BrainTree vs TrustCommerce for Credit Card Processing and Recurring Billing
We’ve been using TrustCommerce.com for a over a year with SugarStats to do the recurring billing/subscriptions and credit card processing. Overall it has been a pleasant experience even though we had a few bumpy bits.
I’ve recently found out about BrainTree which seems to offer everything TrustCommerce does and then some in an all-in-one solution. While I’m a big fan of the “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” saying, we’re considering switching.
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TrustCommerce Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Great Rails/Ruby Integration and API
- Fairly good support
- Great security and risk/fraud protection practices
- Decent prices
- Excellent recurring billing/subscription support
Cons
- Support has slowly been going downhill. I even hear sales is non-responsive to new accounts.
- Online Web Portal is a bit lacking and cumbersome for statistics
- Need a separate company to be the merchant
- Can’t combine multiple apps into one TC account

BrainTree
Pros
- Seems to also have a superb API.
- Rails/Ruby integration via a few diff plugins and especially great support via ActiveMerchant
- Active community
- Quickbooks Export/Import
- Good reporting/Analytics tools in web control panel
- All-in-one solution which includes merchant and gateway
- Can have multiple sites behind one web control panel login
- Great security and risk/fraud protection
- Supports both major credit cards AND Paypal/Google Checkout/BillMeLater
- I hear support is great
- Fee’s: ???
Cons
Don’t know yet.
The real benefit I’m seeing is the multiple sites behind one login, Paypal/Google/BillMeLater payment and the active community/ActiveMerchant support. If the web control panel interface is at all better than TrustCommerce I’ll be very please as well.
Tags: ActiveMerchant, BrainTree, Paypal, Recurring Billing, Ruby on Rails recurring subscriptions, Subscription, SugarStats, TrustCommerce.
Posted on April 23, 2008
Filed Under Analytics, Business, Design, Hosting, Ruby on Rails, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Web, WebDev
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Comments
One Response to “BrainTree vs TrustCommerce for Credit Card Processing and Recurring Billing”
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I’d highly recommend checking out Braintree. Great support and service – a quick read through Brian’s (the founder) blog will show that he’s know his stuff about the CC industry.
The do a good job of showing how getting sucked into a ‘teaser’ rate can really cost you in the end. Feel free to contact me if you want details on my experience with them – no experience with Trustcommerce.com