Stripe is the right payment processor. Integrating it correctly is harder than it looks.
A Stripe integration that handles one-time payments is straightforward. A Stripe integration that handles subscriptions, usage-based billing, SCA compliance, webhook event processing, refund workflows, dispute management, and revenue reporting is a significant engineering project. We build payment infrastructure that works correctly in production — fixed scope, fixed price.
You need to take payments in your app. You've looked at the Stripe docs and it seems manageable. But you're not sure whether you need Stripe Billing or Stripe Checkout, how subscriptions should be modelled in your database, or how to handle the webhook events that determine whether a user's subscription is active.
Stripe's documentation is excellent. The API is well-designed. The client libraries are comprehensive. And yet Stripe integrations in production fail in ways that are expensive: a user's payment method is declined on renewal and no dunning email is sent; a subscription is cancelled in Stripe but the user's account in your application still shows as active; a disputed charge triggers a chargeback that wasn't detected because the webhook handler didn't process charge.dispute.created events; a user upgrades from one plan to another and the proration calculation in your billing UI doesn't match what Stripe actually charged.
These failures happen because a correct Stripe integration requires handling the full lifecycle of a payment relationship, not just the happy path of a successful initial charge. The happy path (card entered, payment processed, subscription created) takes a few hundred lines of code. The full lifecycle (failed payments, dunning sequences, subscription upgrades and downgrades, proration handling, trial periods, refunds, disputes, revenue reporting) takes significantly more and requires careful database design to track the relationship between Stripe objects and your application objects.
The specific failure mode that causes the most real-world damage is webhook processing: Stripe sends events to your webhook endpoint to notify your application of state changes (payment succeeded, payment failed, subscription cancelled, dispute opened). If your webhook handler is not reliable — if it misses events, processes them out of order, or fails silently — your application has a stale view of subscription state that diverges from Stripe's source of truth over time.
A production-ready Stripe integration with subscription management, webhook processing, payment UI, and billing infrastructure that handles the full lifecycle of a paying customer — from initial signup to cancellation, retry, and churn.
Subscription architecture design
Your pricing model (per-seat SaaS, usage-based, flat monthly, tiered) maps to specific Stripe objects (Products, Prices, Subscriptions, Meters). The database schema that mirrors the Stripe subscription state is designed before code is written.
Stripe Billing or Stripe Checkout
The right Stripe surface for your product — Stripe Checkout for self-serve signups, Stripe Billing (with Stripe Elements) for embedded payment flows within your application. The integration handles SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) for European customers automatically.
Idempotent webhook handler
A webhook handler that processes Stripe events idempotently — duplicate event delivery doesn't create duplicate records. Events are processed in order with a queue mechanism for high-volume webhooks. All event types relevant to subscription lifecycle are handled.
Dunning and retry logic
Failed payment webhooks trigger your dunning workflow — customisable retry schedule, email notifications to the customer, and access restriction after exhausted retries. Stripe's Smart Retries are configured to maximise recovery.
Customer billing portal
A Stripe Customer Portal integration or a custom billing UI that lets customers update payment methods, view invoice history, and manage their subscription — without requiring customer support intervention for routine billing tasks. Built on Next.js, TypeScript, Postgres, Clerk, Stripe.
One honest number to start.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price. The number below is the starting point — final scope is built from your brief.
A production-ready Stripe integration with subscription management, webhook processing, payment UI, and billing infrastructure that handles the full lifecycle of a paying customer — from initial signup to cancellation, retry, and churn.
Three steps, every time.
The same repeatable engagement on every project. No surprises, no mystery, no billable ambiguity.
Brief & discovery.
We send you questions, then get on a call. Output: a written scope with every step, feature, and integration listed.
Build & ship.
Fixed schedule, weekly reviews. No scope creep unless you change the scope — and if you do, we reprice it transparently.
Warranty & retainer.
30-day warranty on every launch. Most clients stay on a monthly retainer for ongoing features and maintenance.
Why Fixed-Price Matters Here
A Stripe integration for a SaaS product is a defined engineering project. The payment lifecycle, the pricing model, and the user account model determine the scope. Fixed scope, fixed price.
Related engagements.
Questions, answered.
Stripe Billing is almost always the right choice. Building custom subscription management logic (trial periods, proration, dunning, receipt generation, tax calculation) from scratch is a significant engineering investment that Stripe Billing eliminates. The only cases where custom subscription management makes sense are products with extremely unusual pricing models that Stripe Billing can't represent.
Stripe handles multi-currency transactions natively. If you're serving customers in multiple countries, you'll need to decide between presentment currency (charge in customer's local currency) and settlement currency (settle in your home currency). For EU customers, Strong Customer Authentication requires 3D Secure implementation, which Stripe's payment intents API handles automatically.
Stripe Tax (Stripe's automatic tax calculation service) can be added to the integration. It handles sales tax and VAT calculation based on customer location. The tax data is included in Stripe receipts and available in Stripe's financial reports for remittance.
For an app being built from scratch, the Stripe integration is included in the overall project price (from $25k). For an existing app that needs a Stripe integration added, a subscription management integration typically runs $12k–$25k depending on pricing complexity. Fixed-price.
4 to 8 weeks for a production Stripe subscription integration on an existing application.
Tell Ryel about your project.
Describe what you’re building and what outcome you need. You’ll have a written, fixed-price scope within the week.