10 ms·

(Stripe cofounder.) Hi folks -- as Edwin points out elsewhere in the thread, the article title isn't accurate. (I'll update or delete my comment if it's fixed.

by pc 6y ago

(Stripe cofounder.) Hi folks -- as Edwin points out elsewhere in the thread, the article title isn't accurate. (I'll update or delete my comment if it's fixed.) [Update: it was changed. It used to read "Stripe is now charging 0.5% more for recurring charges."] You can happily make recurring charges yourself and no additional fees are incurred. Lots of Stripe customers do this and we don't charge anything extra for it. If you decide to use Stripe Billing, which is a separate product, we charge for that. Stripe Billing's pricing hasn't changed in a few years. What's changing is that we're ending the several-year grace period where we didn't charge anything for Stripe Billing for businesses who started to use this functionality before 2018. Charging for Billing helps us fund a lot more investment in it -- we've gone from very basic cron-like functionality to a pretty full-featured subscriptions management tool. (You can read more at https://stripe.com/billing https://stripe.com/billing.) Billing is now sophisticated enough that companies like Slack and Atlassian are using and paying for it. We've built things like "Smart Dunning" (which improves revenue recovery for failed charges by about 14%), better analytics, international payment method and invoicing support, and a whole host of other features. There are now more than 30 people working on improving Billing. Importantly, Stripe Billing is (and will remain) significantly cheaper than most of the other competitors in the space.

