So much this. When I started Leavetrack[1] in 2011, it was so difficult to get setup for recurring payments. I was using Chargify to handle the recurring payments/credit card storage, a company in New Zealand (I am in the UK) to handle the interface to my merchant account in the UK. Total costs:
- c. US$40 per month for Chargify (which kept increasing)
- £20 per month for the payment gateway
- £25 per month + transaction fee for merchant account
So happy when Stripe landed in the UK and I could migrate to a flat fee per transaction which scaled with me. Migrating is hard as you need customers to re-enter card details but an offer of reducing their monthly subscription due to savings in processing costs helped that process. :)
Re: migrating customers: I just grandfathered all paying customers to a perpetual free plan. Weren't that many of them. Sadly that app never gained traction. You'd think reliable up/down monitoring of unlimited servers at $4/month would be a good deal.
We can work directly with your previous payments provider to import card details directly, which helps take the burden off when migrating (and keep things PCI-compliant ;) ).
- c. US$40 per month for Chargify (which kept increasing) - £20 per month for the payment gateway - £25 per month + transaction fee for merchant account
So happy when Stripe landed in the UK and I could migrate to a flat fee per transaction which scaled with me. Migrating is hard as you need customers to re-enter card details but an offer of reducing their monthly subscription due to savings in processing costs helped that process. :)
[1] https://leavetrackapp.com/