Why did we switch from Braintree to Stripe?
deekit.comFor one of my clients we had to recently choose between Stripe & Braintree. Although I was really pushing Stripe for the reasons outlined in this blog post, management eventually went with Braintree.
The reason for this is that Stripe had no phone number, and no way to contact them other than via their support channels, where I found response times to be very slow (perhaps this has changed in the past years?). With Braintree we have a rep who we can call at anytime who is very responsive.
Really for my boss it just came down to who had a phone number. I'm surprised that Stripe is lacking in this department, you would think that a company who wants you to trust them with all your payments would at least give you a way to talk to an actual human.
We've been testing phone support, and we're working to roll it out very soon.
Last week, we expanded live chat availability, and it's now available 24 hours, Monday through Friday.
That's awesome! Can't wait to hopefully give you guys a try in the future :)
At my company we use Stripe, and we have a rep that (I believe?) we have a direct line to. We started using them ~ 18 months ago, so maybe something has changed recently, but from my PM's perspective I think they have been quite responsive.
That's great to know for the future, i'll definitely keep that in mind going forward. I dug back and some of my last correspondence with them includes:
>However, we do not offer proactive phone support for self-serve users who have integrated and whose questions do not require an immediate call. For further context, a large portion of our users are self-serve, and the majority of their questions are effectively handled via email since we're able to include helpful documentation and a detailed explanation.
To be fair, I can see Stripe's problem, they don't want their phone lines clogged by some 'web dev' who pastes together Javascript asking how to init the payment fields, but it's hard to know what is a real question and what isn't.
That being said, I do think that Braintree ended up working better for us in the end due to the need for people in the financial department to create and edit various recurring plans. Looking forward to hopefully using Stripe with other clients someday!
Good info, thanks.
We are a decent sized company now, so maybe that's why we have a rep. I'd be surprised if Braintree offers reps to every 1 man start up though. From a scale perspective doesn't really make sense, and yeah you'd get plenty of 'web devs' that are stitching together some code they don't understand and then asking stripe why it doesn't work...
As far as I can tell, they really do offer phone support to every 1 man startup. I've dealt with them on behalf of both higher and lower-volume clients, and in all cases their support was available via phone and very helpful. And they list the phone number very publicly on their contact page.
I agree with you, I don't think Braintree offers reps to any small 1 person company, but we are mid sized and clear a fair amount of payments each month which is why I think we have a rep
Oh this is one of those moments where Patio11 would say "phone support is available on our enterprise plan" then charge enterprises many times the same cost on a normal plan.
> pro-rata pricing wasn’t a thing
That's not true. We use Braintree for almost the same per-seat model described in the article and we pro-rate changes to the subscription mid-cycle using Braintree's "pro-rate on upgrades/downgrades" options.
Ref docs: https://articles.braintreepayments.com/guides/recurring-bill...
Funny, I just moved https://www.castingcall.club from Stripe to Braintree. I find Stripe to be superior, but the users wanted subscription Paypal payments rather than using credit cards. Having it in one place made sense.
Follow the users.
I'm a huge fan of PayPals subscription payments personally. :}
Yeah, but then you have to use Paypal.
I'm confused. We've been Braintree customers for 6+ years now and they provide both "pro-rata pricing" and "discount model" based on more than time. I can provide screenshots that show both features for subscriptions and transactions. So confused right now.
Reading this article I thought the same thing. The reasons they decided to switch sounds like just a lack of understanding the the Braintree offerings. The title should be titled "We switched because Stripe's documentation was better and we didn't want to learn Braintree's"
Yep! As we mentioned in the article, it was poor scoping from our part which we 100% own up to. Equally though after pushing on with Stripe after the transition we have found it way more suited to our particular needs.
That's not to say Braintree wouldn't work for others. As we stated, it's an awesome solution and we couldn't fault their support at all.
Great write up with drawing comparisons between the two. I've looked into Braintree as I have some colleagues that work there (Easy tech support channel) and the Ignition program (first $50k transaction fees waived) seemed like a no brainer for lean startup implementation. Had no issues with the node API and the documentation was very helpful.
That being said, I've seen nothing but praise for Stripe payments. The dev and design team are very solid and supposedly have great documentation as well.
I wonder, since Braintree is owned by PayPal, if companies have experienced the same pain points with getting locked out of funds for arbitrary reasons on that platform, or if Braintree is completely agnostic to PayPals TOS.
Braintree stripe and PayPal all have similar reserve policies.
You don't hear about people getting upset with Braintree (or Stripe) because when someone integrates with Braintree they're aware they're making a business decision and they read the contract, and have probably looked into getting their own merchant account and have an idea of the lay of the land.
You do hear about people getting upset with PayPal because it's "laymen" who click through everything without reading, and they don't often understand the concept of a reserve at all, let alone the idea that a product delivered in the future increases the risk to the payment processor. Or the myriad other product/circumstance combinations that increase processor risk
> concept of a reserve
Can you please explain what it is?