radihuq 6y ago
Thanks pc! OT: You're very active, and usually one of the first to get involved, in Stripe-related discussions on HN. I'm curious how you manage this. Do you lurk HN all day like me and spot the new Stripe-related threads, or do others at Stripe let you know when they see a Stripe-related thread?
- jdreaver 6y ago
  I've always wondered if there is a business opportunity here: a company that monitors social media for all mentions of your business and pings you about it. Maybe this already exists?
  - radihuq 6y ago
    I do think there are existing applications that provide this service (ex: Hootsuite[0]). I think a layman could probably setup Google Alerts[1] to achieve the desired results for topics they're interested in (like your company) I'm curious how Patrick does it though as his attention isn't exactly cheap [0](https://hootsuite.com/platform/monitor https://hootsuite.com/platform/monitor) [1](https://www.google.ca/alerts https://www.google.ca/alerts)
  - metal13 6y ago
    There are tons of companies that do that, with varying levels of automation and responses.
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    https://f5bot.com/ https://f5bot.com/
  - prawn 6y ago
    Media monitoring companies have been around for some time. There are companies with people transcribing talkback radio and reporting to clients (including sentiment, etc) for companies and topics mentioned. Would be easier to automate in the age of social media too, so bound to be dozens of upstarts focusing on that.
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    Google Alerts?
- pc 6y ago
  Thanks! Mostly a slightly excessive affinity for HN. But sometimes people point me to stories too.
  - radihuq 6y ago
    Interesting!
stvhanna 6y ago
is the Subscription API (https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions) part of Stripe Billing and thus subject to the additional fee?
- merlinbeard 6y ago
  yes, as we found out through the email. Even if you send invoices, they will also take a 0.5% of those!
- corentin88 6y ago
  AFAICT - Yes [1] In Stripe's API, the subscriptions section is nested under "Billing" [2] https://www.stripe.com/billing https://www.stripe.com/billing is all about handling subscriptions through Stripe
merlinbeard 6y ago
We process a significant amount of charges through Stripe and this is hitting us hard. We’re basically being told that you’d like to keep some of our money for yourself. We were never told that we should expect such a fee increase. This smells a lot like bait and switch.
- pc 6y ago
  I'm sorry that it feels that way. Stripe Billing's pricing has been public since 2018. (We didn't charge any of our existing users from the outset precisely because we wanted to avoid any sense that there's a bait-and-switch. We wanted to wait until we really were confident that we had a good product that businesses are willing to pay for.)
  - merlinbeard 6y ago
    Unfortunately no, It was never communicated to us. we were told stripe billing would be free to use. The very least that Stripe needs to do is to grandfather the existing revenue for old customers, and put in the charge for only newly created subscriptions.
    - spacemanmatt 6y ago
      Strongly agreed. Those are reference customers and should be treated with much greater privilege. They are early adopters and could very easily become early the next group of vocal detractors. I can't help but wonder about the poor client advocate Stripe fired before they made this move.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    I'm sorry that it feels that way. Stripe Billing's pricing has been public since 2018. But lots of us have been using Stripe for a lot longer than that, and don't necessarily want or need all the extra things you're now putting under the "Billing" brand. We haven't received any notification of a change from Stripe, but from the HN discussion, it looks like the option to just have a simple, automated recurring charge -- the key feature that attracted businesses like mine to Stripe in the first place -- is being removed. If that is the case then we'll naturally view the change as a 0.5% increase in Stripe's fees, pure and simple.
cabalos 6y ago
I feel that spinning this as a several-year grace period is a bit disingenuous. I'm a huge Stripe fan, but this is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Here's the exact notification that went out on April 6, 2018 in the dashboard: "As a user of Stripe Subscriptions, you will get all the functionality of Stripe Billing's starter plan with no change in price. You can continue using it free of charge on your existing Stripe pricing, even beyond the $1M free threshold. This will be automatically applied to your account. Contact support@stripe.come with any pricing questions" As far as I can see, the Billing Starter plan has not changed and still applies. Not only that, it claims we get "all the functionality of Stripe Billing.." when this hasn't been the case for a few months. New features have been gated recently, ie. the new customer portal. You have every right to change your pricing how you see fit. However, if this message was worded as it being a grace period, we would have taken steps two years ago to consider other tools or building something in-house.
- pc 6y ago
  You're right. It would have been a lot better if we'd made explicit that we weren't intending to make a permanent commitment. This is good feedback for the next time we do something like this. (Our actual thinking was that we'd iterate on the product for a few years until we were confident it was good and worth paying for -- with both large and small companies using and paying for it -- and then revisit.)
  - porker 6y ago
    > You're right. It would have been a lot better if we'd made explicit that we weren't intending to make a permanent commitment. And the original message, when I read it for the first time today, implies that it is for life because it's "beyond $1M" and there's no qualifier. I'm not using Subscriptions so I have nothing invested. But that's what your message says.
  - cabalos 6y ago
    You're welcome; appreciate the response. For what its worth, I have yet to get an email about the increase and HN is the first I've heard of it. I should have known something was up when Stripe sent out the email survey two days ago about subscription pricing. Very strange that you only sat on those results for a day before pulling the trigger on this. Interestingly, some of the survey answers included concepts of a free tier. To me, the percentage makes little sense. You could be running 1,000,000 $10/mo subs, or 1,000 $1,000/mo subs and the cost is the same. This pricing model hits high value subscription companies significantly harder, even though Stripe's costs are lower.
onassar 6y ago
Can you clarify on the term "migrates" in the new title? If we use Stripe Subscriptions, do we need to migrate our system to the new Billing product?
- pc 6y ago
  No, you don't need to do any work.
  - onassar 6y ago
    If I reach out to support, will they be able to chat w/ me about what's actually happening? I'm pretty confused atm, and don't want to drown this thread with questions about what's actually taking place.
  - merlinbeard 6y ago
    You don’t need to do any work, but you just need to pay more ;)
    - pc 6y ago
      You don't need to! The pricing doesn't kick in 'till next year. We want to give people time to migrate away or to implement a billing system manually. (And if anyone wants more time to do that, we're happy to grant it.)
      - tomsi 6y ago
        This is just great! :)
      - rexreed 6y ago
        Yes - we need more time. This is a bit of a surprise. How do we get an extension, and how long will this extension last?
      - wise_young_man 6y ago
        Next year is just months away.
joseakle 6y ago
Cool! btw there's a small bug on the storage part of the pricing plan calculation. It shows 5,525 GB units but then the calculation is for 10,100 units.
- tdhoot 6y ago
  Thanks for the heads up! We just pushed a fix.
alooPotato 6y ago
