[HN Gopher] Stripe App Marketplace ___________________________________________________________________ Stripe App Marketplace Author : vladikoff Score : 195 points Date : 2022-05-24 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (marketplace.stripe.com) (TXT) w3m dump (marketplace.stripe.com) | orliesaurus wrote: | I was in the beta for this and it's been really cool to hack | around on this platform. Been working on making a read-write | stripe app to connect to an external CRM. To be honest the only | struggle I experienced is that sometimes the console of the | browser doesn't return the error and therefore it requires a | little digging to figure out what's going on that causes the app | to not render. | adithyasrin wrote: | Great to see a fair bit of apps already built. I also see apps | reading a lot of your sensitive data, so I'd wait to see how it | works out. | revorad wrote: | This looks cool. Took it for a spin but got stuck at this | confirmation message after running the create app command: | | _To continue, please accept Stripe Apps terms and conditions for | your account. Press Enter to open the browser or | visithttps://dashboard.stripe.com/apps/accept-terms (^C to quit) | | Waiting for confirmation..._ | | After waiting for a few minutes, it terminates with this: | | _please accept Stripe Apps terms and conditions before | proceeding_ | | I've already accepted the terms. | judge2020 wrote: | It states "Stripe Apps are coming in the next few weeks. | Explore the Marketplace, and get notified when an app is | available" so maybe it's just how they're gating access. | jmtulloss wrote: | The developer experience is live today though! The OP | encountered a bug, we're looking into it internally. | jmtulloss wrote: | Thanks for the report; we're tracking this on the public Github | repo for Stripe Apps: https://github.com/stripe/stripe- | apps/issues/608 | | You can follow that issue for updates (hopefully shortly!) and | if you have additional details to add, adding them there will | get them to the team directly. | | Thanks again and sorry for the launch day bumps :) | bspear wrote: | Is it just me or does Stripe ship something big every week | ultra_nick wrote: | Let's agree they do it frequently | elietoubi wrote: | [deleted] | anurag wrote: | We (Render) are a featured app in the marketplace [1]; the app | lets you run real time queries against your Stripe data in a | fully-managed PostgreSQL database that's always in sync. Happy to | answer questions about our experience building it! | | [1] https://marketplace.stripe.com/apps/render-sql | smotched wrote: | Not quite sure what this is solving, doesnt stripe already | allow you to query for data? | christophilus wrote: | Yes. Very slowly and inflexibly. | fidrelity wrote: | While the Stripe/Render integration looks interesting for our | latest startup, more than anything I just wanted to take a | moment and say 'Thank you' for building such a decent product. | sunjester wrote: | we need more of these comments please. | anurag wrote: | Much appreciated. I hope we can continue to help as you grow. | sl9dmk2 wrote: | Stripe always on a tear | therusskiy wrote: | Do they allow apps they extend Stripe's functionality but charge | for it? | tyingq wrote: | Seems so, | | _" Transparent and consistent pricing You must clearly state | your app pricing up front, without hidden costs or fees. App | pricing must also be consistent with off-marketplace prices."_ | | https://stripe.com/docs/stripe-apps/review-requirements#app-... | | Though I suppose Stripe is watching for apps doing things | Stripe should/could do itself as a real-time _" what would | people pay extra for?"_ list. | schnebbau wrote: | Yes but if you create something worthwhile they'll just copy it | and make you sad. | [deleted] | fumar wrote: | I am always pleasantly surprise by Stripe's output from Increment | to this marketplace. My spouse uses Stripe for two small | businesses and we haven't had any issues. I work in ad tech and I | point to Stripe's documentation as a great example of clear comms | and instructions. | lifeisstillgood wrote: | Ok - so asking the inevitable question - what is the one thing | Stripe does not provide that you want to build / have someone | build for you? | heipei wrote: | Using Stripe for B2B / Enterprise SaaS subscriptions. A few | things that would improve my life, though I suspect Stripe | might already working on a few of those: Easy | way to create a recurring subscription based on a one-off | price, currency and product description (just so this is still | recognised as recurring revenue). Recurring subscriptions | that automatically pause and remind me 30/60 days before | renewal so I can reach out to the customer and get a new | purchase order. Customer