Readit Newsgfloyd commented on Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations prosperstack.com/... · Posted by u/gfloyd
Great launch! This looks similar to www.raaft.io which has been around for a couple of years and supports Recurly in addition to Stripe. How do you differentiate?
I think we would have used something like this (instead of rolling our own) if it integrated with Chargify.
Thanks! I think the main differentiator is our deep integration with your Stripe data. The cancellation flow is obviously an important part of the equation, but ProsperStack can also give you insights into past cancellations, with the goal of being able to win back subscribers from before you integrated the flow into your app. We also want to make churn analytics a core part of the value prop.
We'd love to integrate with more payment providers, and Chargify is definitely on the list. If you'd be interested in helping us get a Chargify integration going, I'd love if you'd send me an email (address in profile)!
gfloyd commented on Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations prosperstack.com/... · Posted by u/gfloyd
gfloyd commented on Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations prosperstack.com/... · Posted by u/gfloyd
How does a flat $79/mo price make sense? Many small companies that could use this don't have that much worth of cancellations in a month assuming something like this will save them all. Medium-small and larger companies could justify paying much more than that. You need to have some kind of flexibility here. I'm thinking if you don't have more than $500 in monthly cancellations you would never be able to break even on something like this.
Honestly, it probably doesn't make sense long term! We wanted to get the product out the door with simple pricing to see how it works and adjust from there.
We're mostly worried about the sales cycle being too long with performance-based or scaling pricing, since none of the founders are trained salespeople. I'm realizing we're probably going to have to adjust that mindset and learn how to sell.
gfloyd commented on Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations prosperstack.com/... · Posted by u/gfloyd
Interesting product! Have had to implement this before and certainly would check it out next time.
Have you thought about pricing based on performance?
At the low end, it could be "pays for itself": A monthly fee of max($79, mrr_preserved_that_month). When the fee cancels out the preserved mrr, the customer still gets data features of the product for free. Thinking mostly of the indiehacker crowd here.
At the high end, I suppose you could flex up to something like a percentage of mrr recovered with a cap.
(Always find subscription pricing economics interesting, especially to learn how others do it.)
Yeah, we've definitely discussed a pricing strategy like that. For now, we're just trying to keep it super simple until we get more data on how people are using it.
I know that virtually no startup gets pricing correct right out of the gate, so I'm sure we'll be tweaking it!
gfloyd commented on Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations prosperstack.com/... · Posted by u/gfloyd
Congrats on launching. Very interesting. Does it support localization / customizing the look&feel? I couldn't work out if it's something that runs directly on our site, or we need to redirect to yours... I think some more documentation/info before you sign up for a trial can help give better confidence about what's involved and how it actually works (although the homepage is awesome and explains the value proposition super well).
Like others, I'm a bit on the fence about the ethical aspects of it. Yes, there's a lot to say about giving real value, listening to customers, but it does start going down the path towards darker patterns like Amazon Prime (there's a looong way to go down that path, but still feels like a step there). I'm not trying to criticize, but just voice my personal feeling around adding friction to cancellation.
The customization is limited right now (you can add your company logo, and customize the text for offers), since our initial focus was on getting the design and UX right. Localization and/or complete customization of the look and feel is definitely on the roadmap.
We'll get to work on adding some more documentation for sure, but the short answer is that it's a JavaScript widget that runs everything for you on your site. You can check out the technical docs on the NPM package here: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@prosperstack/flow
Thanks so much for the honest feedback. I definitely agree about steering away from dark patterns and adding friction to cancellation. We want the cancellation process to be super easy, and hope to try achieve a balance that actually benefits customers instead of trying to trap them into not leaving.
gfloyd commented on Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations prosperstack.com/... · Posted by u/gfloyd
Ha! What would be the counter measures?
I am thinking someone on Reddit posting a trick to save money on your sub.
Right now it's fairly basic: we recommend you offer a limited discount (for example, 30% off for three months) and by default a customer can only accept one offer for their lifetime. That would at least minimize most of the risk.
On the roadmap are plans to target offers based on segmented customer data (lifetime value, etc.) so even if you did try to follow a trick posted on Reddit, it might not work for you!
gfloyd commented on Show HN: ProsperStack – Use Stripe to automatically prevent cancellations prosperstack.com/... · Posted by u/gfloyd
Most of the subscription based saas products make easy money on inactive users who are okay losing money for prospect on using the tool in near future.
Even though that is easy money, saas companies should offer "inactive account maintenance" fees rather than full subscription fees, when the user starts using it, they could charge them full. This is win-win situation where user gets to keep the account for smaller fees and companies can retain more customers.
ProsperStack like tools can offer these by default.
This is exactly what one of our first customers is using ProsperStack for. They use it to offer an "on hold" option to maintain the account data in read-only mode at a lower price.
We do not and never will sell your Stripe data. We're not using any ML, so we're not training any models on your data.
We understand having access to your Stripe account comes with a lot of responsibility, and we're taking that seriously. I'd be more than happy to discuss security if you want to shoot me an email (address in profile).