Kind of agree with cabolos here. When we signed up for Stripe, the fees included access to Strip Subscriptions. We chose Stripe in part because of that. Now we either have to pay more for the same functionality or migrate of. We'd be totally happy keeping the old functionality of Stripe subscriptions and not getting any of the new hotness. I think Stripe has done a great job supporting old versions of the API, seems like we should just be able to stay on our old pricing / subscriptions functionality as well. Saying that we can build the infra ourselves to do reoccurring kind of goes against what we purchased Stripe for initially. I know technically you can change your pricing/billing however you want but this is more of "let's capture more revenue from old customers" than it is "we launched a bunch of stuff thats new so pay for the new stuff".
- pc 6y ago
  We've been testing this change for a few months to make sure that, broadly speaking, the vast majority of current customers are willing to pay for the new functionality. We don't want to even try to charge for things that customers don't feel they're getting good value from. There's obviously heterogeneity, though, and we'll be as reasonable as possible. If this would be really disruptive for your business, or if you need more time to plan a migration (if you don't think Billing makes sense for you), or something like that, I'd be happy to connect you with the team -- we could extend your current pricing through the end of 2021.
  - alooPotato 6y ago
    Extending the pricing through 2021 seems reasonable and would give us a chance to do the cost/benefit on upgrading to Stripe Billing (including integration work) or moving off. Thanks for giving us the time to make the right decision for our business. There have been comments elsewhere in the discussion that for folks with higher volume, we should be negotiating our fees. At what volume would you recommend companies reach out to your team to do so?
    - pc 6y ago
      Great -- if you reach out to support@stripe.com with "billing pricing extension" in the subject, it'll go to the right folks.
nfm 6y ago
Long term Stripe customer across multiple companies here. I'm ok with paying for services like this that provide loads of value. I expect there's increasing diversity in terms of Stripe's customer base and how they use the product, and trying to pick a single percentage price point that works across all of them is no longer feasible. That said, I'm quite unhappy with Stripe's pricing as an AU customer. We're paying exorbitant rates to convert USD to AUD (think retail bank rates despite transacting multiple millions a year, ~3x what we'd pay Transferwise). There's no option to settle in USD, and a lot of our expenses are in USD, so we then pay another currency conversion fee when we spend. It's problematic to the extent that we're considering whether the ongoing costs and hassle of setting up a US entity, dealing with international tax, compliance, parent companies etc. would be worthwhile.
- pc 6y ago
  Yep, heard loud and clear. We've been investing a lot in USD (and other currency settlement) in various markets (and actually just released it in Singapore). We're working on it in Australia too.
  - nfm 6y ago
    Thanks for replying, I'm very excited to hear it's in the works!
  - supah 6y ago
    won’t this eat into your revenue since you won’t make money on the exchange ?
    - OJFord 6y ago
      People like GP who's revenue is eaten into by it not existing switching away from Stripe would also eat into its revenue.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  Do you really need to set up a US entity just to open a US bank account? If not, I would set up a US checking account and settle some portion stripe transactions there. Take that revenue and pay your US vendors. No currency conversions.
iffycan 6y ago
When I first signed up with Stripe years ago, it was a breath of fresh air. Stripe did one thing exceedingly well, at an understandable price and took minutes to integrate with. I could sell Stripe to my developer friends (and did, a lot!) in a single sentence: "You can add credit card charging to your site in about 15 minutes for 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction." I can't do that anymore. Stripe is no longer a single-sentence sell. Stripe still does good work. But the air is getting murkier. I'll point to some objective changes, but mostly Stripe is just starting to feel different. - Several years ago, when I saw announcements that Stripe started supporting ACH payments (and later international payments), I thought, "Great! This is Stripe! I'll just be able to flick a switch and turn those on." Not so. I understand that it's complicated from their end. It's just not the same "Stripe is so easy" experience. "Stripe is supposed to abstract away the complexity, not expose it to me." - The pricing page is a big sign of the added complexity. There used to just be one or two numbers on that page [1]. Compare that with the current pricing page [2] My suggestion to you, pc: Start a little company within Stripe to disrupt Stripe (i.e. re-simplify) in the same way Stripe disrupted the industry 10 years ago. Or keep getting bigger and become just as complex as the things Stripe replaced. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20111216054911/https://stripe.com/help/pricing https://web.archive.org/web/20111216054911/https://stripe.co... [2] https://stripe.com/pricing#pricing-details https://stripe.com/pricing#pricing-details
- fbelzile 6y ago
  I agree. I feel like good companies like Stripe want to keep growing. With this, comes the need to increase revenue to cover the extra costs. I don't know if it's investor pressure, or the fear of being stagnant, but some companies are arguably better off the way they are. There's no need to grow at all costs. If you want more users, double down on marketing to existing users instead of pissing them off. Although it's really hard to measure, happy users do the marketing for you and bring in more customers. First they started charging for international cards (with the "grandfathering" for years excuse), now this. I've already migrated off of Stripe and now actively recommend people think twice about going with them. Instead, I'm recommending Braintree... aka Paypal. It seems we've come full circle already.
- freewilly1040 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ewhauser421 6y ago
Patrick, I think Stripe does a lot of things right, but your comments back in 2018 certainly indicated that Billing could be used in perpetuity: "- For existing customers, there's no pricing change. You just get more functionality than before for free. This is what we generally try to do: we want Stripe to continually become better value for you over time, as you get more functionality for the same price." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16766846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16766846 I specifically reached out to Stripe support back then to verify this would be the case and they confirmed. If you've since changed your mind, I think you should come out and say that's the case as opposed to saying this is a communications issue.
rawoke083600 6y ago
Thank you for taking the time to explain and write this up. While you are here: Any update on when Stripe will be available in South Africa ? We really need some alternatives to PayPal.
parito 6y ago
hi Patrick, For some reason your designers have decided that your website should pick a language based on the ip address. Stop guessing a language :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14175238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14175238
gobluebackstage 6y ago
Patrick, Thanks for building a great product. I'm happy to pay for continued feature + new product development ... ... What I'm not so happy about is: * we have asked Stripe to sign a contract for years (something requested by our institutional investors but have always been just pointed to an online MSA URL * we are now being asked to sign a contract suddenly w/new line-item charges and no ramp-up or notice period Most companies (especially those that are PE backed) have already done year end planning + budgetting. Happy to provide the details of our timeline but so far at a high-level: * contacted by a new account rep 11-days ago about signing a contract * still have not received the proposed rates for billing, processing, rev rec, sigma etc ... * ... but have been told that Billing charging needs to kick off 1/1/2021 (which is essentially 45-days away) Thanks, JE
erockj 6y ago
Patrick, i am trying to build a partnership with you guys and can't get anyone to contact me back. We are a venture backed startup in the veterinary telemedicine space - how do I get in contact with someone senior to explore an enterprise level partnership?

