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How to Build a Subscription Service on Rails: A Noob's Guide

79 points by joelhooks 13y ago

thibaut_barrere 13y ago
Folks interested in using Recurly.js for subscriptions (which I personally love) will also be interested in the sample app I'm starting to push on GitHub (work in progress, but will be updated this week): https://github.com/thbar/rails-recurly-js-sample-application https://github.com/thbar/rails-recurly-js-sample-application
- joelhooks 13y ago
  I gave recurly a long look. It has some great features (specifically the dunning). In the end, working with Stripe was cheaper and less hassle, though I've just pushed out the dunning hassle. Thanks for the sample app, I'm looking forward to seeing what you've done.
  - thibaut_barrere 13y ago
    What originally pushed me toward Recurly was that they support VAT (and I run a french company) - plus Stripe wasn't available back then in France either :-) Currently adding VAT support to Stripe is fairly complex (based on what people who implemented it told me), you basically have to do everything yourself and add custom line items via invoice callbacks. I hope they will support more VAT at some point! I will try to make a more educated comparison later on though. Really wanted to thank you for the link to the Koudoku gem and for sharing more online; the more we have information on how to implement SaaS services, the more developers will be empowered to start businesses.
- malditojavi 13y ago
  Thanks for sharing it, Thibaut. I'm based in Belgium, and it's true that vat issue is solved with Recurly (and hopefully in a near future with Stripe).
dfischer 13y ago
Wow https://github.com/andrewculver/koudoku https://github.com/andrewculver/koudoku is amazing. Thanks.
DanielKehoe 13y ago
I'm glad to hear the RailsApps project was useful to Joel Hooks, and I'm glad he mentioned Giles Bowkett’s ebook, which is an excellent code review of one of the RailsApps example applications. But do us all a favor and make it clear that RailsApps is an open source project. It is only as good as its pull requests. There are hundreds of smart developers who could contribute code to make it better. Giles decided to write an ebook instead of forking the project in the open. I'll recommend that people buy his ebook (really, I will) but I'd much rather have pull requests to improve the RailsApps examples. That'd benefit everyone.
- fdschoeneman 13y ago
  I can say that the RailsApps stripe tutorial was useful for me. My understanding was that the Rails Apps Stripe tutorial was not supposed to be a "good" or even an "allegedly good", but simply a starting point, one that would give other developers a quick way to get up and running with Stripe. A spike, if you will, to help understand how something might be done, before doing that thing in your own way to suit your own purposes. Simultaneously, by not having too much code, it could be understood by beginners and improved by others. I think that Mr. Bowkett has a fundamental misunderstanding of the Rails Apps project. And I probably would have very much appreciated any improvements he could have made to the sample app code.
- joelhooks 13y ago
  This is true, to some extent. You're directly charging for materials related to the code. I gave you 2x as much $$ as I did Giles. I'm glad to do it, but his stated purpose wasn't to improve RailsApp, it was to take common general issues and refactor them. RailsApp just happened to be a convenient example. Hopefully some of the hundreds of smart developers that can contribute will apply some of the code review to RailsApp. It gets into murky waters though. I'm assuming contributors don't get a cut of the monthly subscriptions to RailsApp Pro. I think what you're doing is awesome, and love the approach you've taken.
  - fdschoeneman 13y ago
    For me, the RailsApps tutorials and sample applications are about doing a quick spike to see how a feature might be done, and then going back and figuring out how to do that same feature your own way, to suit your own purposes. In this sense, refactoring one of the rails apps sample apps is the coding equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

79 points by joelhooks 13y ago

Folks interested in using Recurly.js for subscriptions (which I personally love) will also be interested in the sample app I'm starting to push on GitHub (work in progress, but will be updated this week): https://github.com/thbar/rails-recurly-js-sample-application https://github.com/thbar/rails-recurly-js-sample-application

joelhooks 13y ago
I gave recurly a long look. It has some great features (specifically the dunning). In the end, working with Stripe was cheaper and less hassle, though I've just pushed out the dunning hassle. Thanks for the sample app, I'm looking forward to seeing what you've done.
- thibaut_barrere 13y ago
  What originally pushed me toward Recurly was that they support VAT (and I run a french company) - plus Stripe wasn't available back then in France either :-) Currently adding VAT support to Stripe is fairly complex (based on what people who implemented it told me), you basically have to do everything yourself and add custom line items via invoice callbacks. I hope they will support more VAT at some point! I will try to make a more educated comparison later on though. Really wanted to thank you for the link to the Koudoku gem and for sharing more online; the more we have information on how to implement SaaS services, the more developers will be empowered to start businesses.
malditojavi 13y ago
Thanks for sharing it, Thibaut. I'm based in Belgium, and it's true that vat issue is solved with Recurly (and hopefully in a near future with Stripe).

dfischer 13y ago

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

DanielKehoe 13y ago

I'm glad to hear the RailsApps project was useful to Joel Hooks, and I'm glad he mentioned Giles Bowkett’s ebook, which is an excellent code review of one of the RailsApps example applications. But do us all a favor and make it clear that RailsApps is an open source project. It is only as good as its pull requests. There are hundreds of smart developers who could contribute code to make it better. Giles decided to write an ebook instead of forking the project in the open. I'll recommend that people buy his ebook (really, I will) but I'd much rather have pull requests to improve the RailsApps examples. That'd benefit everyone.

fdschoeneman 13y ago
I can say that the RailsApps stripe tutorial was useful for me. My understanding was that the Rails Apps Stripe tutorial was not supposed to be a "good" or even an "allegedly good", but simply a starting point, one that would give other developers a quick way to get up and running with Stripe. A spike, if you will, to help understand how something might be done, before doing that thing in your own way to suit your own purposes. Simultaneously, by not having too much code, it could be understood by beginners and improved by others. I think that Mr. Bowkett has a fundamental misunderstanding of the Rails Apps project. And I probably would have very much appreciated any improvements he could have made to the sample app code.
joelhooks 13y ago
This is true, to some extent. You're directly charging for materials related to the code. I gave you 2x as much $$ as I did Giles. I'm glad to do it, but his stated purpose wasn't to improve RailsApp, it was to take common general issues and refactor them. RailsApp just happened to be a convenient example. Hopefully some of the hundreds of smart developers that can contribute will apply some of the code review to RailsApp. It gets into murky waters though. I'm assuming contributors don't get a cut of the monthly subscriptions to RailsApp Pro. I think what you're doing is awesome, and love the approach you've taken.
- fdschoeneman 13y ago
  For me, the RailsApps tutorials and sample applications are about doing a quick spike to see how a feature might be done, and then going back and figuring out how to do that same feature your own way, to suit your own purposes. In this sense, refactoring one of the rails apps sample apps is the coding equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.