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You really need to make a lot of dough before the 5-7% that Fastspring charge on top of credit card fees becomes a problem. I guess at that point you could also

You really need to make a lot of dough before the 5-7% that Fastspring charge on top of credit card fees becomes a problem. I guess at that point you could also negotiate better rates. I've been using Fastspring for years, and I'm not 100% happy with them, but they just work, they support lots of payment methods, and their invoices are compliant with EU regulations (which is a very rare thing). If you just want to get on with your business, use Fastspring.

seanwilson 8y ago
(Oops, before I meant to write a few more percent probably isn't worth it at the start) Did you consider Paddle who offer EU VAT processing as well? Paddle offers 5% + $0.50 on every transaction. Fastspring you can pick between 1) 5.9% + $0.95 on every transaction or 2) a flat 8.9% with a minimum of $0.75. I agree you're best getting on with things but when they're comparable in terms of integration it's worth considering the fees.
- jakobegger 8y ago
  Paddle’s aggressive sales team really pissed me off. They tried to get me to switch from Fastspring, and just wouldn’t stop emailing me. The biggest thing they had going for them was that they’re a EU company, but with Brexit that no longer applies either (if Brexit ever actually happens...). Maybe at some point I’ll reconsider, but 1% of revenue is not going to be enough reason to switch.
  - seanwilson 8y ago
    Are you doing subscriptions? How did you find integration? Both of them seem to rely on webhooks and synchronising to your own database which feels like it could cause problems if a webhook fails during sign-up. They both have APIs but seem to be missing calls for things you'd expect like looking up a user by email address or license key.
    - jakobegger 8y ago
      I don’t do subscriptions, I sell pay-once licenses for a desktop app. Fastsprings API sucks, and the licensing options are very limited, but it works. My reporting script uses IMAP to download and parse order confirmation emails from Fastspring. Not an elegant solution, but it does get the job done.
      - seanwilson 8y ago
        > My reporting script uses IMAP to download and parse order confirmation emails from Fastspring. Not an elegant solution, but it does get the job done. Yeah, I've had to consider similar frustrating options as well because of surprising functionality lacking in APIs. For example, for Paddle subscriptions, the webhook that gets called when a subscription is created sends you a user specific URL that lets a user cancel or update their payments and that's the only place you can get programmatic access to it. You can query the subscription data from their API and it returns most fields you'd expect except for these URLs. You've either got to create your own database to store these or deal with it manually when you get support emails.
      - ezekg 8y ago
        Have you thought of using something like https://keygen.sh https://keygen.sh to handle the licensing side of things (inc. licensed distribution), while keeping FastSpring for processing payments/VAT/etc? I'm the founder of Keygen, so let me know if you're interested and we can chat.

seanwilson 8y ago

(Oops, before I meant to write a few more percent probably isn't worth it at the start) Did you consider Paddle who offer EU VAT processing as well? Paddle offers 5% + $0.50 on every transaction. Fastspring you can pick between 1) 5.9% + $0.95 on every transaction or 2) a flat 8.9% with a minimum of $0.75. I agree you're best getting on with things but when they're comparable in terms of integration it's worth considering the fees.

jakobegger 8y ago
Paddle’s aggressive sales team really pissed me off. They tried to get me to switch from Fastspring, and just wouldn’t stop emailing me. The biggest thing they had going for them was that they’re a EU company, but with Brexit that no longer applies either (if Brexit ever actually happens...). Maybe at some point I’ll reconsider, but 1% of revenue is not going to be enough reason to switch.
- seanwilson 8y ago
  Are you doing subscriptions? How did you find integration? Both of them seem to rely on webhooks and synchronising to your own database which feels like it could cause problems if a webhook fails during sign-up. They both have APIs but seem to be missing calls for things you'd expect like looking up a user by email address or license key.
  - jakobegger 8y ago
    I don’t do subscriptions, I sell pay-once licenses for a desktop app. Fastsprings API sucks, and the licensing options are very limited, but it works. My reporting script uses IMAP to download and parse order confirmation emails from Fastspring. Not an elegant solution, but it does get the job done.
    - seanwilson 8y ago
      > My reporting script uses IMAP to download and parse order confirmation emails from Fastspring. Not an elegant solution, but it does get the job done. Yeah, I've had to consider similar frustrating options as well because of surprising functionality lacking in APIs. For example, for Paddle subscriptions, the webhook that gets called when a subscription is created sends you a user specific URL that lets a user cancel or update their payments and that's the only place you can get programmatic access to it. You can query the subscription data from their API and it returns most fields you'd expect except for these URLs. You've either got to create your own database to store these or deal with it manually when you get support emails.
    - ezekg 8y ago
      Have you thought of using something like https://keygen.sh https://keygen.sh to handle the licensing side of things (inc. licensed distribution), while keeping FastSpring for processing payments/VAT/etc? I'm the founder of Keygen, so let me know if you're interested and we can chat.