Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by theseanstewart 3074 days ago
> Would you say ChargeBee is also a good solution for small one-time-payments?

My startup uses ChargeBee and deals with one-time-payments as well as subscriptions. It's definitely geared towards the subscription model, but you can make the one-off payments work by using the API and utilizing add-on products.

First, the customer would need to be signed up for a subscription plan that has a trial set to expire X years out (I think the maximum is 10). ChargeBee's pricing model is based on the total number of invoices per month (or at least that's how our plan works), so signing them up for a trial does not result in an invoice being generated.

Then you would set up an add-on product in ChargeBee that is of the "Quantity" type and has a price of $.01. When the customer makes a one-off purchase, you would call use the ChargeBee API to purchase a quantity of X of the add-on. So if the total charge is $10, you would use a quantity of 1,000 (1,000 x .01 = 10).

If you have products that have a set price, you can just add each one as an add-on and reference that product ID when calling the API.

It sounds kind of hack-ey, but I'm very happy with our decision to go with ChargeBee. Their customer support is awesome as well.