Stripe vs Stripe Billing

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Stripe vs Stripe Billing: What are the differences?

Introduction

Stripe and Stripe Billing are two services offered by Stripe, a popular online payment processing platform. While Stripe provides the infrastructure needed to accept online payments, Stripe Billing focuses specifically on recurring billing and subscription management for businesses.

Key Differences between Stripe and Stripe Billing

  1. Integration and Functionality: Stripe provides a wide range of APIs and tools to integrate and accept online payments, allowing businesses to handle one-time transactions, refunds, and more. On the other hand, Stripe Billing focuses specifically on recurring billing, providing features such as subscription plans, metered billing, and prorations.

  2. Subscription Management: One key difference between Stripe and Stripe Billing is their approach to subscription management. Stripe offers basic subscription management functionalities, allowing businesses to create and manage subscriptions. However, Stripe Billing provides advanced subscription management tools, including features like trial periods, upgrades/downgrades, and cancellation proration.

  3. Invoice Generation: Stripe strives to provide businesses with flexibility in managing invoices, including generating invoices for one-time transactions. In contrast, Stripe Billing specializes in subscription billing and provides comprehensive invoice generation capabilities. It supports features like automatic invoice generation for subscriptions, invoice customization, and tracking invoice statuses.

  4. Taxes and Compliance: While Stripe handles tax calculations and compliance for businesses receiving payments, Stripe Billing offers additional built-in tax features specific to subscription billing. This includes automated tax calculation and management, allowing businesses to handle taxes for recurring billing without additional integrations.

  5. Payment Recovery: Stripe handles failed payments and automatically retries them in case of temporary issues. However, Stripe Billing takes payment recovery a step further by providing a comprehensive system for handling failed payments in recurring subscriptions. It offers automated retries, dunning management, and customizable email notifications to minimize involuntary churn.

  6. Customer Portal: Stripe Billing provides a pre-built customer portal that allows customers to manage their subscriptions, update payment methods, view invoices, and make changes to their billing details. While Stripe also supports customer management, Stripe Billing offers this additional functionality out-of-the-box, saving businesses development time and effort.

In summary, Stripe is a comprehensive payment processing platform, while Stripe Billing is tailored specifically for managing recurring billing and subscription services. Stripe Billing offers advanced features for subscription management, invoice generation, tax compliance, and payment recovery, providing businesses with a comprehensive solution to handle recurring billing needs.

Advice on Stripe and Stripe Billing
Vincenzo Belpiede
CEO at StellarTalents.com · | 7 upvotes · 109.3K views
Needs advice
on
ChargebeeChargebeePaddlePaddle
and
StripeStripe

Stripe or Paddle for payment processing for SaaS?

we used Stripe + Chargebee once and will NEVER use them again (they charge too much (300usd/month while offering way fewer integrations than Stripe)

Furthermore, Chargebee doesn't support managing disputes. We still need to go to stripe for that.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts

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Replies (1)
Julien DeFrance
Principal Software Engineer at Tophatter · | 4 upvotes · 31.7K views
Recommends
on
RecurlyRecurly

I'd recommend you check out Recurly. They are one of the leading solutions in the recurring billing space, but also support one-off orders. Recurly answers most common e-commerce use cases, will also give, out of the box, rich plan/subscription management functionalities to all the teams within your organization. They also come with great documentation, and SDKs, which from an Engineering standpoint, made it a very enjoyable pilot to work on, at the time. You'll also get great visibility/BI/analytics for free, allowing you to monitor the health of your business. Your Finance team will also get all of the data that they want. Without having you write any line of code. As you did touch upon integrations, they integrate with major payment gateways, including their own, support webhooks, integrate with Segment and therefore any tool that integrates with Segment, which makes this solution one of the most extensible one you'll find. Eg. Triggerring some Email Marketing "journey" (workflow) in AutoPilotHQ based on certain events.

