I run a small online store (about 400 orders/month) and Stripe has been fine, but the fees and their recent policy changes are starting to bother me. I'm considering switching to another processor, but I'm worried about losing customers during the transition, especially recurring ones. Has anyone here actually done it without a big drop-off?
Payments
Has anyone moved away from Stripe without losing customers?
I moved to Square llast year. It was a bit of a hassle updating card info for subscriptions, but I sent out a clear email two weeks ahead and only lost maybe 3 out of 200 recurring customers. Not zero, but not a disaster.
What's the actual reason for leaving? If it's just fees, have you tried negotiating? I got a slightly better rate from Stripe after a polite email.
I switched to Paddle for digital products. The migration of saved cards was the tricky part. We had to ask customers to re-enter payment details, which caused some friction. We offered a small discount for doing it, and that helped.
Yeah, the re-entry thing is real. I think it depends on how many are subscriptions vs one-time. For one-time buyers, they just Use the new checkout and don't even notice.
Most of my revenue is from subscriptions, so that's my main concern. Penny_arcade, I did ask about fees but they wouldn't budge. It's noot just fees though, it's also that they froze a friend's account for a week with no warning. That spooked me.
Froze an account? That's scary. But honestly, every processor has horror stories. I've been with Stripe for 6 years and never had an issue. Switching might just trade one set of risks for another.
Fair point. But if you're already uncomfortable, that's a valid reason to move. Have you looked at Braintree? They have a good rep for subscriptions and I think they have a migration tool for card data.
Braintree's support was slow when I tried them years ago. Things may have changed. Also, check if your new processor can import tokenized cards from Stripe. Some can, some can't.
Thanks, I'll look into Braintree. The tokenized card import is key. If I can avoid asking customers to re-enter, that would be huge.
One more thing: don't forget to upDate your dunning emails and retry logic. I messed that up and lost a few payments in the first month because the new system didn't retry failed charges the same way.
Also, if you do switch, run both systems in parallel for a month if you can. That way you can catch issues before fully committing.
Parallel running is smart. I wish I had done that. I just flipped the switch and spent a week putting out fires.