The Blog of Spreedly.com - Home

Can You Have Too Many Subscribers?

2009-10-13T04:05:00Z

As clients using Spreedly grow their businesses they start hitting new challenges that Spreedly hasn’t had to handle yet. One of the recent ones has been the problem of an unmanageable number of subscribers: a great problem to have, but really annoying if you’re the one having to deal with it. Spreedly started out with a simple paginated list of subscribers that worked great for a few dozen entries but has really started to wear thin as clients have started accumulating hundreds of subscribers under active management.

We knew we had to do something about large numbers of subscribers lest we become the cause of the premature graying of our best clients. As usual we’ve chosen to iteratively attack the problem, starting with a straightforward search function that has so far proved super useful even in our own usage of Spreedly. We also show a list of the most recently touched subscribers so it’s easy to see at a glance what’s going on with signups. And of course the full paginated list is still available for flipping through customers a page at a time.

One of the things we love about building Spreedly is that every time we improve the platform it improves for everyone using it. In the bad old days when everyone managed their own billing, improvements like this took time away from the core app. Today, though, you get to come along for the ride as we work to make Spreedly a profit center for your business rather than the cost center that homegrown billing always is.

Enjoy subscriber searching, and keep the feedback coming – it’s key to our quest to build the best billing platform ever!

Ready to RUMBLE

2009-09-10T09:48:00Z

It was with great pleasure and anticipation that Spreedly sponsored the Rails Rumble this year, and we weren’t disappointed: there ended up being a mind-bogglingly amazing field of entries. With applications ranging from the fun Lazeroids (argh – just lost ten minutes!) to the useful hurl (might come in handy for poking at the Spreedly API!) the skills and creativity of the Ruby on Rails community were on front and center display.

As promised, the overall winning team, makers of the slick Hi, I’m “internet nametag” site, are now the proud owners of a Spreedly Kickstart. As with a lot of the other teams this year, they plan to continue on with the application and build it out into a full-fledged business, and we hope Spreedly helps with that. Making money tends to be an important factor in business success, so we’re betting it will!

In addition to the frontrunner, Spreedly also sponsored a special “Ready to Earn” category, and it’s my pleasure to announce that the winner is: Affiliapp! We laid out three criteria for winning the Ready to Earn prize:

a clear business model,
an application that offers real value, and
a working Spreedly integration

Affiliapp has all three of these in spades, but what really impressed us was that Affiliapp has double Spreedly integration. Not only does it manage its own subscriptions via Spreedly, it also allows a business using Spreedly to plug in their credentials and get tailored information based on Spreedly transaction data! Such extreme awesomeness simply couldn’t go unrewarded, so we’re going to be hooking the one-man team behind Affiliapp up with a Kickstart. We can’t wait to see how it continues to improve.

Congratulations to the Hi.im team, the Affiliapp team, and to all the other great competitors that made the Rails Rumble such a smashing success. We’re already looking forward to next year: what will you build?

Grace Periods

2009-09-01T04:06:00Z

A few weeks ago we rolled out an important tweak to how automatic renewals are handled in Spreedly. Previously, all renewals were run at least 24 hours before the subscription expired so that if there was an error there was some time to correct it before the subscription lapsed. For a long time this worked just fine, but there were some definite weaknesses with it, such as 24 hours being a really short amount of time within which to correct a problem.

As part of some other work that we were doing, we decided to go ahead and implement grace periods for renewals, which are a major improvement over the previous setup. With grace periods, we attempt a renewal less than 12 hours before the subscription expires. The key difference is that if the renewal fails, we allow continued access for the grace period (currently hard coded to three days) during which time the problem can be resolved and the subscription successfully renewed.

Features like grace periods are pretty mundane and low-level, so I hope I haven’t bored you too much. That said, it’s just another example of our ongoing quest here at Spreedly: to handle the grunt work of billing so you don’t have to. We want you spending your time making your product awesome, not on trying to get paid. We’ll navigate those waters so you don’t have to!

If you have any questions about grace periods don’t hesitate to drop a comment below or send us an email.

Spreedly & Startup Success

2009-08-26T02:37:00Z

Bob Walsh of the Startup Success Podcast was kind enough to invite me on the show recently, and the final version of our conversation went live a few days ago. Give it a listen if you haven’t already – I think some real gems came out in our discussion. As always when I do an interview like this, I had a blast talking Spreedly and business with Bob, and am super grateful to him for the invitation and the stimulating chat.