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Team Showwcase
Product Team at Showwcase · | 6 upvotes · 57.5K views
Needs advice
on
PayPalPayPal
and
StripeStripe

Hi Folks,

I represent Showwcase, which is a network built for coders.

We're introducing a paywall for content creators on the platform to start accepting payments from their Followers for premium and unique content over and above the general free content. We are internally considering either Stripe or PayPal to handle this for us.

If we take the pricing out of the debate, what's the go-to choice when choosing which to integrate? Our current standpoint is that Paypal has wider consumer adoption, and since most creators are individuals, it makes sense to just use Paypal because they already have an account. However, our business uses Stripe, and so it makes it easier if both the platform (Showwcase) and creators to be on the Stripe platform. That being said, if creators don't already have an account, they will need to sign up with Stripe on the spot, which is a friction point.

I would like to hear the pros and cons in developer environments as well as any other things we might not know.

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Replies (3)
Arthur Sparks
Recommends
on
StripeStripe

PayPal is a dinosaur and a nightmare to work with, both in terms of API as well as on the business side. We support both because our A/B tests showed a material increase in conversions by offering both, but I would drop PayPal in a heartbeat if I could. Stripe is a joy to work with.

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Les Brown
Developer at Blue Sky iSolutions · | 5 upvotes · 46.7K views
Recommends
on
PayPalPayPal

I prefer Stripe for developers' ease of integration and PayPal for providing the simplest user experience (i.e., improved revenue.) In my experience, neither platform requires a user register to pay via credit card. However, as noted, many people have a PayPal account, which allows quick and easy payments through a "more" trusted name.

I used Stripe and Paypal and settled on Paypal for the customer. However, the PayPal web hook back end is a complete mess (at least in PHP). Unless they have improved very recently, PayPal web hook integration is poorly documented and barely supported with bits and pieces of important code on GitHub and elsewhere. I can't speak for other languages. But given the popularity of Paypal (i.e., improved revenue), I decided to keep using Paypal after I got the web hook integration worked out.

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Pamela Pierce
President at Learn About Green LLC · | 2 upvotes · 42.6K views
Recommends
on
PayPalPayPalStripeStripe

Stripe is strong because of their security. It is difficult for the programmer to install it, and in my case was impossible since my hosting provider did not have up-to-date software that it requires. I had to use another program on top of it as the shopping cart instead of using Stripe's shopping cart. But Stripe integrates with everything if you can get it to install, and is stable.

The big reason to go with PayPal is the 6 months same as cash or multiple payments over weeks for your clients. Some clients need this and you will lose them without PayPal. PayPal may change their policies, so in my opinion, PayPal is not as stable as Stripe. Some clients refuse or can't use PayPal, where Stripe is available to everyone with a credit card.

In summary, I set up both for my clients. And I used Zoho for everything else - shopping cart, accounting, CRM, banking, etc. It integrates with both Stripe and PayPal and pretty much anything else you use.

Be sure to read the Terms of both Stripe and PayPal, and I think that will help you with your decision.

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Decisions about Stripe and Stripe Billing
Lucas Litton
Founder & CEO at Macombey · | 4 upvotes · 260.1K views

We use GoCardless to simplify the way clients and partners pay for our services. What intrigued us is the quick and easy ACH feature that gives our clients the option to log in with their bank account and shoot the funds directly to our account. The fee, compared to Stripe is less. Stripe and PayPal charge 2.9% + 30c and Stripe also forces the client to enter in all of their payment details manually and then if the payment doesn't work, the client has to try all over again. GoCardless charges 1% + 25c which is much more reasonable dealing with the large projects that we are currently working on.

We integrate GoCardless with Xero to easily send out quick invoices, receive the funds and track all revenue in one place.

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With COVID-19 looming over us, businesses are, more than ever, looking for ways to set up online payments.

And having recently gone through implementing both Stripe and GoCardless to get monthly subscriptions set up and automated on my company website, I felt there was no better time to write this blog post!

