Stripe best practice question for subscription + variable fees?

underhill.dan · 2021-02-07T21:33:59.970Z

Hi there,

I’m beginning to implement Stripe into our app. I would like some feedback from users who have more experience with Stripe. The Stripe plug in (Bubble’s native) seems pretty straightforward, but my billing requires a few things and I’d like to know how you would recommend proceeding.

All of my clients are first and foremost on fixed subscription plans. Either 1) Monthly, 2) Annually or 3) Lifetime (one time payment). Setting that up seems pretty straightforward.

In addition to each client’s subscription, they are charged a granular amount depending upon how much data storage space they utilize on our server, along with other variables. This amount is easily calculated on our end, but it’s going to vary from client to client.

For example, all Monthly subscriptions are charged $29.97 base amount, PLUS maybe $3.62 in addition for Client A. Client B maybe gets a surcharge of $5.88 and so on.

MY QUESTION: Is it better to set up a workflow that manually bills them a one-off payment at each recurring interval that includes the Base price + the additional charges?

It seems to me with Stripe I have two choices, I can set up a recurring subscription, or a one-off payment.

If I create a subscription, is that recurrence triggered on Stripe’s end, and do I not have to do anything about it in my app? I assume so. In this case, can I still add the monthly fees to the bill? OR…

Should I create a workflow that checks if it’s time to run the charge, and create a one-off charge that totals everything up and then have my app submit it to Stripe automatically.

Maybe there are other options for this situation that I’m unaware of, but any input and advice is appreciated.

Thanks

nocodeventure · 2021-02-07T21:46:53.457Z

I’m using Zeroqode’s marketplace plugin to add a card to new customers. From there I have my own seperate API calls to charge my users on their usage period.