On a related note, be sure to check out the Startup Success Podcast archives for some other great topics and interviews. It’s obvious that Bob lives and breaths startups, and I know the topics he covers on the podcast and in his books are apropos to a lot of the businesses using Spreedly. Oh, and don’t miss out on Bob’s upcoming startup (which of course uses Spreedly!) – StartupToDo. It looks like a fantastic resource from someone with a ton of experience.

Thanks Bob – we’ll have to do it again in a year or two to see how things develop between now and then!

Web Courses Bangkok Interview

2009-08-17T14:02:00Z

I got the opportunity to do an interview with Carl over at Web Courses Bangkok. The discussion ended up being as much about my path to starting Spreedly as it was about Spreedly itself:

How did you get started working with the Web?

While I’d dabbled with it before, Rails really thrust me into the web scene, since I wanted to use Ruby and Rails was turning into Ruby’s killer app. At the same time it was becoming blatantly obvious that the web wasn’t just a different way of delivering applications, it was a fundamental game changer for what could be done, and I’m glad I got involved when I did.

Definitely give the whole interview a read, and thanks so much to Carl for making it happen!

The Lesson of the Delete Button

2009-08-15T05:35:00Z

As we’ve built Spreedly one thing we’ve tried to do at every turn is to stay focused on what’s really going to add value for our clients right now. Because of that focus we often put off “obvious” features until later – they just don’t add enough value yet. The “delete button” has been one of those features: we’d get the occasional request to delete a site from Spreedly but it was easier to handle it manually than to spend the time to make it accessible via the UI.

But: the requests have increased lately, and we’ve also seen a lot of Spreedly sites named “Delete Me 000”, so we decided it was finally time to knock out the feature. You can now leave any site you’re a member of:

If a test site is left without members, it will be immediately deleted. Production sites will be deleted 1 week after the last member leaves – the window is there so we can undo an accidental deletion. Of course, undo is currently manual, since there’s no point spending time on it until we’ve actually had to do it manually a few times.

The general lesson is: don’t add functionality just because it’s obvious, add it once you know it will get used. Sometimes you’ll need to experiment, but always do it in as minimal a fashion as possible – any time you spend on a feature that isn’t used is time taken from a feature that your customers could get value from immediately!

Callback Error Notifications

2009-08-08T03:59:00Z

One of the key aspects of how Spreedly works is our straightforward callback system. You can read the full details in the Integration Guide, but the short story is that whenever the state of one of your subscribers changes we call back into a url in your application and let you know so you can take appropriate action. This allows you to do everything from deactivating an expired subscriber to preventing a renewal from happening if you’re so inclined.

There’s one rough spot with the callback, though: if Spreedly can’t get in touch with you and let you know that subscribers are changing your application is going to quickly get out of sync with reality. This could mean your users pay for a new subscription but then not get access to it, or they might keep their access even once their subscription has expired. The tricky part is that it might take awhile for you to notice, probably not until one of your users emails you to complain that they can’t use what they just paid for.

Usually Spreedly not being able to notify your site is due to something simple, like a url you changed or a simple bug introduced in your last deploy. We’ll keep retrying until we get a 200 OK status code, doubling the time between retries every time the notification fails so that we don’t hammer your application too hard. We already let you know on your Spreedly site overview if we’re having trouble talking to your site:

But, at the excellent suggestion of a few of our clients, we realized there was something more we could do: Spreedly will now email you if we’re unable to notify your site for any reason. There are actually two emails: one that’s sent out the first time we can’t successfully notify you, and a second that’s sent out once the problem is resolved and we succeed at notifying you again.

Our hope is that this new error email will let you identify problems long before your customers notice, helping you retain business and be ever more successful at making money. If you have any concerns or questions about the new emails, just let us know in the comments below, via email, or on Get Satisfaction – we’d love to hear from you!

The Payments API

2009-08-03T16:17:00Z

One of the most important parts of Spreedly is how your customers interact with it when they buy a subscription from your site. Up until now, that interaction came in one flavor, we’ll call it vanilla:

While we’ve done a lot to make the payment pages neutral and keep the process simple, various businesses we’ve talked to have wanted more control. I mean, vanilla is great, but sometimes you just want chocolate, right? Well, we’ve heard those requests, and today I have the privilege of announcing that the recently launched Payments API allows Spreedly-powered sites to completely control their subscriber’s payment experience if they so choose.

How it Works

The new API allows you to create a flow like this:

As you can see, when using the Payments API your customers will stay on your site, and all communication with Spreedly will happen via API calls. Spreedly of course still takes care of all the details of subscription management including building an invoice for you to display, pro-rating customers, etc., but now you can own the display of all the info and create a completely custom experience. Read all about how it works over at the Integration Reference.

