Show HN: Subscription Billing for Developers and Startups(billforward.net)
billforward.net
Show HN: Subscription Billing for Developers and Startups
http://www.billforward.net
30 comments
I had a similar experience after signup.
First, Billforward tells you to check your email after you signup which I waited a few minutes for then found it contained no activation link or anything (it just contains some "see our docs" type message). So you let me signup successfully then have me exit your site to read an email that is not required to then come back to the site to login? Why not just log the user in right after signup? Or at least send the user to the login page after signup. This round trip from signup to useless email to login was a waste of time.
I then logged in to see a message telling me to setup a unit of measure. What that is supposed to be I have no idea. The tooltips on the units of measure modal offer no real help. Why not just do a "Create a billing plan" wizard or something similar. Also on the sidebar, there is a link that says "Dunning" that contains no helpful text and just another empty table. If I have to Google a word and read a wikipedia entry to figure out what it's for, you've failed in your mission to 'simplify'.
For a site that is supposed to make billing easier the site is incredibly confusing and unintuitive.
First, Billforward tells you to check your email after you signup which I waited a few minutes for then found it contained no activation link or anything (it just contains some "see our docs" type message). So you let me signup successfully then have me exit your site to read an email that is not required to then come back to the site to login? Why not just log the user in right after signup? Or at least send the user to the login page after signup. This round trip from signup to useless email to login was a waste of time.
I then logged in to see a message telling me to setup a unit of measure. What that is supposed to be I have no idea. The tooltips on the units of measure modal offer no real help. Why not just do a "Create a billing plan" wizard or something similar. Also on the sidebar, there is a link that says "Dunning" that contains no helpful text and just another empty table. If I have to Google a word and read a wikipedia entry to figure out what it's for, you've failed in your mission to 'simplify'.
For a site that is supposed to make billing easier the site is incredibly confusing and unintuitive.
Thanks for the feedback, there was a minor glitch with our DNS config which caused a few of our outgoing signup emails to bounce... All fixed now and you should have received your welcome email.
I received the email with no problem within a few minutes. The problem is that it was virtually useless and not required to login (no activation link).
If I understand correctly, the deal here is "get a higher level 'Stripe', pay an additional 1% transaction fee" (above $10K+ total transactions).
thats correct, BillForward offers a deeper subscription stack making it easier and faster to start billing and handling upgrades, downgrades, switch plans etc....
I m currently trying to integrate stripe subscription api, for my soon to be launched service. Could you tell me why I should consider you instead of them?
As pointed out by dan_bk we provide a bunch of features above the plan based subscriptions Stripe offer.
If you think you are going to be selling your product with usage based pricing, or want to use tiered pricing then we can add value from what you get with Stripe. Feel free to drop me an e-mail at ian AT billforward . net and can talk through you use-case.
If you think you are going to be selling your product with usage based pricing, or want to use tiered pricing then we can add value from what you get with Stripe. Feel free to drop me an e-mail at ian AT billforward . net and can talk through you use-case.
It could be valuable to have a feature grid kind of page where you compare your platform to the built-in subscriptions in Braintree and Stripe, to provide an explicit list of the things you can handle that they can't.
Yeah, for example, see MailChimp's feature table for their Mandrill service that allows prospective customers to compare Mandrill to SendGrid (the market leader?):
https://www.mandrill.com/features/
I definitely prefer pages like that.
https://www.mandrill.com/features/
I definitely prefer pages like that.
Your pricing looks extremely generous, especially because you only take a percentage fee. This could be good (an edge over the competition when signing up new companies) or bad (unsustainable). I expect your lead time for new customers growing from $0/month to > $10k/month will be _long_ (ballpark 12 - 24 months), which could be problematic depending on the distribution of new vs established companies you end up with.
What does it do? I'm confused. Do I get a form or do I still have to build that? You should answer these questions.
Hey, we provide a hosted out of the box subscription checkout for users who do not want to build. We also support you building your own checkout via our API
You should redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS.
