HN: How do int'l Rails webapps handle recurring subscriptions? | Hacker News Reader

HN: How do int'l Rails webapps handle recurring subscriptions?

4 pointsmarcamillion10 comments

I am not talking about the credit card info. I am going to be using 2checkout to handle that. Chargify, Recurly and Spreedly can't help me here - because as far as I know they don't work with 2checkout (and I need a payment facility that works with Jamaica, 2checkout is one of the few that does). However, if you have a recommendation for that, I will gladly look at it.

But more the logic of the restrictions on each of the plans. E.g. Plan A has 1GB storage, with 2 clients, Plan B has 5GB storage, etc.

Is there a rails gem or something that you guys have used that can help me with this ?

Thanks.

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I think this is more of a strategy question. I'd approach this problem by defining each user to belong to a plan. Then with authorization gems such as CanCan, define the actions that can be accomplished with each role.

For example, one ability definition would be for adding new files. It would check that the user's used space has not exceeding the user's plan allotment.

I hope this helps some, but I doubt you'll find a silver bullet gem or service because this requires some deep application logic.

I am using devise and auth_logic for authentication and authorization.

But I am struggling with rolling my own, so was wondering if there is a gem that does it.

I found one - https://github.com/linoj/saasramp - but doesn't seem to be written for Rails 3 (and hasn't been updated).

Know of any others like that, but for Rails 3 ?

I think you may be confused with a couple things.

Devise and AuthLogic are both authentication gems, and wouldn't be used together. They only authenticate a user, but they don't authorize actions. For authorization, a gem like CanCan would be a good fit.

saasramp looks like a way to do handle CC's and submit for processing. From my experience, don't do this. Let Chargify or someone else handle payments on a hosted payment page. It's not worth the risk.

Sorry...I meant declarative_authorization.

Yeh, I don't want to handle CCs & submit for processing. I need assistance with the application logic, but I think I got it.

Thanks.

I'm the Product Manager of PostageApp (www.postageapp.com) and we have quite a few international customers and our revenue comes in from a subscription model.

Can't help you too much with gems, but our user registration uses the Freshbooks (www.freshbooks.com) API to create a new client + recurring payment profile, and we've connected a payment gateway (Authorize.net) to the account to process credit cards immediately.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Kinda different than my model. I am a company based in Jamaica - with US & EU based clients (to be).

So it's kinda the opposite.

I'm considering the same for a similar application and am interested in your overall impressions of this method? Am place we can hedge and spend time to improve the process? Does up charges/credits in cycle work well?

It's a decent method, to be honest. It works well enough without us doing too much - unless transactions fail. When that happens, we might have to intervene manually, but relatively painless.

Moneybookers.com

It seems that they facilitate sending money back and forth.

But I see nothing about integrating into my Rails app to handle subscription management.

Am I mistaken ? Can you provide some more details please.

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