Caveats

There are a few important things to be aware of if you’re thinking of using the Payments API.

It is significantly more work to implement against, simply because you have to build out all the views and deal with a new set of API calls. For this reason our strong recommendation is that sites start out using the Spreedly-hosted payment flow, and only switch to the Payments API once they’re driving traffic and it makes sense to spend the time on it.
On a related note, using the Payments API means that your site will touch credit card data. This means that you will need an SSL certificate and will have to pay close attention to security to make sure customer’s payment information is protected. Thankfully Spreedly still takes care of long-term storage of payment information, so you only have to make sure the details stay safe until they’re handed off to Spreedly.
While Spreedly’s support for PayPal Express is already limited (no support for auto-recurring subscriptions), the Payments API goes even further and provides no support at all for PayPal Express (yet).

Of course, these are all trade-offs – if you’re undaunted, go for it! We’re not trying to scare you, just let you know what you’re getting into.

Feedback

As always, we’re really keen to hear what you think of the new API – don’t hesitate to drop us an email at support@spreedly.com or get in touch via Get Satisfaction.

Rumbling - Spreedly Style!

2009-07-25T19:56:00Z

One of the reasons we started Spreedly was to make it easier to get a business up and running ASAP, so when the Rails Rumble rolled around this year Spreedly just had to be involved. For those not familiar with it, the Rails Rumble is a yearly competition in which a few hundred teams compete to see who can build the best application in 48 hours using Ruby on Rails. With a full complement of prizes, plenty of trash talking, and lots of sweaty palms, it’s the geek equivalent of the weekend basketball tournament! Having competed in it a few times in the past I can tell you it’s crazy intense and loads of fun.

Now, creating a working application within 48 hours is pretty impressive, but how much more impressive would it be if that application was actually able to make money? We think it kicks the awesomeness up multiple levels, so we’re putting our money where our mouth is and offering two Spreedly Kickstarts as prizes, one to the overall winner of the competition, and one to the winner of a special Spreedly-judged “Ready-to-Earn” category. We’ll be looking for a number of different things when picking the Ready-to-Earn winner, including:

a clear business model,
an application that offers real value, and
a working Spreedly integration.

Of course, the best part of Spreedly is that you can hook an application up to it at anytime without paying us a dime – just grab a test site and have at it. This means that everyone competing in the Rumble can take Spreedly for a spin and make their application that much more polished by having it already collecting revenue by competition’s end. Nothing says “real application” like “we’re already charging for it”!

A quick anecdote: not long after we launched Spreedly, two of the Spreedly co-founders (Duff and Alex) decided to build an application together to scratch an itch that they had. They cranked out No Kahuna in a bare 40 hours, including it being able to collect money. While they might be a little biased, they’ll both tell you that there’s absolutely no way they could have gotten so far in such a short amount of time if not for Spreedly.

And that’s why we think that the Rails Rumble and Spreedly are like chocolate and peanut butter and are so excited about being a part of the Rumble this year. All the coolest Rumble teams will be using Spreedly to get that extra edge in the competition – don’t miss out!

Variable Currency Support

2009-05-29T18:34:00Z

One of the most consistent questions we’ve received since we launched Spreedly is, “Can I use it to collect in currency X?” where X is any of British Pounds Sterling, Canadian Dollars, Euros, etc. While we’ve really wanted to make Spreedly more accessible to the wider world, we’ve had to put it off to date since collecting in multiple currencies is a huge task and we’ve had to spend our time working on other priorities.

But then, about two weeks ago, we figured out how to “make half a product” and get a big part of the benefit of multiple currencies without a lot of the complexity. What we realized is this: a majority of those wanting to transact in different currencies weren’t wanting to collect in them simultaneously, but rather they wanted to pick a currency other than US Dollars and run all their transactions in it. And when we dug into allowing this simpler multi-currency support (we dubbed it “variable currency”) we realized that not only could we build it faster and release it sooner, it also moved us closer to full multi-currency in really important ways. So we got cranking and now you’ll see an extra option when you create a new site:

So how does it work? Well, whatever currency you select when you create a site will be used for all business within that site. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can only collect from subscribers who have a credit card in that currency – just like it’s always worked, your gateway and/or the subscriber’s credit card will happily convert from whatever currency you’re using into the subscriber’s native currency.

As you can see in the screenshot, you can’t (at least for now) change the currency once you’ve created the site. You can of course create another site anytime you’d like and set it to use a different currency, but a given site is locked to its transaction currency when it’s set up. We may revisit this limitation in the future, but for now you’ll want to decide on the currency before you go to activate and start using a production site.