templates - Many customers | purchase through resellers, so having templates for different | resellers would accelerate the process to add new customers | with the same bill-to but different ship-to. Dashboard | with upcoming renewals for annual subscriptions. Saved | export settings (columns) for payouts, so I can export these | each month for my accountant. | | Yes, you can do all of those through the API, and I'm sure | Stripe will tackle these sooner rather than later, still, just | to give you an idea. | cyral wrote: | I really want a wrapper around the terrible in-app payment APIs | of Google and Apple. There are some companies doing this | (RevenueCat) but in my experience they are super buggy even to | this day, which sorta goes against the entire problem they are | trying to solve. The APIs that apple and google provide are a | mess and full of weird edge cases and hacks (like polling for | changes rather than webhooks), so a wrapper around it with | proper webhooks and a well designed API like Stripe's existing | products would be amazing. | jefago wrote: | Hey, RevenueCat Head of Product here. I'm sorry that you have | had a bad experience with RevenueCat - we definitely aim to | provide just what you outlined. Could you let me know what | kinds of bugs you experienced? We're doing our best to | abstract those messy APIs, and unfortunately some things are | outside our control, but if there are any issues we can fix, | we'll do our best to do that! | cyral wrote: | Hi, I have two tickets open which are really causing a lot | of issues for us: | | - Expiration webhooks are not always sent, so customers | keep their entitlement way after they should: Ticket 13919 | (although it's been spread across a few as it must close | them after a while or something) | | - A much more urgent issue I opened a couple weeks ago: | Customers that cancel and then re-subscribe for a trial at | some point in the future have no webhook sent at all. The | dashboard says their trial has started, so revenuecat knows | the trial exists, but no webhook event is actually sent for | it. This is causing a mess of customers who sign up but | don't get their entitlements and end up asking for a refund | or sending an angry email. Ticket 16016 | | - I've noticed a bunch of weird bugs, sometimes only | affecting one customer so I haven't opened a ticket, but it | just makes me question things. For exmaple, we implemented | trials in April but our dashboard shows trial signups and | conversions from last year. That is not possible, so I | question the accuracy of the trial stats as well. Another | issue from long ago was that the product_change event on | android commonly sends the wrong new product ID, so we just | have to ignore it. I was told this is a limitation of the | play store though, but it wasn't obvious from the docs back | then (not sure if it is fixed now). This makes it difficult | to reflect what plan a user switched to within the app, | since the product change event can't be trusted. Like most | of the issues, the RC dashboard shows it correctly, it is | just the webhook that is wrong (which is why I couldn't | understand the response that it is a play store bug, when | RC shows it right on their end but sends the wrong/old ID | in the webhook) Since android downgrades are immediate, the | initial_purchase that follows will actually set the correct | ID, so that is the workaround for now that I found. | (Hopefully I got that right, I'm reading the comments for | the workaround we added) | | I really want to see revenuecat work and succeed, because | it is a great idea and for the most part made implementing | subscriptions much easier, there are just a lot of edge | cases we keep running into. Support is also not the most | helpful, but I understand they are probably swamped. The | android bug I mentioned above, the solution was to just use | the RC api to fetch the status rather than using the | webhook. Why would the API return a different ID than the | webhook sent 50ms before? I'm not sure why there is such a | disconnect between webhooks and what the API/dashboard | returns. It would also be great if you could add a | dashboard for support tickets rather than having to use | email, it would keep things more organized, as I often need | to contact support directly because the community tech | support forum is a graveyard. I understand technical issues | should be directed there, but they often sit for weeks with | no response. Even with these issues I'd still recommend RC | in general though. If these issues are happening with a | company who's purpose is to handle them, I can't imagine | how difficult it would be to implement a subscription | system from scratch. | jeiting wrote: | Hi, RevenueCat CEO here. Thanks