by pc 6y ago

radihuq 6y ago

Thanks pc! OT: You're very active, and usually one of the first to get involved, in Stripe-related discussions on HN. I'm curious how you manage this. Do you lurk HN all day like me and spot the new Stripe-related threads, or do others at Stripe let you know when they see a Stripe-related thread?

jdreaver 6y ago
I've always wondered if there is a business opportunity here: a company that monitors social media for all mentions of your business and pings you about it. Maybe this already exists?
- radihuq 6y ago
  I do think there are existing applications that provide this service (ex: Hootsuite[0]). I think a layman could probably setup Google Alerts[1] to achieve the desired results for topics they're interested in (like your company) I'm curious how Patrick does it though as his attention isn't exactly cheap [0](https://hootsuite.com/platform/monitor https://hootsuite.com/platform/monitor) [1](https://www.google.ca/alerts https://www.google.ca/alerts)
- metal13 6y ago
  There are tons of companies that do that, with varying levels of automation and responses.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  https://f5bot.com/ https://f5bot.com/
- prawn 6y ago
  Media monitoring companies have been around for some time. There are companies with people transcribing talkback radio and reporting to clients (including sentiment, etc) for companies and topics mentioned. Would be easier to automate in the age of social media too, so bound to be dozens of upstarts focusing on that.
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  Google Alerts?
pc 6y ago
Thanks! Mostly a slightly excessive affinity for HN. But sometimes people point me to stories too.
- radihuq 6y ago
  Interesting!

