Stripe's APIs have grown so complicated to support so many different shapes of large enterprise workflows that they have to color code the entities to make you think it's simple.
You'll be processing events from totally different yet slightly overlapping entity types for building a simple subscription service and having to synthetically handle 12 month billing. The docs won't adequately explain which events should trigger which product decisions, and there is no guidance on which events and states are authoritative or take precedence.
Stripe is no longer the correct shape for small startups. They are wonderful for big business, but startups need something smaller to go faster. Your Stripe integration will slow you down.
Stripe APIs being simple and easy is a meme from the 2010s. It isn't anymore.
They're great for big business at scale, but they lost how to cater to startups.
danpalmer 2 hours ago [-]
Having done a major migration with Stripe, at a startup, I disagree.
They have lots of products, but you don't need most of them and can ignore them. What's left is, in my experience, the correct amount of complexity. We looked at Braintree, and it was just missing things that we were legally required to support, we looked at Judopay and it was... lacking (a nearby founder describe Judopay as treating payments like a hobby).
If your business is just ecommerce and you can use Shopify instead, sure, do that. If you just need to take dumb payments, just use Stripe Checkout. But if you need any control over your payments, Stripe is the only good option for startups. As you grow it becomes easier to justify more complex integrations such as Adyen, Klarna, etc, but Stripe is definitely the best starting place I've seen.
rrr_oh_man 46 minutes ago [-]
> If you just need to take dumb payments, just use Stripe Checkout.
Could not agree more. Offload as much complexity (receipts, invoices, tax, customer info, etc.) to Stripe as humanly possible in the beginning. Don't build for edge cases or UX polish. If people want your product, they will buy it.
wouldbecouldbe 29 minutes ago [-]
and then without knowing it you are paying 1000's a month to stripe
OtherShrezzing 16 minutes ago [-]
This is kind of the tradeoff you need to make when launching a product though. You cleave off some of the product's margin & send it to a third party so that you can get the thing launched. If it's unsuccessful, that's fine, you'll pay no money to the vendor. If it's successful..? Great! Now you can afford to pay someone to build a checkout that doesn't cost me thousands a month in fees.
Stripe takes 1.5-2.5%, so if you're sending them 1,000s a month, your revenues from that checkout are approaching the $millions p/a. Certainly enough to hire an expert in the domain.
rrr_oh_man 5 minutes ago [-]
This means you’ve done everything absolutely fucking right
wouldbecouldbe 2 hours ago [-]
He is right, reading the docs you have no idea which events leads to what. Nowadays with llm's it's easy before that I still dont know which events mean what.
pbowyer 13 minutes ago [-]
> Stripe APIs being simple and easy is a meme from the 2010s. It isn't anymore.
I'm working with Stripe subscriptions at the moment for a charity taking donations via their website. The subtle differences between subscriptions done through Stripe checkout and subscriptions set up yourself using Stripe elements are by turn infuriating and frustrating.
The documentation is geared towards people using checkout. Stripe's own AI help could find us a bit of information which going through the documentation didn't give us, and it even struggled to find the reference in the docs for it.
One product, two different ways to use it, and slightly diverging feature sets between the two. Argh!
zrn900 1 minutes ago [-]
Huh? Stripe is still the easiest payment provider to build a subscription on. The complexity with payments does not come from APIs. It comes from payment types, regulations, and the need to avoid losing customers. That doesn't change with or without Stripe.
In my experience, you couldn’t just setup an account and start selling, you had to contact their sales team and they let you know if they want your business.
Stripe has no real competitor.
zrn900 29 seconds ago [-]
Stripe is trialing a MoR solution (managed payments) right now.
lucrbvi 46 minutes ago [-]
Mollie might be a direct competitor
sumedh 19 minutes ago [-]
Isnt Mollie Europe only?
lucrbvi 7 minutes ago [-]
Mollie seems to only provide services to business based in European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK [0], so yes?
You'll be processing events from totally different yet slightly overlapping entity types for building a simple subscription service and having to synthetically handle 12 month billing. The docs won't adequately explain which events should trigger which product decisions, and there is no guidance on which events and states are authoritative or take precedence.
Stripe is no longer the correct shape for small startups. They are wonderful for big business, but startups need something smaller to go faster. Your Stripe integration will slow you down.
Stripe APIs being simple and easy is a meme from the 2010s. It isn't anymore.
They're great for big business at scale, but they lost how to cater to startups.
They have lots of products, but you don't need most of them and can ignore them. What's left is, in my experience, the correct amount of complexity. We looked at Braintree, and it was just missing things that we were legally required to support, we looked at Judopay and it was... lacking (a nearby founder describe Judopay as treating payments like a hobby).
If your business is just ecommerce and you can use Shopify instead, sure, do that. If you just need to take dumb payments, just use Stripe Checkout. But if you need any control over your payments, Stripe is the only good option for startups. As you grow it becomes easier to justify more complex integrations such as Adyen, Klarna, etc, but Stripe is definitely the best starting place I've seen.
Could not agree more. Offload as much complexity (receipts, invoices, tax, customer info, etc.) to Stripe as humanly possible in the beginning. Don't build for edge cases or UX polish. If people want your product, they will buy it.
Stripe takes 1.5-2.5%, so if you're sending them 1,000s a month, your revenues from that checkout are approaching the $millions p/a. Certainly enough to hire an expert in the domain.
I'm working with Stripe subscriptions at the moment for a charity taking donations via their website. The subtle differences between subscriptions done through Stripe checkout and subscriptions set up yourself using Stripe elements are by turn infuriating and frustrating.
The documentation is geared towards people using checkout. Stripe's own AI help could find us a bit of information which going through the documentation didn't give us, and it even struggled to find the reference in the docs for it.
One product, two different ways to use it, and slightly diverging feature sets between the two. Argh!
Stripe has no real competitor.
[0]: https://help.mollie.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002116105-Can-I...