I'm in the same boat, here's a little bit of research regarding subscriptions:
1. PayPal subscriptions are an under-documented mess. I was hoping to get a trial going with their subscription quickie form builder but couldn't figure out how to get return data. I'm sure this is possible, but it all seemed more like it was setup for magazine subscriptions than for online subscriptions.
2. Zuora is a company that keeps getting mentioned on TechCrunch and had given me the impression it was subscriptions done right, where right is simple API and simple setup. On investigation, they're only open for private beta and they seem more like a "solution" provider where you're going to have to talk to a salesperson to get anywhere.
3. If you mention Zuora on twitter you will be contacted by a company called Aria Systems. In order to see their API they will say they "need a signed NDA as our API's are mature proven and we guard them like the family jewels."
4. Spreedly seems a little bare bones but is the only company out of that bunch that seems to share my sensibilities.
I would love to hear an authoritative answer. If you were building a subscription based service like Basecamp, what would you use to start?
PayPal's API was actually pretty easy to implement for my subscription service.
PayPalTech has a nice script generator that outputs a simple PHP script that gets data from PayPal's API after a purchase/subscription is processed, I'm a terrible coder and I was able to get all the data I needed pretty easily.
1. PayPal subscriptions are an under-documented mess. I was hoping to get a trial going with their subscription quickie form builder but couldn't figure out how to get return data. I'm sure this is possible, but it all seemed more like it was setup for magazine subscriptions than for online subscriptions.
2. Zuora is a company that keeps getting mentioned on TechCrunch and had given me the impression it was subscriptions done right, where right is simple API and simple setup. On investigation, they're only open for private beta and they seem more like a "solution" provider where you're going to have to talk to a salesperson to get anywhere.
3. If you mention Zuora on twitter you will be contacted by a company called Aria Systems. In order to see their API they will say they "need a signed NDA as our API's are mature proven and we guard them like the family jewels."
4. Spreedly seems a little bare bones but is the only company out of that bunch that seems to share my sensibilities.
I would love to hear an authoritative answer. If you were building a subscription based service like Basecamp, what would you use to start?