stvhanna 6y ago

is the Subscription API (https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions) part of Stripe Billing and thus subject to the additional fee?

merlinbeard 6y ago
yes, as we found out through the email. Even if you send invoices, they will also take a 0.5% of those!
corentin88 6y ago
AFAICT - Yes [1] In Stripe's API, the subscriptions section is nested under "Billing" [2] https://www.stripe.com/billing https://www.stripe.com/billing is all about handling subscriptions through Stripe

merlinbeard 6y ago

We process a significant amount of charges through Stripe and this is hitting us hard. We’re basically being told that you’d like to keep some of our money for yourself. We were never told that we should expect such a fee increase. This smells a lot like bait and switch.

pc 6y ago
I'm sorry that it feels that way. Stripe Billing's pricing has been public since 2018. (We didn't charge any of our existing users from the outset precisely because we wanted to avoid any sense that there's a bait-and-switch. We wanted to wait until we really were confident that we had a good product that businesses are willing to pay for.)
- merlinbeard 6y ago
  Unfortunately no, It was never communicated to us. we were told stripe billing would be free to use. The very least that Stripe needs to do is to grandfather the existing revenue for old customers, and put in the charge for only newly created subscriptions.
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    Strongly agreed. Those are reference customers and should be treated with much greater privilege. They are early adopters and could very easily become early the next group of vocal detractors. I can't help but wonder about the poor client advocate Stripe fired before they made this move.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  I'm sorry that it feels that way. Stripe Billing's pricing has been public since 2018. But lots of us have been using Stripe for a lot longer than that, and don't necessarily want or need all the extra things you're now putting under the "Billing" brand. We haven't received any notification of a change from Stripe, but from the HN discussion, it looks like the option to just have a simple, automated recurring charge -- the key feature that attracted businesses like mine to Stripe in the first place -- is being removed. If that is the case then we'll naturally view the change as a 0.5% increase in Stripe's fees, pure and simple.

cabalos 6y ago

I feel that spinning this as a several-year grace period is a bit disingenuous. I'm a huge Stripe fan, but this is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Here's the exact notification that went out on April 6, 2018 in the dashboard: "As a user of Stripe Subscriptions, you will get all the functionality of Stripe Billing's starter plan with no change in price. You can continue using it free of charge on your existing Stripe pricing, even beyond the $1M free threshold. This will be automatically applied to your account. Contact support@stripe.come with any pricing questions" As far as I can see, the Billing Starter plan has not changed and still applies. Not only that, it claims we get "all the functionality of Stripe Billing.." when this hasn't been the case for a few months. New features have been gated recently, ie. the new customer portal. You have every right to change your pricing how you see fit. However, if this message was worded as it being a grace period, we would have taken steps two years ago to consider other tools or building something in-house.

pc 6y ago
You're right. It would have been a lot better if we'd made explicit that we weren't intending to make a permanent commitment. This is good feedback for the next time we do something like this. (Our actual thinking was that we'd iterate on the product for a few years until we were confident it was good and worth paying for -- with both large and small companies using and paying for it -- and then revisit.)
- porker 6y ago
  > You're right. It would have been a lot better if we'd made explicit that we weren't intending to make a permanent commitment. And the original message, when I read it for the first time today, implies that it is for life because it's "beyond $1M" and there's no qualifier. I'm not using Subscriptions so I have nothing invested. But that's what your message says.
- cabalos 6y ago
  You're welcome; appreciate the response. For what its worth, I have yet to get an email about the increase and HN is the first I've heard of it. I should have known something was up when Stripe sent out the email survey two days ago about subscription pricing. Very strange that you only sat on those results for a day before pulling the trigger on this. Interestingly, some of the survey answers included concepts of a free tier. To me, the percentage makes little sense. You could be running 1,000,000 $10/mo subs, or 1,000 $1,000/mo subs and the cost is the same. This pricing model hits high value subscription companies significantly harder, even though Stripe's costs are lower.

