Subscriptions: Braintree vs. Chargify/Recurly, etc.
While doing research on the best options for this whole process I read a lot of articles on HN and elsewhere. What I found is that there does not appear to be a concrete consensus on the best options. The only thing people seem to agree upon is that it is best not to create your own account plan and recurring billing management setup. I couldn't agree more due to the complications, security issues, and overall time investment.
Currently, two main options are leading our discussions:
1. Braintree (http://braintreepaymentsolutions.com/) for our payment gateway, merchant account, and recurring billing. The features described for their recurring billing fit our needs (and more) and the overall prices of using Braintree for everything, while correctly described as "Premium" by others here on HN, appear competitive with Authorize.net + WF merchant account + Chargify/Recurly for recurring billing. We like Braintree's in-depth and extensive support, docs, and dev resources. And we "think" we like the fact that everything (payment gateway, merchant account, and recurring billing) are tied into one system so we don't have to try to work with three separate entities to work out issues.
2. Third party payment gateway, third party merchant account, and Chargify/Recurly for recurring billing. This option has the proposed benefits of potentially reducing overall costs and separating the components, which may make future changes to individual components of the overall setup easier. For a third party payment gateway we're considering Authorize.net. Third party merchant accounts are a little bit of a tougher decision, but we've considered simply going in house with Wells Fargo to reduce complications or another organization such as SVB.com.
At the moment we're leaning towards Braintree. One reason for this is its benefits (ease of setup going through a single company, extensive dev resources, competitive cost, quality customer support) outweigh the benefits we can come up with for the other option(s).
Does anyone have experience in this field and suggestions on the matter? Does it make sense to use Braintree for everything, or are there other benefits of going with separate entities for the payment gateway, merchant account, and recurring billing that we are overlooking?
13 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 40.1 ms ] threadBraintree's API is pretty darn good. But it's not up to Charigfy's standards. Chargify has some pretty great features that are really simple to implement (like metered billing, and others of similar complexity). Not going with Chargify has slowed down my iteration speed when it comes to billing changes. It's just not as easy to do certain things when you have to write all the code yourself.
That said, you can do a lot with Braintree, and their customer support is fantastic. Their API is continually being improved. I also have a slight sense of relief that I won't be dependent on Chargify. Chargify, as we know, is a startup in search of a long term business model, and there are no guarantees that they'll be able to do what I need 6 months from now. But that security comes at a price - writing my own code.
What I would not do is use Chargify with a gateway with a crappy API. If something happens to Chargify, you could be stuck using something horrid.
In the end, most of what you get with Chargify is increased development speed if your billing gets complicated. But I wouldn't sweat the decision too much. It would be nice if Chargify supported Braintree V2 - as you'd have the best of both worlds.
I don't think this argument is valid. They already have a business model and currently implement it: they charge for their product. They might not become profitable with their pricing, but I feel like the way they are doing it is a valid and fair monetization model.
Ahoy..
But yeah, had I stuck with them at the beginning, I'd be madly coding to get rid of them now, as I can't justify the cost at this point in my business.
I bet in the long run, this will be seen as a good and bold move for Chargify, though.
If we already had a merchant account or payment gateway Chargify would definitely be the right fit, but I too am apprehensive about their longevity. It remains a tough call, though, since the field still feels in infancy with no clear winners. At the moment it feels as if we're leaning towards Braintree, which appears to be more secure in the long term, professionally managed, and offers a nice set of quickly growing features to their already rock-solid service. Next step will be to start playing around with both platforms and see if either one stands out in practicality.
For the record, we are currently using Chargify -- had the same issue with Braintree (Chargify does not support v2) so switched to Auth.net
We are considering Braintree and Authorize.net's ARB. Another option is PayPal's Website Payments Pro gateway service. Here is a comparison of the two:
PayPal Website Payments Pro w/Recurring Payments: Discount Rate: 2.9% $0-3k; 2.5% $3k-10k; 2.2% 10k+ Transaction Fee: $0.30 Monthly Fee: $30/mo Recurring Billing Fee: $30/mo Monthly Minimum: $0
Braintree: Discount Rate: 2.29% qualified; 2.89% non-qualified Transaction Fee: $0.30 Monthly Fee: $35/mo Recurring Billing Fee: $0.10/transaction + $20/mo and $0.01/card for the Vault service Monthly Minimum: $75 (does not include monthly fee)
We use Paypal and Chargify and they work well together. It saved us the time and additional expenses of setting up multiple payment accounts.
One observation, AMEX really doesn't play well with Paypal. We've had $25K payments and the next nothing from a $17K day. Amex is spotty in what they'll accept from PP.
If you have heavy AMEX usage then go with something else. The fees are also high for PP acceptance of AMEX (3.5%).