for sharing honestly. | | I dug into both tickets. A bunch of failures both in | product and process on our part. Going to dig in more. | cyral wrote: | Thanks for taking a look, I believe I sent you an email | about the first one actually since it had been months | without any updates. They did get on it and released a | fix soon after, but last I heard it was rolled back and | then (maybe?) re-applied. Unfortunately it is still | happening, but the second issue is much more urgent for | us right now. | jeiting wrote: | Ah! Right, yeah that was me kicking it back to the top of | the stack. IMO, these core issues are more important than | almost anything else we do, but I think we aren't as good | as we should be as making sure we are resourcing them | over the new and shiny things. | | I've made CEO-noise again and hopefully we can keep | pushing on these two. | markyc wrote: | merchant of record (like paddle) | lifeisstillgood wrote: | Afaik the merchant of record takes on the full liability, | cost of fraud etc. It's pretty rare is it not? | onphonenow wrote: | We do relatively lower volume of higher value ACH transactions | (ie, 20K/transaction). | | What's interesting is strip invoicing is pretty uncompetitive | here. | | Fee for sending one invoice is $100/invoice. For every 100 | invoices you are spending $10,000. | | OUCH!!! | | In other words, if someone was allowed to do an invoicing app in | this marketplace it might do ok for a group out there. A target | would be folks doing ACH payments (you need to cap per invoice | including payment fees at $10 to be competitive here I think). | | EDIT: Sorry, corrected to be $100/invoice from $500/invoice which | is still much higher than we see elsewhere to send out an | invoice. | 101008 wrote: | Sorry, question by someone who is not part of the USA (not even | Europe, if it's a common case in Europe too). Why would you | have to pay to send an invoice? It isn't just a PDF? Is there | an extra mechanism that I am missing? | stu2b50 wrote: | When people say "invoicing" in this context they generally | refer to both the PDF and the transfer of money per the | details on that PDF. How that money is transferred will incur | different costs. | 101008 wrote: | Ah got it. So you can send the invoice for free but if they | pay you then the fee will be deducted from that payment. | Thank you very much! | notyourday wrote: | Startup: (n) a weird entity that would risk $20/k customer | because $100 invoice is too much. | jmuguy wrote: | They charge 0.5% per invoice for the higher tier, so for 20k | that would be 100 bucks. Which is still excessive imo, but not | 500 bucks. | systemvoltage wrote: | Why is invoicing a percentage and not a flat fee? Does it | cost more to transact it? | antaviana wrote: | Pricing works best when aligning with value instead of | costs. In general you should also try to align your pricing | with value for better margins (especially if you are have a | monopoly condition). | | The rationale is that Stripe believe that a small | percentage will align better with customer acceptance of | pricing than a flat fee per invoice, which allows them to | capture more dollars from the relationship. | systemvoltage wrote: | I firmly believe that transaction fees (incl invoices, | etc) should be fundamentally a constant flat fee. Whoever | builds a competitor to Stripe will blow everyone away. | | The cost of transaction is the same. Customers are being | robbed in day light with % based transaction fees since | the dawn of time. | | This entire industry is begging for disruption. | lmeyerov wrote: | Until you want value-based fraud prevention layers like | insurance. Keeping fixed fee would knock that out of | alignment. But perhaps your point would be that should be | some sort of opt-in higher SLA tier so the transaction | layer fee is low but the insurance etc. add-on layers are | variable. | kasey_junk wrote: | Transaction costs are not the same price per transaction. | The major costs for most transactions are the risks | (credit, irr, fx etc) associated with it not the fixed | costs of infrastructure. | | Those costs go up with the value of the transaction. | systemvoltage wrote: | Good points, this was my oversight/ignorance. Surely it | is not 100% value-based costs? | kasey_junk wrote: | No. And you can do pricing that's flat if you are really | good at risk management but note that means the price for | smaller transactions begins to subsidize the big ones. | | See Atlantic Monthly vs Wise for different pricing types | in fx transactions as an example. | onphonenow wrote: | Sorry - correct - $100/invoice - which is really way way | above standard market for invoicing software. | | There is an additional payments fee that applies. | edwinwee