Also, if you are interested in using a currency other than those listed, let us know at support@spreedly.com. We’re adding support for additional currencies as we get requests from clients, so don’t be shy!

We recognize that some of our existing clients paid for Spreedly when it didn’t support this and may want to migrate their sites to a different currency. If you’re in that boat, drop us a line and we’ll work through it with you. In particular if you Kickstarted a site, haven’t used it yet, and would like to use a different currency, we can easily accommodate the switch for you.

We’re super excited to see Spreedly used by businesses all over the world, so go create a site in your preferred currency and let us know how it goes! We’d also really appreciate if those of you in far-flung places would help us spread the word about Spreedly – your heart-felt recommendations mean a lot to us.

P.S. Don’t forget that you can still get a great deal on a Kickstart. It’s definitely worth it if you plan on running a business on top of Spreedly.

The Spreedly Kickstart

2009-05-07T20:32:00Z

Spreedly is doing really, really well. We’re cranking along on features, we’re fielding inquiries from interested parties left and right, and signups (and renewals) are coming in at a good clip. The Spreedly team is really happy with what we’ve built, and we’re loving where it’s going.

But: Spreedly’s still a young business, and it doesn’t get as many hours a week as we’d like. We’ve thought about taking on funding, but have preferred to focus on building a market and getting more paying customers rather than doing market research and navigating the tricky waters of startup investment.

And yet, one of the best sources of funding is clients – what if we could raise a chunk of capital from our clients and use that to accelerate development for everyone? It would benefit clients by accelerating the rate at which we’re able to add the features that they’re asking for, and it would allow us to keep Spreedly’s interests directly aligned with our client base rather than getting distracted by taking on investment.

And so we are offering the Spreedly Kickstart plan: with one payment you lock in a sweet deal on Spreedly services, and once we sell out of the plans (we’re only offering 100 this time around) Spreedly will have a moderately sized chunk of capital to use towards accelerating the business.

We’d love to have you as one of our Kickstarters, and you can get all the details and start the sign up process on our Kickstart page.

What will you do with a Kickstart?

Spreedly on the Web 2.0 Show

2009-03-25T01:23:00Z

Josh and Adam of Web 2.0 Show fame had Nathaniel on to talk about Spreedly, and talk he did! Tune in to hear about Spreedly’s origins, why we’re priced the way we are, and what we have up our sleeves for the future: Spreedly on the Web 2.0 Show.

A big “Thank You” to Josh and Adam for having Spreedly on – it was a blast!

Site Invitations

2009-03-10T04:16:00Z

It’s been weeks in the making, but we’ve finally rolled out the final piece: you can now invite your business partners, developers, and anyone else of your choosing into your Spreedly site so they can keep track of what’s going on and help you administer the site. Rather than try to describe the process or give you screenshots, here’s a little screencast that shows you exactly how it works:

We hope this is useful to you – we know it already has been for us!

New Subscription Emails

2009-03-09T19:08:00Z

Sometimes you implement something and go, “That wasn’t hard – why didn’t we do it a long time ago?” Such is the case with a feature that got rolled out in the past few days: you as the client will now get BCC’d on the receipt email that goes out to a new subscriber. Oddly enough, we’ve been BCC’ing clients on renewal notices for a long time, and just hadn’t gotten around to adding the one line of code to make the same thing happen on a new subscription.

Hopefully you’re now happily buried under a deluge of new subscription emails, and this helps you see how your business is growing and thus provide better support to your customers. Have other ideas for how Spreedly can give you better insight and keep you up on what’s happening with your business? Let us know!

Spreedly Sighting: Squid

2009-03-06T03:14:00Z

One of the things we want to do with the Spreedly blog is highlight some of the businesses that are using Spreedly for their payment collection. We love the fact that we get to be a part of so many businesses, and we’d like to share that love with you!

One really interesting business that just launched is Squid. The goal of Squid is to help you manage the project of increasing in-bound links to a website the upstanding, ethical way: by having conversations with high-value sites and convincing them to link to you and your content. Rather than go in to a lot of detail, though, I’ll just point you at this great post by Jake Scruggs that includes two screencasts showing off exactly what Squid is: Get Better Page Rankings With Squid.

We’re psyched that Squid is launched, and we’re double-psyched that they’ve launched with subscriptions already implemented. One of the ways Spreedly changes the game is by cutting the time necessary to collect payments down to a point where you’d be crazy not to launch with them!

P.S. If you’re launching or have launched a business on Spreedly, get in touch with us as we’d love to feature you. We know how tough and important it is to launch and we’d like to help you celebrate!