How do you integrate gumroad (as payment gateway) to your SAAS?
Gumroad is no brainer to me for validating idea, but I still curious how to actually integrated it with a real SAAS product, I have google it but don't find any helpful resources (it's the first time for me setting up payment gateway like this, fell overwhelmed about the Gumroad API docs, don't know what to do)
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I’ve integrated it twice.
First time I didn’t really integrate it. I asked Gumroad to generate a license key per purchase and then allowed unlocking my software functionality with the license key.
For my new customer dashboard I subscribed to all Gumroad webhooks. Instead of using the web hook post data, I request the current purchase state using the Gumroad API and then update my mirror state in the database, this i find works pretty well.
https://app.gumroad.com/api
What should be said is that at the start of the year I was having lots of trouble syncing things up because some fields weren't correctly returned by the Gumroad API. I contacted support and they quickly made adjustments to the API. Now everything has been in sync for the past couple months.
I actually use both 1 and 2. I try to first upgrade the user account based on Gumroad webhooks, the problem is that what ties both my system and Gumroad is an additional field that users sometimes make mistakes when filling.
That's when case 1 enters, they can manually redeem the license key themselves to self serve.
Yeah never hurts to offer both options. :)
I have a register purchase field which users can manually add their purchase with, good fallback for if something goes wrong or is delayed during sync.
I do try the first one and it's works, but still confuse with the latter one. thank you Rik, may I know why you switch to the latter one if the first one just work?
It worked fine, but it required customers to sometimes manually sync their status in the dashboard with the purchase status. Additionally if I refunded a subscription I'd have to manually edit the db. This worked fine when I started out but with the second integration this is all automated, so it saves me some work, and makes the entire process less prone to errors.
wow thank you Rik, I learn a new thing today
I use Gumroad for managing paid yearly subscriptions for a Chrome Extension.
On purchase, Gumroad generates a license key and sends it to the customer. The customer enters their license key in the extension, which gets validated by serverless functions I've written that check the license key against Gumroad's API. If valid, they get access to the extension, if not valid, it spits out an error message.
The extension periodically checks the license key in case the customer hasn't paid or has cancelled their subscription. If this is the case, it blocks access to the extension.
Even though I currently use Gumroad, I wouldn't recommend it. They don't charge sales tax for digital products sold in the US.
This means you yourself need to keep track of what state each your US customers are from as well as how much tax you owe each state (all have different rates) as well as remitting taxes to the appropriate tax agencies.
I implemented Gumroad as my payment system before I knew that sales tax was charged by customer location. This is now causing me headaches as I need to swap payment processors to something like Paddle or Stripe, which handle sales tax.
Another reason I'm swapping off Gumroad is that they don't provide free trial license keys. That is, if a potential customer wants to trial the extension first, there's no way for them to select "free trial" in the Gumroad checkout and receive a license key. They must purchase the subscription.
Wow got it, this is what I'm looking for, thank you jarrad
As mentioned, I recommend starting with the license key.
It's simple and requires minimal setup.
I just implemented this for Timeva.
Feel free to DM if you have questions.
thank you Dan, I will research more on license key
Yea, since Gumroad is not really made for SaaS you'll have to find some workarounds, with license keys and stuff.
Any reason why you don't want to use Paddle? I think you can signup for any small project, a company is not needed.
wow thank you, I remembered now, yes, Paddle, I will learn it next after gumroad
Assuming you're looking to use Gumroad for the ease of use/set-up, I'd recommend looking into Memberstack - it's really easy to integrate, but it's also pretty flexible depending on your use case.
Good luck!
I am currently building git18n.com and I was initially thinking of using Ayden as it isn't such rip off as Stripe (it has a flat process fee of 0.10 €), but (I think) Stripe has better support for reoccurring payments.
Stripe's API is also massive and overwhelming and offers tons of different integration options for various frameworks and languages.
Might be worth looking at Paddle, which is a payment platform more specifically aimed at SaaS.
if you are looking at paddle you should look at getrevin too. They are the same but built on stripe.
You guys have an interesting product! I was wondering when someone was going to do something like that.
Does Revin use Stripe's payout schedule? As from what I know, one of the reason why a lot of small startups don't go with paddle is because they only payout once a month.
You can choose daily/weekly/monthly and your currency
That's pretty great! I might give it a try sometime for one of my new projects if I decide to develop it further. It can defintely get rid a few headaches that come with handling that part of a business.
On another note, I was looking through your site and docs and noticed that everything is still in text format only. If you are planning to make video guides and such in the future, and need someone to help with that, then let me know, I can most likely help you out with that.
What are the advantages of using Gumroad vs Stripe ?
Gumroad handles sales taxes for you which is a huge headache if you're selling globally (and who isn't nowadays)
Stripe now has 'Stripe Tax' which hypothetically solves this too
Not tax remittal though.
I think they at least track your sales per region (country, state etc) and will flag for you the moment you meet the VAT threshold in that region...and automatically apply VAT thereafter.
Very true, but the USP of paddle and gumroad is that they remit tax to the relevant authorities.
Stripe Tax applies it for you, but you get to figure out who to pay still.
The problem with Paddle though is that it only allows subscriptions, basically. Which is nice for SaaS but unusable for consulting…
use getrevin.com - a paddle but built on Stripe. Simple :)