koudoku

Not OP, but it's 5% + 30c a subscription. I hear what you're saying and certainly in this space there are great tools and open source packages like Koudoku [1] which make it easier. Worth noting though that there are multiple services that just handle the user management, etc. and also multiple services that handle the billing aspects. To my knowledge this is pretty unique in tackling both. It's not necessarily hard to implement these things yourself, but I think it is hard to implement them really well. They aren't the "core" useful part of your service either, so every second you spend messing with them is time taken away from actually making your SAAS more useful. At the very least, it's intriguing. 1 - https://github.com/andrewculver/koudoku

Congrats, Pete! You literally wrote the book on Stripe integrations and it's awesome seeing you embrace open source as a way of sharing your knowledge. I love how well thought through everything you've done is. I can't wait to see what you do with subscriptions! As the author of the Koudoku gem[1] that Pete mentions, I'd encourage people familiar with it to keep a close eye on Payola as well. Given Pete's technical excellence, great implementation choices, and broad experience with different types of Stripe integrations (my primary interest has been SaaS products,) Payola could very well supersede Koudoku when he tackles the subscription side of things. [1] http://github.com/andrewculver/koudoku

Wow https://github.com/andrewculver/koudoku is amazing. Thanks.

I totally agree that Stripe is easy to get started with and I believe their documentation is the best in the industry. But, as someone who processes payments in the six figures annually with Stripe, I feel there is definitely still room for a book like Pete's, in the same way that there was a place for a book about design patterns even among talented and experienced developers. His book builds on the platform, rather than replacing the documentation. I manage a drop-in Rails engine for adding Stripe subscriptions to an app (http://github.com/andrewculver/koudoku) and the number one piece of feedback I get is that people wish they had heard of it before they integrated Stripe subscriptions in their app. This tells me that there is room for gems like mine and books like Pete's in the little ecosystem Stripe has created.

Thank you so much! I maintain a gem for drop-in subscription support which integrates with Stripe[1], and improving test coverage and implementing more robust webhooks support has been on my to-do list for a few months now. Seeing this on HN is like receiving a pull request for half of that work. Thanks, again! :-) [1] http://github.com/andrewculver/koudoku