[LRUG] Recurring Payments and subscriptions

[Glenn Gillen]

> We could use something like Recurly, or Cheddargetter with a service such as Paypal, or we could and try and roll our own billing system that talks direct to somewhere like SecureTrading - both of which require vastly different levels of effort, and provide vastly different pros and cons.

I had great difficulty setting up the PayPal Payments Pro account needed, actually I never got one. I had to show utility statements, rent agreements, and all kinds of things in my business name for my registered business address. Given my registered business address is my accountant's office it wasn't possible. I assume many one-person setups would face a similar problem. I've also read enough horror stories about PayPal and their questionable policies and practices to know that under no circumstances would I feel comfortable having them as my *only* payment option, merely a quick way to get going while I sorted something more solid out. It didn't quite work out that way obviously.

> So, who's done something like this before and how did you do it (and with who)?   Does anyone have any direct experience of this stuff?

As Marcus mentioned, getting a merchant account setup was much harder than expected. Given I'd been operating for less than 2 years at the time most banks didn't want to touch meat all, so HSBC (who I already banked with) were my only option. So you need the merchant account, and then a gateway, and then maybe a subscription management service. The merchant account took me almost 6 months to get in the end due to continual problems with HSBC (setting it up in the wrong currency, having to start the whole process again, documents apparently lost somewhere, etc.). Then comes the gateway, and I think every provider I spoke to groaned when I mentioned I'd gone with HSBC and asked if I could change to Barclaycard.

If you're looking at using Chargify, your only option for a gateway at last check is PaymentExpress. PaymentExpress insist they support HSBC, HSBC insisted PaymentExpress hadn't completed certification and if I was to demand that I would be using them they would not provide any liability cover on payments, chargebacks, fraud protection, etc. That ruled out PaymentExpress and Chargify for me.

Spreedly had wider support for gateways. I checked with SecureTrading as a client had been using them in the past and from my perspective they seemed to be OK. You need to be running a java webservice/proxy on your server to take payments which seemed needlessly complicated and a little restrictive (would make running on something like Heroku mighty difficult) so I decided to bin them. Their sales support were incredibly helpful, apparently the client I thought was happy with them was less than enthused with their performance so I think I may have dodged a bullet.

SagePay and Realex were the two left. Realex was cheaper and didn't seem to have many people complaining about them, in SagePay's defence it may just be representative of the number of clients they have. I went with Realex and they've been great. Integration with Spreedly was easy, and their tech support have been very proactive in picking up any issues with integration or account setup (it was Realex who discovered HSBC had setup my account incorrectly).

I've also used Recurly for a client. They were just okay, seemed responsive to requests for new features but integration took longer than it did for both Chargify and Spreedly. I was also concerned with things like getting mixed-mode security warnings in my browser because assets were getting served over plain HTTP rather than HTTPS and that we'd occasionally get the standard rails error message when things broke. Minor and possibly pedantic, but I expect a high standard from someone I'm entrusting the safety of credit card numbers to.

Hope that gives you some insight, drop me a line if there are any other questions.

Glenn