[plantain]

I tried to use it for a new SaaS product - but their plans start at 3000$/mo.

It seems like they have things backwards. The small fry like me don't want to self-host, we want a managed solution. The big fishes have enough scale to self-host.

[danpalmer]

I see your point, but I think this might work for them. At my previous place we started on Stripe it was really nice to work with, cost nothing in absolute terms because we had few sales, easy to integrate.

But a few years in we were doing substantial volume and we wanted to re-negotiate the contract. If we had Lago and could re-integrate with that, using it as leverage on a Stripe contract renewal, that could have been worth $3k a month, given that we were paying Stripe $30k per month in fees.

Our situation was a little different being retail rather than SaaS billing, but I could see a world where this makes financial sense.

[redslazer]

Got trapped by the same thing. Usage based billing is a huge pain point for us we were really excited by lago but dont want to self host infra if we can outsource it.

We ended up talking to about 5 different usage based billing API providers and basically no one is interested in servicing the sub $1000 per month market which is where we will realistically be for the next year as we grow.

Additionally lago and other providers advertise "no revenue cut" and then always quote pricing as a percentage of revenue (which is technical not a revenue cut except your fee scales pretty linarly with revenue).

[symfrog]

Did you consider Kill Bill https://github.com/killbill/killbill ? I used it a few years ago for usage based billing.

[jngiam1]

https://www.stigg.io/ might fit (we are in the midst of integrating it into our product and it’s been good so far)

[cable]

Take a look at https://revenium.io (full disclosure: I'm co-founder/cto.) We are a fully hosted solution with a free/developer tier and plans that start at $19/month. We also have a self-hosted option.

[sturgill]

This is actually a space I’m exploring. Would love to chat about your use case if you’re interested. Shoot me an email at chris. Domain name revenuehq.com.

[carlosjobim]

Why do you spend time talking to 5 different payment providers while still not billing even $1000 per month?

[redslazer]

We are billing more than $1000 a month :). The providers didn’t want our business for less than $1000 per month (at a heavily discounted time limited price).

We talked to this many providers because it’s a huge pain point for us and the thing we hacked together was inadequate for tracking usage.

[helsinkiandrew]

> Why do you spend time talking to 5 different payment providers while still not billing even $1000 per month?

Presumably because "no one was interested" in taking their business?

[carlosjobim]

Stripe doesn't have any lowest limit, as far as I know.

[boudin]

They have things backwards only if their strategy is to focus on the low end of the market. It doesn't seem to be the case here.

[plantain]

The big end of the market starts at the small end with a few large VC-funded exceptions...

[pc86]

This may be true in the most technical sense but it's a pointless observation. There are of course plenty of big businesses now so it's a perfectly rational business decision to target those big ones first. Because they were small 5, 10, 50 years ago is completely irrelevant.

[paulsutter]

This suggests their target customer are the Stripe whales spending more than $3000 a month on fees.

It's pricing genius to avoid the small, expensive to service, unprofitable customers (let Stripe lose money on those), and then they cherry pick the good customers once that have already scaled up at Stripe

[quartesixte]

Medium Trout may be the intended market?

[Rafsark]

What's a fair price for a budget-friendly hosted version? Lower upfront cost, or maybe a revenue share? We've aimed at enterprise deals for the paid edition, keeping the open-source version widely accessible. Keen to hear your thoughts on adjusting our pricing.

[plantain]

100$/mo? I would like to be able to build out an idea in a week or two and see if it goes anywhere. Making my own metered billing system to go with it would be an enormous project.

If it does go places, I'm happy to pay the big fees when it gets big.

IMHO this is why Stripe is so successful - picking up the customers while they're small. I'm with Stripe because Adyen et. al wouldn't talk to me at $100/mo but Stripe would, and many years later I'm still with Stripe running a large multiple of that through them (ok, via Paddle now..)

[Solvency]

Can i ask why, in 2024, basic internet payment infrastructure isn't a commoditized resource shared across FANG/governments/ISP/banks? Why Does it have to be this way? Why must it be so convoluted for the merchants themselves? Why must it cost so much money just to be able to accept payments? Don't we all love payments? Don't transactions make the world go round? Are we already paying taxes on literally everything? Wouldn't it be in everyone's best interest is to make the simple act of doing business be as simple, frictionless, and barrierless as possible?

[n_plus_1_acc]

It is easy. Give out your IBAN and a reference/invoice number, Wait for the money, then ship the product.

[pc86]

What is it exactly that you want Amazon, the US government, Verizon, and JPMorgan doing together that isn't done better by Stripe and its competitors right now?

For a discussion around payments this seems very similar to the "internet is a utility" discussion from decades past with a weird anti-capitalist / "a private company doing this is bad" vibes.

[Solvency]

it costs $3000/month just to use Lago. this just seems insane but it's normalized by developers + big business.

[true_religion]

https://www.getlago.com/pricing

They have open source / no support billing, so why wouldn't use use that? They also have an up to 50% discount for early-stage companies.

[derekperkins]

You can't even refund with the OSS version. It's so hamstrung as to be completely unusable for a real business