From the stripe TOS:
> All funds resulting from Charges are held in pooled clearing accounts (the “Clearing Accounts”) with our Financial Services Partners. We will make Transfers to and from the Clearing Accounts in the manner described in this Agreement; however, you have no rights to the Clearing Accounts or to any funds held in the Clearing Accounts, you are not entitled to draw funds from the Clearing Accounts, and you will not receive interest from funds maintained in the Clearing Accounts.
> In certain circumstances, we may require you to place funds in reserve or to impose conditions on the release of funds (each a “Reserve”). We may impose a Reserve on you for any reason if we determine that the risk of loss to Stripe, Customers, or others associated with your Stripe Account is higher than normal. For example, we may hold a Reserve if: (i) your or your Customers’ activities increase the risk of loss to us or to your Customers, (ii) you have violated or are likely to violate this Agreement, and (iii) your Stripe Account has an elevated or abnormally high number of Disputes. If we impose a Reserve, we will establish the terms of the Reserve and provide you Notice of the amount, timing, and conditions upon which the funds in the Reserve will be released to you. In many cases, the Reserve amount will be the entire amount of Charges processed using the Payment Services. We may change or condition the terms of the Reserve based on our continuous assessment and understanding of the risks associated with your Stripe Account, if required to do so by Financial Services Providers, or for any other reason. We may fund the Reserve with funds processed through your use of Payment Services, by debiting the Payout Account or another bank account associated with your Stripe Account, or by requesting funds directly from you.
> To the extent possible, we prefer to identify the necessity for a Reserve in advance of establishing one. If you are concerned that we will impose a Reserve on you due to the nature of your business activities, please contact us before using the Services.
We moved from Auth.NET to Braintree, but not in the traditional sense. We use our own merchant account with Braintree's API, something that not many people know is even possible.
Braintree's one-iframe-per-field integration is a beautiful thing. It gives us ultimate flexibility in formatting, bypasses a lot of PCI-DSS compliancy issue, and avoids the impression that the customer is leaving our website to enter payment info.
But we don't have to deal with subscriptions, so ours is a completely different problem space than the article.
> We use our own merchant account with Braintree's API, something that not many people know is even possible.
Could you elaborate on this?
The advantage here is with your own merchant account the fees can be significantly better. Also you get paid typically much faster with settlements happening daily instead of weekly. Assuming stripe PayPal still hold the funds in their banks longer? Before the PayPal acquisition of Braintree it was much more like authorize.net in that it was just a gateway for processing credit cards. Not being a bank account like PayPal and stripe.
There is an advantage to having your processor be both an account and a gateway in that you need only one relationship and it's much easier to get started.
Ah I see, Thanks for the info!
We just moved from Braintree to Stripe (they changed their relationship with Adyen and gave us ~ 6 weeks to re-sign with their new merchant provider or move away). We do all our recurring payments on Chargebee, so it was pretty painless when we eventually got the vaulted details securely moved out of Braintree.
I'm looking at using Adyen. Why do you need to use Stripe as well?
Halfway through the article I got a huge popup with a button "Create your whiteboard". When I clicked it, I ended up on a 404 page - https://www.deekit.com/braintree-to-stripe/https
Thanks for letting us know 0x0! I've got that disabled now.
The only advantage Braintree has is Paypal support.
I haven't checked on Braintree lately, but the few times I've had to talk to the Braintree support or sales team, they've been very unhelpful.
If your business is not the size of AirBnb they make it clear they don't really care about having you as a customer. And that's even if you process a few millions a year.
If you're outside the US, have fun signing up and jumping through hoops. If you're building a marketplace, your users will have to jump through the same hoops just to start accepting payments.
While Stripe isn't perfect either, they are a lot friendlier and helpful when you speak with them. They also have Stripe Connect and self-signup which makes it much easier to build a marketplace.
I'd rather use Stripe for credit card processing, even if that means dealing with Paypal's bottom of the barrel APIs directly to add Paypal payments. That's how bad Braintree support is.
Maybe they've gotten better and this is out of date, but based on past experience, I don't really care to find out.
I truly do not trust Braintree as a secure payment service.
As a company, they host an asinine number of public events at their 100+ person meeting hall at Chicago's Merchandise Mart. To get to that hall, you have to walk about 200ft past all of their workstations and meeting rooms. Infrastructure diagrams and unlocked workstations are pretty much everywhere.
Sure, they do a few things to mitigate the risks of people who come in by requiring sign-ins and presumably cameras everywhere, but it still feels very surreal to be a few meters away from having potential access to a large payment processor's infrastructure. I've seen at least one person there who was very clearly using a burner laptop.
As an employee, how is walking away from your computer without locking it even remotely accessible? Granted most of my experience is healthcare and government but I've worked placed where leaving your computer open and unlocked if you were more than an arm's length away from it was a fire-able offense. I'm not saying that's an appropriate response, but come on... it's downright negligent, especially if you're dealing with anything even remotely sensitive.
By all means, lock your machine when you walk away from it. Just don't pretend that would provide any protection against strangers walking through your office for even a few seconds.
Here's a USB dongle that's actually a key-logger with 2GB of storage and WiFi offloading for about $150 bucks available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Wi-Fi-Premium-Hardware-Keylogger-comp...
