaround if you're selling these subscriptions like
hotcakes right now though :)

------
patja
Any concerns about naming? My first reaction was to think this was a new
offering from Snappy [https://besnappy.com/](https://besnappy.com/)

~~~
singer
I'm not concerned about it... if this was directed toward me. I guess it could
become a problem if I release a product named Snappy Support though.

------
eliteraspberrie
Helium ([https://gethelium.com](https://gethelium.com)) is less expensive for
items priced less than $25, since they charge 2% rather than $0.50.

------
Dwolb
Is there a way to embed a picture within a payment link?

My friend could use this because her 'digital storefront' is literally
Facebook and there's no way for her to sell things.

~~~
singer
Are you referring to selling digital photos? If so, you can sell any kind of
file with Snappy Checkout.

~~~
Dwolb
This would be an image of a physical good.

For her: take product image > apply price > put on Facebook; For user: see
product image > click link to buy > purchase

~~~
singer
That would be possible. Just link the Facebook image to the link that points
to the checkout at snappycheckout.com.

~~~
Dwolb
Cool thanks!

------
tsurantino
Interesting choice of an IE preview for the home page. Is it by accident or is
this something online stores are looking to validate in terms of features? (IE
compatibility)

~~~
singer
I would think anyone who has an online store would want their checkout to work
in all web browsers. IE just happens to have a pretty plain looking window
that works best for screenshots where the window is not important :)

------
disdev
Great job! I'll definitely be giving this a shot!

Quick question, though... Do you use Stripe's Connect API for the 50 cent
transaction fee you're taking (application_fee)?

~~~
singer
No. The fee is charged at the beginning of the month. So, for all payments
received in April, you'll be charged 50 cents per payment on May 1st.

I thought of using Stripe's API to remove the 50 cents right away, but that's
not possible since it wouldn't work for PayPal payments.

~~~
disdev
I just see it as removing a layer of complexity... I don't really care for
having PayPal functionality, and not having to worry about the monthly fee
paid to you makes it easier on me and you. You get paid quickly, and I don't
have to account for another fee. The 50 cents just becomes part of COGS.

~~~
singer
Makes sense. I'm all for making things easier. There is no reason why I could
not charge the 50 cents for Stripe charges immediately. And, then come back
and charge 50 cents for any PayPal transactions (if any) at the end of the
month.

------
araftery
Looks awesome. A great checkout experience is always a delight to use. Even
Amazon's feels kind of clunky if you have to enter credit card information.

------
jaredcwhite
Great job Mike. I think you could be on to something really huge here. Will
have to try out in depth when I'm not on my phone. :)

~~~
singer
Thanks for checking it out. Let me know if I can help in any way.

~~~
alttab
One question I had was "what is my customer's experience?"

You went into great detail about what features it had that would be convienent
for me as an owner, and there seemed to be a hint at some of the customer
features, but what is their online shopping experience like? Do they have
search, navigation, categories, pictures, images, reviews, etc?

I feel as though you are only explaining the benefits of using it for half of
the equation. Does this assume that you've already "sold" your product and you
are not truly an online retailer? Or a simple product company?

What target "check-out" scenarios does this cover? Maybe that's why the
customer story is absent.

~~~
singer
Good questions. Snappy Checkout is not a shopping cart. It'll only work in
situations where a purchase involves buying a single product (e.g. an eBook).

Reviews, pictures, etc. are things that fall outside of the scope of Snappy
Checkout.

~~~
alttab
So this is an integration SDK for credit card processing?

------
3zzy
But a Stripe account is still required..that means its US only (or limited
countries where stripe is available), correct?

~~~
singer
You can use Stripe only, PayPal only, or Stripe + PayPal. When using PayPal
only, you cannot collect subscription payments -- due to the limitations of
the way I'm using PayPal.

Snappy Checkout shows prices in USD no matter which of the 3 above pricing
options you choose. So, it is currently limited in that way.

------
dewey
It looks like there are some encoding problems. (Chrome, Mac OS)

"Straight-forward pricing. You only pay 2.9% + 80� per sale*"

~~~
singer
Thanks! I'll fix it.

------
goodwink
Do you have ability to import data from a previous provider to allow reporting
history to stay intact?

~~~
singer
Not at the moment. It should be possible to do though if that data can be
retrieved in some common format -- like CSV.

------
prezjordan
Kind of off-topic, but if I want to start selling software as an individual -
should I form an LLC?

~~~
opendais
LLC protects your personal finances and is always a good idea once you reach
the stage of a 'serious business' that might be sued by its customers. [e.g.
$1000 or more MRR]

------
evanm
What's with the horrid markup (tables and inline CSS) on that page??

~~~
singer
Always be shipping :)

------
espressopowered
Love it, but when are you expecting to publish documentation?

~~~
singer
I'm working on it. Please send me an email if you need help with anything in
the meantime.

------
notastartup
few questions

how does this differ from stripe? does it charge extra on top of stripe? What
is the justification for the price increase? I don't see what else this offers
besides stripe does. For me, I focus on subscriptions.

What is the template being used on the website and where can I get it?

~~~
arbuge
I think it's meant for non-coders who don't feel comfortable using Stripe
directly... similar to Gumroad, Selluno, Sellfy, etc.

~~~
singer
Right! And for those people who do not want to spend the time
coding/maintaining their own system.