Hey, this looks pretty slick. I like the targeted coupons and progressive discounting, I'm hoping to extend the latter over multiple product lines. I agree this could use a wizard or more explanation for us non technical types, but otherwise it looks very start up friendly. Thanks.
So, other than having a free tier, how is this different from ChargeBee, Recurly, or Peakium?
Hey there, one of the BillForward founders here.
Our goal is to enable any company to bill how they want without hassle or constraints of building out a full subscription stack. Billing models such as tiered/volume pricing and usage billing can get complex but we make them very simple to use. You can often implement these features in places such as Stripe et al but often the minutiae becomes complex. We built the product that can scale from a simple flat price all the way up to composite price plans with tiered/volume pricing.
Our goal is to enable any company to bill how they want without hassle or constraints of building out a full subscription stack. Billing models such as tiered/volume pricing and usage billing can get complex but we make them very simple to use. You can often implement these features in places such as Stripe et al but often the minutiae becomes complex. We built the product that can scale from a simple flat price all the way up to composite price plans with tiered/volume pricing.
How they are different from each other? :)
This looks interesting! Was there a video demo somewhere though? I have a vague idea of what you are trying to do, but I'd love to see the interface (our admin and our customer side) before creating an account to see what we think.
Nicely executed, but as a developer I don't understand the value proposition. Especially when it's so easy to do all this stuff. Maybe it's for non developers?
Hi, thanks for the feedback on messaging.
What we are trying to do is enable companies to have a single billing platform that grows with them from simple flat priced subscriptions all the way up to subscriptions which have multiple components and pricing strategies.
For example some of our customers sell their subscriptions with 3 or 4 components, for example international calls, local calls, 4g usage, 3g usage etc. Inside each of these units they give discounts the more you use. For example up to 100 minutes of X is $1 a minute, whereas anything above 100 minutes X is charged at 75c a minute.
What we are trying to do is enable companies to have a single billing platform that grows with them from simple flat priced subscriptions all the way up to subscriptions which have multiple components and pricing strategies.
For example some of our customers sell their subscriptions with 3 or 4 components, for example international calls, local calls, 4g usage, 3g usage etc. Inside each of these units they give discounts the more you use. For example up to 100 minutes of X is $1 a minute, whereas anything above 100 minutes X is charged at 75c a minute.
Hey Guys...
Docs are fixed! Thanks for letting us know... http://docs.billforward.net
Docs are fixed! Thanks for letting us know... http://docs.billforward.net
Is 10k in USD / EUR or any currency ? Looks great, and very competitive price there. I just hope that you can make money out of it to keep it going.
We should improve that on the website, 10k - USD, GBP, EUR
https://docs.billforward.net/ was unavailable for me (Chrome on OS X)
Had the same issue, you have to be logged in...
You totally should use billforward platform to manage plans and billing for billforward platform itself. Meta.
we do :)
Looks interesting! How easy is it to switch between stripe and braintree?
Stripe and Braintree are both payment gateways so in theory this should be feasible.
Then I went to sign up and it all came apart. Firstly, I didn't get the email that I was supposed to (even after waiting a while.) Then, I went to sign in, figuring that I didn't need the email anyway. Once I did this, I was greeted with a confusing screen: what the heck is a Unit of Measure? I couldn't find any information on what it was anywhere, including with Google, so I went back and tried to set up a payment gateway. I chose PayPal. For that, I apparently have to email the help account to "discuss integration". So I tried Braintree, Balanced, CyberSource, Authorize.Net - all the same story. Boom, I've already hit several major roadblocks.
Contrast this with https://snappycheckout.com/, which was really easy to set up, and I've had a great experience overall with it.
[0] The only flaw I saw was that I didn't know what my users would see. Would they see a standard form, as with Snappy Checkout or Stripe, or would I pass credit card details to your service with my own form and you handle the rest?
[edit] Still no email, two hours after signing up.