onassar 6y ago

Can you clarify on the term "migrates" in the new title? If we use Stripe Subscriptions, do we need to migrate our system to the new Billing product?

pc 6y ago
No, you don't need to do any work.
- onassar 6y ago
  If I reach out to support, will they be able to chat w/ me about what's actually happening? I'm pretty confused atm, and don't want to drown this thread with questions about what's actually taking place.
- merlinbeard 6y ago
  You don’t need to do any work, but you just need to pay more ;)
  - pc 6y ago
    You don't need to! The pricing doesn't kick in 'till next year. We want to give people time to migrate away or to implement a billing system manually. (And if anyone wants more time to do that, we're happy to grant it.)
    - tomsi 6y ago
      This is just great! :)
    - rexreed 6y ago
      Yes - we need more time. This is a bit of a surprise. How do we get an extension, and how long will this extension last?
    - wise_young_man 6y ago
      Next year is just months away.

joseakle 6y ago

Cool! btw there's a small bug on the storage part of the pricing plan calculation. It shows 5,525 GB units but then the calculation is for 10,100 units.

tdhoot 6y ago
Thanks for the heads up! We just pushed a fix.

alooPotato 6y ago

Kind of agree with cabolos here. When we signed up for Stripe, the fees included access to Strip Subscriptions. We chose Stripe in part because of that. Now we either have to pay more for the same functionality or migrate of. We'd be totally happy keeping the old functionality of Stripe subscriptions and not getting any of the new hotness. I think Stripe has done a great job supporting old versions of the API, seems like we should just be able to stay on our old pricing / subscriptions functionality as well. Saying that we can build the infra ourselves to do reoccurring kind of goes against what we purchased Stripe for initially. I know technically you can change your pricing/billing however you want but this is more of "let's capture more revenue from old customers" than it is "we launched a bunch of stuff thats new so pay for the new stuff".

pc 6y ago
We've been testing this change for a few months to make sure that, broadly speaking, the vast majority of current customers are willing to pay for the new functionality. We don't want to even try to charge for things that customers don't feel they're getting good value from. There's obviously heterogeneity, though, and we'll be as reasonable as possible. If this would be really disruptive for your business, or if you need more time to plan a migration (if you don't think Billing makes sense for you), or something like that, I'd be happy to connect you with the team -- we could extend your current pricing through the end of 2021.
- alooPotato 6y ago
  Extending the pricing through 2021 seems reasonable and would give us a chance to do the cost/benefit on upgrading to Stripe Billing (including integration work) or moving off. Thanks for giving us the time to make the right decision for our business. There have been comments elsewhere in the discussion that for folks with higher volume, we should be negotiating our fees. At what volume would you recommend companies reach out to your team to do so?
  - pc 6y ago
    Great -- if you reach out to support@stripe.com with "billing pricing extension" in the subject, it'll go to the right folks.

nfm 6y ago

Long term Stripe customer across multiple companies here. I'm ok with paying for services like this that provide loads of value. I expect there's increasing diversity in terms of Stripe's customer base and how they use the product, and trying to pick a single percentage price point that works across all of them is no longer feasible. That said, I'm quite unhappy with Stripe's pricing as an AU customer. We're paying exorbitant rates to convert USD to AUD (think retail bank rates despite transacting multiple millions a year, ~3x what we'd pay Transferwise). There's no option to settle in USD, and a lot of our expenses are in USD, so we then pay another currency conversion fee when we spend. It's problematic to the extent that we're considering whether the ongoing costs and hassle of setting up a US entity, dealing with international tax, compliance, parent companies etc. would be worthwhile.

pc 6y ago
Yep, heard loud and clear. We've been investing a lot in USD (and other currency settlement) in various markets (and actually just released it in Singapore). We're working on it in Australia too.
- nfm 6y ago
  Thanks for replying, I'm very excited to hear it's in the works!
- supah 6y ago
  won’t this eat into your revenue since you won’t make money on the exchange ?
  - OJFord 6y ago
    People like GP who's revenue is eaten into by it not existing switching away from Stripe would also eat into its revenue.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
Do you really need to set up a US entity just to open a US bank account? If not, I would set up a US checking account and settle some portion stripe transactions there. Take that revenue and pay your US vendors. No currency conversions.