Options as cheap as $50 are available if you're willing to accept less storage and risk a second physical contact to recover your device (no WiFi).
I lock my computer habitually even if I'm just walking over to a co-workers desk. I find it funny though, because I was forced into this habit from my days in school where leaving your computer open/unlocked meant coming back to all sorts of pranks.
Same here. Great way to learn the importance of basic security habits.
As someone starting out (and still learning) what may be the recommended way of going about this?
I can't seem to find a payment processor that I trust to send payments to Central America (from the few I have seen - Braintree and stripe don't). There are a few caveats to this, unfortunately. My plan is to do all the legal work through the e-Estonia program but can't get started since I would need to fly out to pick up the identification card. Cash which will need to be generated through the business first.
Once that is set up it will be easier to get a payment processor (stripe, please add Estonia to your list first chance you get).
I'm wondering if it is sensible to accept payments online, generate some cash, start the e-Estonia process to have a legal business. But, I'm still stuck as to which processor to use to send the payments to to a personal account in Central America. Last I checked, I can't use paypal since that is a U.S only option. In either case, besides wondering which processor I could use, is this a sensible plan?
Another vote for Stripe supporting Estonia. As for e-residency, I believe you can also pick up the card at your local embassy.
Just double checked. There are only three pick up locations on this side of the world and they are all in the U.S.
There's an embassy/consulate in Ottawa. Also the ambassador travels and you can pick them up when they travel.
Check with your local embassy/consulate and ask about their travel schedule.
NB: I too would like to see Stripe support Estonia. They've been dragging their feet long enough that "soon" is now feeling like an insult.
If you can afford the trip, open a company in Ireland (supported by Stripe) where taxes are much lower than the U.S.
I chose Braintree over Stripe for my application. Want to know why? Because Stripe doesn't want to do business with me. Stripe only operates in a limited number of countries. Until they decide to actually allow me to use them, articles like these are, well, amusing I guess.
"doesn't want to do business with me" is a bit much. I'm sure they'd love to do business with as many companies as possible, but finance is one of the most regulated industries in most countries; it's not trivial to enter new markets.
Perhaps it isn't trivial, but somehow Braintree does service me and Stripe does not. It has been like that for many years now, so I can only assume it is not a priority for Stripe, hence "doesn't want to do business with me".
Braintree has built in PayPal support which is a big advantage compared to Stripe. This can be very strong argument if your employer already has a business relationship with PayPal as then legal work can be worked out faster as Braintree is a PayPal company.
But as a developer I also prefer Stripe because they have better API and SDK libraries.
Also subscription model is better in Stripe. You can create plans dynamically. With Braintree the API doesn't allow you to create new plans on the fly. Existing subscriptions cannot be upgraded/downgraded between different plans.
Also Braintree sandbox has been very flaky from my experience. In 3 months they have had several downtimes which slowed down development a bit.
> Also subscription model is better in Stripe. You can create plans dynamically. With Braintree the API doesn't allow you to create new plans on the fly
I believe you may be incorrect about this[0]
[0]: https://developers.braintreepayments.com/reference/request/s...
The "planId" in the request must be manually created in the dashboard. There is no API way to dynamically create a plan which you haven't hardcoded manually in the console in advance.
This makes automated deployment a bit more annoying with Braintree as it involves more manual fiddling with the console. With Stripe this can be part of the code so your business logic creates a plan if it doesn't exist, similar to upserts in SQL.
I stand corrected, thanks! I can definitely see that this increases friction and working with APIs that truly support everything is much more ideal.
Billing is far more complex than people tend to believe, and much more so with subscriptions. As your pricing plans become more convoluted with discounting, optional add-ons and conditionals it becomes hard not just to bill, but also to keep track of activities, ordering, and reporting. In this case it's easier to implement your own charging system, and leverage it using an external billing API (Stripe, Braintree...) that hosts your customer's payment methods.
Or use something like Kill Bill. It has plugins for many different billing providers.
Nice. never knew about this.
I am making the same decision right now. Unfortunately Stripe is not an option because they don't support Poland :(
Hey, check out https://www.mondido.com/en/ that support Poland 🇵🇱
You're in a pretty good spot if your choice is between Braintree and Stripe.
Some of us are still stuck with stagnant vendors like Beanstream/Bambora/Moneris that seem to have missed the last 15 years of developments in the web space.
The title seems needlessly editorialized. (I have no problem with the word 'fuck', but the title of the page is "Why did we switch from Braintree to Stripe?")
Yes, we changed it from “We fucked up: why we had to switch from Braintree to Stripe”. This breaks the guidelines and is the sort of blatant clickbait that's seriously disrespectful of the community, especially when promoting one's own stuff.
I hope the mods change it
My fault there. Noted for next time. :-)
Granted I'm not running a business so what do I know, but their reasons for making the decisions they made seem very flighty and not well considered.
Off topic, but yet another startup where the main page (which is actually labelled "Product"!!!) is blank and doesn't tell you anything about the product.
How? It's pretty clear that it's a white board for teams. There's a screenshot of the product on an iPad and several other screenshots that give an acceptable (if not great) idea of what it does.