Since we entered private beta, one of the most requested features has been PayPal merchant services support. PayPal’s Website Payments products ease the pain of finding a gateway and merchant account, making it simple to start charging customer cards.
This week, we introduced support for PayPal Website Payments Pro in the United States. Next week, we will add support for PayPal accounts in Canada and the United Kingdom. We also plan to support PayPal Payflow Pro in the near future.
As a developer, I tend to like clean, concise URLs that map directly to my RESTful resources. Want to view a subscription?
GET /subscriptions/77
Want to edit it?
GET /subscriptions/77/edit
The URLs for Chargify hosted pages followed this convention. Updating credit card details loosely maps to editing the subscription to change the payment information. So, we had:
GET /h/subscriptions/77/edit/abcdef0123abcdef0123abcdef0123abcdef0123
With the ‘h’ part meaning our “hosted” namespace, and the gibberish at the end being a secret token.
Now, if I were a layperson, and IF I happened to glance at the URL for the page I was about to enter my credit card on, which one of the following would be more likely to give me warm fuzzies?
We’ve just released a new feature that allows you to add “components” to your products which your customers can purchase and be charged according to the quantity chosen. This is great for offering things like the following to your products:
What the heck are components?
We’ve built a new framework that is going to give you a lot of flexibility in defining your products, and we’re calling these “components”. If you think of the traditional “product matrix” you used to see on most websites selling a service, you would usually see their plans (or products) in the columns and row after row of optional and included things. Well, in Chargify these “things” are called “components” - they are the building blocks of your products that you use to add options, upgrades, and add-ons to enhance your offerings.
The following simplified graphic shows what I’m talking about.
Chargify is officially entering into public beta today, and we couldn’t be more excited!
Having originally launched at the TechCrunch50 Conference (http://techcrunch50.com) in San Francisco, CA on September 14th, 2009, we’ve been steadily growing our beta list this past 6 months while making numerous improvements and adding new features.
Some highlights/ improvements include:
The team here at Chargify has been hard at work on a bunch of new features. We just flipped the switch on two of these: Prorated Upgrades/Downgrades and Metered Components.
Metered Components
Metered Components give Sellers the ability to charge for a product on a per-usage basis. For example, a cell phone provider could charge $1 for each text message that was sent, or a Web Hosting company could charge for storage by the number of gigabytes used. Creating metered components is quick and easy. Simply give the component a name, specify the unit used to measure it, and give it a per unit price. Usage of metered components is tallied throughout the billing cycle and the charge is seamlessly integrated as a line item on the Customer’s next invoice.
For more information on how to create Metered Components, and how to record usage via the API, see:
We’ve been working hard over the last few months on releasing new features for Chargify, and have been excited with what we’ve been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. And along with the performance and feature set of the application, we want to make sure Chargify looks as good as it works. So this week we’re rolling out the first in a series of user interface design updates that will continue to make Chargify a pleasant and beautiful environment in which to work.
We released several new features for Chargify this week that definitely deserve mention.
Multi-Site Support
Before, when you created a Chargify account, you were given 2 “sites”: 1) your “live” account and 2) your “test” account. This structure was somewhat limiting, both for us and our customers. We re-architected how Sites (now with a big “S”) work, and now, you can create as many Sites as you want, and you can move them in and out of test mode.
Each Site has its own Customers, Subscriptions, and Settings. This means each site configures its own:
This also opens us up to support other sorts of things in the future that aren’t compatible when you only have 1 production site… like multiple currencies. (We haven’t committed to a roadmap for multi-currency, but we do know the need is there and we want to make sure we’re ready).
Last week was a great week at Chargify. The team is normally spread out across the USA, but last week we all worked together in Sacramento, CA.
Two exciting and useful developments happened over the weekend:
Welcome to the Bullring, the blog dedicated entirely to empowering entrepreneurs and developers to start and run successful businesses based on recurring revenue models.
Let’s lay it out there. Recurring billing is a pain in the ass. Credit cards get declined for a million different reasons, you have to deal with upgrades/downgrades, proration, refunds, credits, customer communication, fraudulent transactions, and the list goes on. It’s no small task to implement a system that handles all of the potential pitfalls of billing on a recurring basis.
