Do any of these companies have a process in place to transfer your customers to another provider?

My concern is that most of these companies really lock you in.

You probably don't have your customers CC numbers yourself. The billing services archive this information in an encrypted and compliant manner, so you don't have to. But when the day comes, that you want to take your 20,000 customers and go to another billing service, you need that database. Do any of these companies explicitly address this issue?

Chargify requires that you have an Authorize.net merchant account. I'm assuming that means they're just acting as a wrapper for the Authorize.net API (which sucks), and if you ditched them, you'd still have all your customers on your Authorize.net account.

Some clarification from all of these companies would be much appreciated.

Does anyone know of payment gateways that work with merchants outside the U.S.?

We are based in Israel and are going to launch a subscription based web app soon.

Right now it looks like the only option is to use Google checkout/ Paypal (the basic plan). Both of these send the customer off site and this makes for a slow user experience.

I'm using Spreedly; they have a Kickstart program going on which freezes fees at the lesser of 1%/10¢ per transaction, and no monthly fee.

If my math is correct, that makes it cheaper than all except Cheddargetter until 50,000 customers.

If I'm not mistaken, the kickstart is a limited offer and costs you $699 up front. That's difficult to swallow for most bootstrapped startups.

I don't really understand the benefits of Chargify versus using Authorize's Automated Recurring Billing. Authorize's ARB is only $20 a month, no matter how many customers you have. If one needs an Authorize account to use Chargify why wouldn't I just use Authorize's solution?

I had intended to use PayPal's Subscriptions and Recurring Payments option. I had some concerns that there was a slight stigma with using PayPal, (unprofessional), but I feel that, perhaps that stigma has faded the last few years.

[as an aside, I've been using Amazon DevPay, and I feel that it's weirding too many people out. Too different from what they're used to]

Any thoughts on why to use these services rather than PayPal?

Some of those companies are actually based on the new PayPal X.

We used PayPal's Recurring Payments for http://www.placevine.com and it has been an absolute nightmare. Charges get declined for seemingly random reasons, the management console is riddled with bugs, and support has been useless.

I highly recommend using Braintree (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/). I've worked with them as the payment processor for http://www.parkwhiz.com for 3 years and they've been fantastic.

What's the advantage of using one of these api's over the api of say the gateway directly like authorize.net? Is it the fact that they are adding more value into the api and making it into more of a framework for managing members?

What are the advantages to using any of these over the PayPal Direct Payment API? https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_dcc_hub-outside

I haven't spent much time looking at PayPal's API, but it looks like that more of a competitor to something like braintree or authorize.net. It's just for processing the payment, right? The services I'm looking at here manage the entire subscription process. Essentially, you're outsourcing your billing system to them so that you don't have to think about things like dealing with the dunning process or prorating the bill if the user upgrades their plan mid-month, etc.

We use www.billingcircle.com and are very happy with the service there. With their API we automatically charge overage fees on top of our monthly fees. Works great.

A friend had his PayPal account frozen for no reason. In my experience their API is terrible and it is a torture to use their test site.

Any feedback on braintree? I'm considering them for a new app.

Braintree is expensive when you're just getting started. Their API is nicer than authorize.net's API, but if you're using a service like Spreedly, it's Spreedly's API you'll be talking to, not Braintree's.

Great service and full PCI compliance. Watch out for monthly minimum and early termination fees. Not supported by any of the SaaS billing frontends yet (though Spreedly is willing to make it happen).

Is braintree willing to negotiate on these costs?

There was a discussion about that on HN that a while back. It sounds like the answer is "yes," but only to a point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598974

We're using them. Happy for two reasons: 1. Easy to use and 2. Very responsive and helpful as a company.

We've been with Braintree for two years, and are about to use them for a second startup. Big, big fan.