[merlinbeard]

We process a significant amount of charges through Stripe and this is hitting us hard. We’re basically being told that you’d like to keep some of our money for yourself. We were never told that we should expect such a fee increase. This smells a lot like bait and switch.

[pc]

I'm sorry that it feels that way. Stripe Billing's pricing has been public since 2018. (We didn't charge any of our existing users from the outset precisely because we wanted to avoid any sense that there's a bait-and-switch. We wanted to wait until we really were confident that we had a good product that businesses are willing to pay for.)

[Silhouette]

I'm sorry that it feels that way. Stripe Billing's pricing has been public since 2018.

But lots of us have been using Stripe for a lot longer than that, and don't necessarily want or need all the extra things you're now putting under the "Billing" brand.

We haven't received any notification of a change from Stripe, but from the HN discussion, it looks like the option to just have a simple, automated recurring charge -- the key feature that attracted businesses like mine to Stripe in the first place -- is being removed. If that is the case then we'll naturally view the change as a 0.5% increase in Stripe's fees, pure and simple.

[tomsi]

Second that! We are exactly in the same shoes. We are not using or planning to use any of those extra features and are pretty disappointed by that move. Costs us a couple of grand more every year in stripe fees or we now have to go hire a developer.

[TedDoesntTalk]

We use recurly.com for subscription management and have been very pleased with them for years.

[Silhouette]

FWIW, we're in the UK, where a combination of the European PSD2/SCA changes, ever more complicated tax rules, and uncertainty over Brexit is making the model used by services like Stripe unattractive now. We've been looking into merchant-of-record alternatives, where it can be someone else's problem to keep up with all the tax and regulatory changes and to implement all the awkward UI edge cases. We haven't yet made a final decision on how to proceed, but apparently the difference in fees relative to the existing services we use is going to be smaller in the new year, so that's one barrier to switching getting lower.

[_kyran]

This was what was sent to us:

Your account has been upgraded to Stripe Billing for free. No matter how much revenue you process on Stripe, you’ll get unlimited use of Billing’s Starter plan included in the price you currently pay for payments. All new features are available in your account now, no API version upgrade necessary.

If Stripe pushed ahead forcing an additional 0.5% with no new features adopted, that's pretty predatory and the kind of rent seeking that will leave a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth which then when starting new projects won't be looking to adopt Stripe with the same passion they did years ago.

[merlinbeard]

Unfortunately no, It was never communicated to us. we were told stripe billing would be free to use. The very least that Stripe needs to do is to grandfather the existing revenue for old customers, and put in the charge for only newly created subscriptions.

[spacemanmatt]

Strongly agreed.

Those are reference customers and should be treated with much greater privilege. They are early adopters and could very easily become early the next group of vocal detractors. I can't help but wonder about the poor client advocate Stripe fired before they made this move.

[AlchemistCamp]

I created an account and integrated Subscriptions in 2018. At no point was I told that I would later be charged extra for doing so. On the contrary, I was later told that my account was "upgraded" to Billing for free.

> I'm sorry that it feels that way.

It's not just that it feels this way. It is this way. I'm still on the Subscriptions API and haven't seen anything in Billing compelling enough to rewrite my code to implement.

I'm not saying any other payment processor is better. They may not be. It's just that while I deeply respect some of your broader ethical stands, this kind of behavior is dismaying.

[gizmo]

We were told we were grandfathered in, actually. We specifically asked before we started our migration process to Stripe Billing.

[robertlagrant]

> I'm sorry that it feels that way.

I think it is that way, and this is an attempt to make it feel a different way.