Cristel-customer-portal

[lone hemlock]

hello @frank ginkgo, this implementation is going to require a developer to implement. You can consider hiring a developer from this list of verified experts : https://stripe.com/partners/expert-services

[crude frost]

While I’m not on the list of experts there, I may be willing to help out and maybe make a friend along the way.

Just happy to help to gain some traction in this community.

[frank ginkgo]

Thanks Alex will take a look!

[frank ginkgo]

hey @crude frost ! Thanks for your response - does the explanation I posted make sense to you?

[crude frost]

Yeah. You are wanting to implement Stripe Portal to allow your subscribers to update payment details when needed but are not a developer. Do you have any access to your code base or know what language it’s in?

[crude frost]

What is the use case of your subscriptions?

[frank ginkgo]

yeah that's right - where would I find out what language it's in?

[frank ginkgo]

The use case of subscription is auto-renewal each month - customer portal use case would be updating card details out of preference, when card has expired or no funds available

[crude frost]

Right. I guess what I’m asking is how do you create the subscriptions? In your stripe dashboard or did you have a developer build an app for you.

[frank ginkgo]

Oh gotcha - I created the subscription as a payment link myself

[crude frost]

To be able to implement the portal, you would need some sort of app with a server to be able to authenticate the user with to then be able to redirect them to the portal. What is the subscription for? I’m assuming it’s not for some sort of app. Probably something physical?

[frank ginkgo]

It's for an online membership on the platform Mighty Networks

[crude frost]

That’s not to say it couldn’t be easily implemented. It just sounds to me like you have no existing code base to implement onto.

[frank ginkgo]

Hmm not that I'm aware of - so not something that can be done in the Stripe "back end"?

[crude frost]

No, it’s not something that’s able to be generated in the dashboard. You would need to be able to direct a subscriber to a login form, where they would provide their login details they setup with you. Then we could generate the link to send the user to the Stripe Portal.

[frank ginkgo]

I think that could be possible via Mighty Networks as they have to create login details to access the membership?

[crude frost]

I am just a little curious, looking at the mighty network website, it looks like they provide subscriptions within the platform. Why do you use Stripe for billing outside of that? Other than Stripe being awesome.

[frank ginkgo]

MN integrates with Stripe but their payment system didn't meet my need, they would charge me to use their payment processor as well as the charge through Stripe and I couldn't filter members joining through their system, if someone pays they are automatically accepted into the membership which isn't how I wanted to run the service

and I felt more comfortable going directly through Stripe 🙂

[crude frost]

A quick look through their site it doesn’t appear as they offer an API which is what you would need to be able to do that. As you are managing payments outside of the network, anything to do with those payments would be outside of the MN network.

[crude frost]

Those pesky extra fees. They get ya every time.

[frank ginkgo]

Ah okay so not an option

[frank ginkgo]

Yeah I know :/ I might end up paying more to have the additional options like customer portal but didn't make sense at the time of set up

[crude frost]

I mean. Essentially you’d just have to provide your users two sets of logins. One for the MN network and one to manage billing.

[crude frost]

It would take some code development and server setup for sure though.

[frank ginkgo]

Okay I see

[crude frost]

I’d be willing to work with you on getting something up and running on a Google Firebase account. They provide authentication and everything we’d need to make it work. If it was something you wanted to do.

[crude frost]

Or one of the experts listed at the top of this thread could absolutely help you.

[frank ginkgo]

Thanks so much for your help - can I ask, would Google Firebase be the second authentication you mentioned? So users would need to create a second set of login details through that? And would there be a cost involved?

[frank ginkgo]

I guess I'm trying to weigh up whether it's worth investing in a payment portal like samcart or if there's another way to do it via Zapier for example

[crude frost]

Yes, a user would need to create a username/password for what we would call your billing platform. They would then login with those details each time they wanted to access their billing platform.

[crude frost]

The costs associated with Google Firebase are minimal. I just paid my bill and it was 12 cents usd.

[crude frost]

I don’t THINK zapier would be able to help.

Though. What you could do. When you created a customer on the Stripe dashboard, you could send a web hook to your Google Firebase server that could send an email to your new customer inviting them to setup their billing portal. That would get them signed up and able to manage their billing without you having to create a user within Firebase

[frank ginkgo]

Ok cool thank you for explaining that

[frank ginkgo]

Good to know thank you

[frank ginkgo]

Ok so I could do this for future new members but for existing members they'd need to create a user within Firebase ?

[crude frost]

Everyone would have to be a user in Firebase. We could create a function that would send an invite email to everyone existing when it was ran.

[crude frost]

The “invite email” would basically be them setting a password. The webhook would have already “created” the user in Firebase.

[frank ginkgo]

I see gotcha - well it sounds like a good option. Let me know how we'd go about figuring this out together?

[crude frost]

I hope I answered a few questions and didn’t completely confuse you with nerd talk. We could certainly get on a Google meets chat or zoom call to discuss it further. It’s certainly something that can be done, will just take some time. Happy to help.

[frank ginkgo]

Haha what you described makes sense I'd just had no clue how to implement hence why I need the help. That would be awesome - I'd really appreciate the support!

[frank ginkgo]

Whereabouts are you based?

[crude frost]

I’m in Missouri, USA right outside of Kansas City.

[crude frost]

You?

[frank ginkgo]

Melbourne, Australia

[crude frost]

Kangaroos are what come to mind. I’ve always thought it would be a cool place to visit.

[frank ginkgo]

I could jump on a Zoom call tomorrow about this time?

[frank ginkgo]

Haha yes - lots of them here!! It's a pretty awesome place, I'm from the UK originally

[crude frost]

Oh wow! Quite the traveler. Certainly jealous. A zoom call tomorrow would work for me. What time is it where your at now?

[frank ginkgo]

Do enjoy a bit of travel yes! It's 3.36pm so could do 3pm tomorrow?

[crude frost]

That works perfect for me. That’ll be 11pm my time. I do just want to be upfront with telling you I am just a freelancer. While I have been coding since I was in middle school, I don’t have any formal training however, Google Firebase, Angular, as well as Stripe are my go to’s when it comes to anything so very well self taught. Hope that doesn’t change anything.

[frank ginkgo]

Is 11pm your time ok? I could do earlier like 1pm my time if that's better? Yeah I understand that thank you for explaining - I suppose I'd like to chat and see how we go. I guess one thing I'd be nervous of is how much access I give to a developer / freelancer as we're talking about a payment service so want to be as secure as possible but hoping to get this sorted 🙂

[crude frost]

11pm my time is good for me. We can chat about access and integrity tomorrow. I’ll send you a private message for the zoom invite

[frank ginkgo]

Great thank you!