Stripe Payments

What I like most is how flexible it is to connect into other tools we were already using. Being able to tie payments directly into Jotform and then use Zapier to automatically send purchased documents to clients saved a lot of manual work and made the whole process feel seamless from the customer's side. I also liked how dependable the payment processing was day to day, since we didnt have to worry about transactions failing or needing a lot of intervention. Another big plus was the access to funding based on receivables, which gave us another option to manage cash flow when volume was changing.

The page where you view incoming orders in real-time is fantastic. I also love the ease with which I can pull and export reports as and when I need it, and dictate what is and isn't in said reports. This allows for less noise in my reports, as I always have exactly what I want. Having spoken to colleagues who were involved in the setup of Stripe, they have indicated that this was extremely simple to setup for our business needs.

Stripe's developer experience and high attention to detail are genuinely best-in-class. As someone who's integrated multiple payment processors, their API docs are clear, comprehensive, and include practical examples that work well. Their dashboard and overall UI is top notch, which makes it a joy to use. They are also extremely reliable, we have experienced minimal downtime if any, and their API responses are consistently fast. Stripe also has very competitive pricing and was able to counter any other competitor's offer.

If I had to point to a few things, some of the reporting views took me a little time to get used to when I first started using them, especially when looking for very specific transaction details. There were also times where I needed to click through a few screens to find certain settings, which wasnt a big issue but added a little extra navigation. Lastly, when setting up more advanced workflow connections, it sometimes took trial and error to get everything mapped exactly the way I wanted. None of these affected our ability to process payments or serve customers, but they were small areas that could be a little more streamlined.

The level of service and ongoing support is not good at all. I have to live chat often to request certain pieces of information to do with my accounts, and I am constantly having to explain the same thing to them and often get passed in different directions. To follow on from this, I sometimes don't have all the information I need to do my job effectively, namely the metadata on accounts.

When we first implemented Stripe 4 years ago, their limited out-of-the-box subscription features weren't quite sophisticated enough to handle our specific needs - usage-based pricing with multiple tiers and a complex discount structure. While their subscription product has likely evolved since then, we had to build our own billing system on top of their payment APIs, which meant we couldn't take advantage of their other products like Checkout, Billing, etc.