If you're currently looking at working with a Payment Gateway provider API, or you're currently working with one but are not a fan, are looking to automate things a bit more, or are just generally thinking about changing, then you should have a read of my latest blog post where I compare Stripe and GoCardless.

I compare APIs in depth, specifically the subscription checkout flow that both offer (they're very similar, with some BIG differences).

There are plenty of code examples on how to set it up in a Node.js environment and right at the end, I rate each API based on the following factors:

  • API ease of use
  • API documentation
  • Payment pages
  • Costs / fees
  • Security
  • Developer appeal
  • Customer experience
  • Free Trial

So feel free to check it out, and I hope you like it. Please leave any feedback as it is very helpful. Thanks!

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Stripe was made with developers in mind first so the extensibility of it is great! This makes it very easy for us to integrate and automate as much as we need with its APIs and SDK. It allows a lot of customization of exactly what we need to build our applications. They also manage all of our customers from a tax and accounting perspective which makes it easy from a business standpoint.

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Pros of Stripe
Pros of Stripe Billing
  • 302
    Easy setup
  • 292
    Developer friendly
  • 248
    Well-designed api
  • 191
    Great documentation
  • 169
    Clear pricing
  • 75
    Secure
  • 74
    Reliable
  • 63
    Full integration with webhooks
  • 43
    Amazing api
  • 38
    Great customer support
  • 11
    Easy
  • 6
    Credit cards never hit your server - no pci worries
  • 5
    Recurring billing
  • 4
    No merchant account/gateway required
  • 3
    BitCoin
  • 3
    Easy to integrate
  • 2
    Support for SCA (Strong Customer Authentication)
  • 2
    Fast UI
  • 2
    Great app
  • 1
    Payments without own backend (using Stripe Products)
  • 1
    Connect
  • 1
    Checkout.js
  • 1
    Great UI
  • 1
    So easy to use
  • 1
    Beautiful
    Be the first to leave a pro

    Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

    Cons of Stripe
    Cons of Stripe Billing
    • 4
      Connect
    • 2
      CANNOT withdraw USD to a Canadian Bank Account
    • 2
      Does NOT have a currency conversion option like Paypal
    • 2
      They keep 25% of the income for 60 days
      Be the first to leave a con

      Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

      What is Stripe?

      Stripe makes it easy for developers to accept credit cards on the web.

      What is Stripe Billing?

      A set of billing and subscription tools for developers and business people. Developers can use out-of-the-box functionality to get started quickly or use the composable API building blocks to design fully customized subscription logic and pricing models. Business people can create and manage subscriptions and invoices—and view detailed financial reports.

      Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

      What companies use Stripe?
      What companies use Stripe Billing?
      See which teams inside your own company are using Stripe or Stripe Billing.
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      What tools integrate with Stripe?
      What tools integrate with Stripe Billing?

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      What are some alternatives to Stripe and Stripe Billing?
      Braintree
      Braintree replaces traditional payment gateways and merchant accounts. From one touch payments, to mobile SDKs and international sales, we provide everything you need to start accepting payments today.
      PayPal
      PayPal is an online payments and money transfer service that allows you to send money via email, phone, text message or Skype. They offer products to both individuals and businesses alike, including online vendors, auction sites and corporate users. PayPal connects effortlessly to bank accounts and credit cards. PayPal Mobile is one of PayPal’s newest products. It allows you to send payments by text message or by using PayPal’s mobile browser.
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      Recurly
      Recurly is the leading pay-as-you-go recurring billing service because setup is easy, integrations are quick, and our service grows with the needs of your business.
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      Shopify powers tens of thousands of online retailers including General Electric, Amnesty International, CrossFit, Tesla Motors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Foo Fighters, GitHub, and more. Our platform allows users to easily and quickly create their own online store without all the technical work involved in developing their own website, or the huge expense of having someone else build it. Shopify lets merchants manage all aspects of their shops: uploading products, changing the design, accepting credit card orders, and viewing their incoming orders and completed transactions.
      See all alternatives