iffycan 6y ago

When I first signed up with Stripe years ago, it was a breath of fresh air. Stripe did one thing exceedingly well, at an understandable price and took minutes to integrate with. I could sell Stripe to my developer friends (and did, a lot!) in a single sentence: "You can add credit card charging to your site in about 15 minutes for 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction." I can't do that anymore. Stripe is no longer a single-sentence sell. Stripe still does good work. But the air is getting murkier. I'll point to some objective changes, but mostly Stripe is just starting to feel different. - Several years ago, when I saw announcements that Stripe started supporting ACH payments (and later international payments), I thought, "Great! This is Stripe! I'll just be able to flick a switch and turn those on." Not so. I understand that it's complicated from their end. It's just not the same "Stripe is so easy" experience. "Stripe is supposed to abstract away the complexity, not expose it to me." - The pricing page is a big sign of the added complexity. There used to just be one or two numbers on that page [1]. Compare that with the current pricing page [2] My suggestion to you, pc: Start a little company within Stripe to disrupt Stripe (i.e. re-simplify) in the same way Stripe disrupted the industry 10 years ago. Or keep getting bigger and become just as complex as the things Stripe replaced. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20111216054911/https://stripe.com/help/pricing https://web.archive.org/web/20111216054911/https://stripe.co... [2] https://stripe.com/pricing#pricing-details https://stripe.com/pricing#pricing-details

fbelzile 6y ago
I agree. I feel like good companies like Stripe want to keep growing. With this, comes the need to increase revenue to cover the extra costs. I don't know if it's investor pressure, or the fear of being stagnant, but some companies are arguably better off the way they are. There's no need to grow at all costs. If you want more users, double down on marketing to existing users instead of pissing them off. Although it's really hard to measure, happy users do the marketing for you and bring in more customers. First they started charging for international cards (with the "grandfathering" for years excuse), now this. I've already migrated off of Stripe and now actively recommend people think twice about going with them. Instead, I'm recommending Braintree... aka Paypal. It seems we've come full circle already.
freewilly1040 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ewhauser421 6y ago

Patrick, I think Stripe does a lot of things right, but your comments back in 2018 certainly indicated that Billing could be used in perpetuity: "- For existing customers, there's no pricing change. You just get more functionality than before for free. This is what we generally try to do: we want Stripe to continually become better value for you over time, as you get more functionality for the same price." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16766846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16766846 I specifically reached out to Stripe support back then to verify this would be the case and they confirmed. If you've since changed your mind, I think you should come out and say that's the case as opposed to saying this is a communications issue.

rawoke083600 6y ago

Thank you for taking the time to explain and write this up. While you are here: Any update on when Stripe will be available in South Africa ? We really need some alternatives to PayPal.

parito 6y ago

hi Patrick, For some reason your designers have decided that your website should pick a language based on the ip address. Stop guessing a language :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14175238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14175238

gobluebackstage 6y ago

Patrick, Thanks for building a great product. I'm happy to pay for continued feature + new product development ... ... What I'm not so happy about is: * we have asked Stripe to sign a contract for years (something requested by our institutional investors but have always been just pointed to an online MSA URL * we are now being asked to sign a contract suddenly w/new line-item charges and no ramp-up or notice period Most companies (especially those that are PE backed) have already done year end planning + budgetting. Happy to provide the details of our timeline but so far at a high-level: * contacted by a new account rep 11-days ago about signing a contract * still have not received the proposed rates for billing, processing, rev rec, sigma etc ... * ... but have been told that Billing charging needs to kick off 1/1/2021 (which is essentially 45-days away) Thanks, JE

erockj 6y ago

Patrick, i am trying to build a partnership with you guys and can't get anyone to contact me back. We are a venture backed startup in the veterinary telemedicine space - how do I get in contact with someone senior to explore an enterprise level partnership?