Subscription Based Services, Paypal and TrustCommerce aka “Integrating recurring payments into SugarStats.com with Rails”
The guys over at ActiveReload posted an interesting article on their experiences integrating subscription-based recurring payments into their app Lighthouse.
Check it out: Dealing with subscription payments
Its funny as we’re having a similar situation with SugarStats.com . We’re on the last stretch before a public launch and all that is remaining is to get the payment processing integration finished.
We wanted (really really wanted) to have all our subscription issues magically handled by PayPal in one clean, managed solution. It didn’t turn out like that.
Actually, I had changed my mind and the direction of the project multiple times! First it was paypal, got it about 80% implemented and realized some new limitations. We then decided to switch to TrustCommerce, but with so much invested with implementing PayPal it was a little difficult to just throw that all away. We also didn’t want to leave out all the people who want to pay via PayPal as of course, TrustCommerce won’t fulfill that need.
Upon further deliberation we decided since it was almost done to finish the PayPal solution since it could process credit cards too. It can process credit cards right? It says it right on their website, users don’t even need to create a PayPal account! Yes, that would have been ideal. After many hours Google searching, API crawling and forum question asking the answer was found. It can process credit cards… For one-time payments and not subscriptions. Great.
But now the decision is final, TrustCommerce and credit card subscription process direct from the website and finish the PayPal subscriptions after launch. But it is our own faults for second guessing and really not doing all the homeworked needed.
Dealing with TrustCommerce has been a breeze so far. Their service, Citadel, is specifically made for recurring subscriptions. They even say it’s “A dream come true for the subscription based business.”, now I’m seeing the truth in that. Their API is as clean and clear as can be and they even have a Rails Plugin (The TrustCommerce Subscription Plugin) that makes implemention DEAD simple.
Another good element, as it was with PayPal as well, is that TrustCommerce’ Citadel keeps all Credit Card information secure on their servers along with automatically handle all the payments and invoicing (as it should be). Though we’ve still built our own house record-keeping solution for subscriptions and payment records.
Since the code base is about 80% done, we’re fairly sure we’re going to add PayPal subscriptions down the road. But so close to deadline, this takes priority though I wouldn’t be surprised (I love Rails) if we get both in there before launch 
.
Posted on May 17, 2007
Filed Under Analytics, Business, CSS/XHTML, Daily Thoughts, Design, General, Hardware, Hosting, Marketing, Mobile Tech, PHP/MySQL, Productivity, Ruby on Rails, SEO, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Travel, Web
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I'm Marston and here you'll find my rantings, rhetoric and other useful info. I dig tech, photography, quantum physics and organic food. I'm the founder of SugarStats.com and thats my days developing.
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Marston – care to share any info on TrustCommerce pricing? I’m working out some new ideas of my own, and am stumbling when trying to figure out how to handle recurring payments (since PayPal can’t).