wrote: | Yes, this math seems more accurate. And for businesses | sending _many_ high-dollar invoices, we have custom pricing. | (Get in touch at https://stripe.com/contact/sales or email | edwin@stripe.com.) | gkedzierski wrote: | But would you allow invoicing app into your app store? | onphonenow wrote: | That's really my question - I think there's room for a $5 | or $10 invoicing solution (ie, cap invoicing fee at $5 or | so). Maybe somewhat simplified. I'd like custom domain as | well of course. | systemvoltage wrote: | Every time I use any of these apps, there is always a nagging | sense of instability. I don't want to base my business | transactions that relies on a 3rd party Shopify app that fulfills | orders over a fragile API, run by one dude hanging out on the | beaches of Bali. | | Some of these may be very stable but this is always on the back | of my mind: "Is this going to work in 5 years?" | | If you ever want to witness horror, jump over to Shopify forums: | Zapier integrations gone wrong, unresponsive APIs, App owners not | responding, businesses adding free integration apps that were | last updated during the Obama administration, etc. | | While Stripe API and their core services are stable, none of this | inspires confidence. | costcofries wrote: | This is great, congrats on the launch, I love ecosystems! One | thing I'd really love to get Stripe's take on is how they are | thinking about utility of 3p apps within Stripe. For me, it's | much easier to work within the native app than to figure out how | to use that same app, with limited functionality, within Stripe. | xeeton wrote: | The "Build an App" link in the header 404s. Looks good otherwise! | edwinwee wrote: | Sign in to Stripe and it'll work. (Updating now to work when | you're not signed in too.) | jmtulloss wrote: | This works now! | possiblelion wrote: | Somewhat unrelated, but I've found it really difficult to stop a | recurring payment with Stripe. A company which has shut (website | down and email unresponsive) keeps trying to charge 299 bucks on | my card via stripe. No way to stop it either, if the client | website is down. | | Ripe for failed founders to exploit | edwinwee wrote: | Could you email me at edwin@stripe.com? Would like to see | what's going on here and stop the payments. (We stop recurring | payments when a business shuts down their Stripe account.) | sodality2 wrote: | What if a business does not shut down their Stripe account? | | My business uses Payment links and a customer asked to cancel | their subscription. Of course I canceled it but I stopped to | think what would happen if I was hit by a bus. Is there no | other option but a chargeback if a subscription does not have | a cancel option? | Jugurtha wrote: | Hi, Edwin. I'm in the process of integrating Stripe to | https://iko.ai. I recently discovered Portal | (https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/integrating- | cu...) and I thank you for that. Less code for me. | | I'm a bit ashamed to say, but I'm having trouble with | checking if the customer has a valid subscription. I'm | currently only storing the customer_id in the database and | retrieving the information from Stripe to have it as a single | source of truth and avoiding putting the Stripe info in our | database and having to make sure it's synced. | | On the other hand, I can't make a request to Stripe with | every request, so I'm thinking of memoization or something. | | I could find guides on how to accept payments and create | subscriptions which are trivial, but no examples on what | happens after that. | | Suppose I have an API with a single endpoint and set up a | subscription for a customer, how do I not hit the Stripe API | with every request to check if the subscription is still | alive without storing customer info in my database and having | to sync it (i.e: keep everything in Stripe)? | edwinwee wrote: | iko.ai looks neat! Our developers hang out in Discord | (https://stripe.com/go/developer-chat) -- this seems like a | good question you can chat with them live about. | Jugurtha wrote: | That's great, I'll definitely /dev/pay* a visit. | | Next question: Algeria is not covered by Stripe. Many | people here incorporate in the U.K or the U.S. just to | accept payments. | | How can I put a country on the map here: | https://stripe.com/global | | What conditions that, if satisfied, would enable someone | in Algeria to use Stripe directly? How can we make this | happen? | redshirtrob wrote: | I had this happen with a fraudulent charge once. To be clear, I | don't know that it was a recurring payment with Stripe, but the | behavior was similar. It took me about three years and a half | dozen new cards to finally kill it. | | At one point I asked the customer rep if there