Comment by markbao | Hacker News Reader

Comment by markbao | Hacker News Reader

Wow, really? Chargify just lost its position as the best choice for subscription management. Extremely glad we didn't launch yet with Chargify...

Here are some Chargify alternatives that we are looking at: Recurly, http://recurly.com/pricing/ at 200 transactions and 500 users $29/m - Spreedly, http://spreedly.com/info/pricing/ at $19/m + $0.20/transaction or 2% per transaction if less - CheddarGetter, https://cheddargetter.com/pricing at $39/m -> 1000 customers, $0 per transaction.

At the moment, we're probably going to switch to Spreedly, since the rates look good and they've been around for a while. Depends on what kind of dunning management they have.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's pretty ironic that it was part of the lean startup bundle.

Last time I looked, Spreedly's API and functionality wasn't even in the same ballpark as Chargify's. I've worked on integration projects with both, and Chargify is much better and more configurable. Spreedly may have improved, it's been a while.

That is what I found when I last looked at Spreedly as well. Good opportunity for them to beef up their API to attract defectors.

On the one hand, I agree with you - Spreedly's not as feature rich as some of the competition. On the other hand, we have a lot of very happy customers, so that doesn't mean we're not a good fit for a significant set of startups.

Very true, please count me as one of your satisfied customers. In a different comment, I did say Spreedly would be a great fit for those who just want a straight forward recurring billing solution, without deep API integration and other features offered by Chargify/Recurly. I forgot to note that here.

Deep API integration translates in to 'more lock-in'. Better try to handle as much of the business logic other than the initial add, the rebilling and the deletions upon account expiry yourself.

Keep your interface to services like this as thin as you can get away with without compromising customer comfort, in the long run you'll be very happy you did.

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