was any way to | rid myself of this nuisance other than completely closing my | account. She responded with the normal "that's your decision, | blah, blah, blah...", but I was legitimately asking, not | threatening. | | I think I said something like: "No, let me be clear: I don't | want to close the account. I just don't want to deal with this | every six months either. I'm seriously asking if this is the | only other recourse because it seems we've tried everything | else." | | It did get resolved eventually. It was also for a trivial | amount so nothing like what you're looking at. It was still | very annoying though. | upupandup wrote: | seems like a lot of YC IPO companies are struggling to keep their | share prices afloat and this seems like something to send more | paying customers to its network of YC backed businesses. | | ex) Docusign is down by at least 80% | ctvo wrote: | A lot to unpack here. | | 1. Stripe is a private company, it hasn't IPO'd. | | 2. YC was an early investor in Stripe, but as a late stage | company, Stripe has many, many stakeholders that are investors: | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/stripe/company_finan... | to think that they're beholden to YC and would make business | decisions for the sake of YC companies -- oof. | upupandup wrote: | Lot of the companies featured in the marketplace is what I'm | referring to I don't think its esoteric knowledge of those | points you listed. | | But I'm sure you been paying attention to the markets.... | ctvo wrote: | > Lot of the companies featured in the marketplace is what | I'm referring... | | This isn't actually what you said in your original post, | but sure, let's breakdown this too. Under "Featured apps" | there's Mailchimp, Dropbox, Google Drive, Bench Accounting, | Ramp, and Render. Dropbox is the only one I recognize as a | YC company. | | I pay attention to a lot of things. What do you pay | attention to? | upupandup wrote: | Do you work for YC? Why do you care so much? | ctvo wrote: | No, I don't work for YC. I do get value from this site | and would prefer it not be a cesspool of ignorant | conspiracy theories when possible. | upupandup wrote: | so its a conspiracy that Docusign is down 80% from ATH as | are many YC backed IPO stocks? | | Just open up a chart and have a go at the numerous | tickers YC is involved with. Are those stocks that you | would trust your life savings with and that its a | conspiracy that they are struggling with potential | problems to capital and liquidity? | | If you are going to simp for YC at least have skin in the | game | cschep wrote: | "...this seems like something to send more paying | customers to its network of YC backed businesses." | | Is a baseless conspiracy. Back it up with facts! If you | can, we're all here to listen. Accusing someone of being | a simp because they think your argument is baseless and | weak is not a great way to strengthen your argument. | xwdv wrote: | YC has no real clout anymore. | [deleted] | upupandup wrote: | careful you might get shadowbanned for that! | kache_ wrote: | So stripe is trying to emulate what made skyrim so successful? | Modding for Saas? Cool :) | shillalert wrote: | wdb wrote: | Looks nice but I can't find a Sketch template to help designing | the Apps only Figma seems to be available | orliesaurus wrote: | I think Figma is the de-facto in SV - I haven't heard of any | designer friends using Sketch since at least 2019 | throwaway110535 wrote: | So this is what happened to https://openchannel.io/ | tikkun wrote: | This was inevitable. | | App marketplaces are great all around. Great for users - more | functionality. Great for partners - easy access to | distribution/users. Great for the marketplace owner - improve | your product, while adding network effects that deepen your moat | against competitors. | [deleted] | onphonenow wrote: | The question is often how closely they let apps compete with | them. Ie, can I roll out a (cheaper) invoicing solution with | for example a $5/invoice cap. Quickbooks et al do allow this. | Some players do not like that. | DantesKite wrote: | If history is any indicator, Stripe can always Sherlock the | service and build a better native feature. | boringg wrote: | It's almost like any successful developer needs to develop | an app thats popular but not that popular and verging on | slightly more difficult so that the moat holder (in this | case Stripe) doesn't want to build it themselves. | Alternatively make something that catches fire really | quickly and sell very quickly before they can build it | themself. | FpUser wrote: | Welcome to capitalism. These are shark infested waters. | Either be a shark or learn how to swim safely ;) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-24 23:00 UTC)