Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Stripe Billing VS Stripe Elements

Compare Stripe Billing VS Stripe Elements and see what are their differences

Stripe Billing logo Stripe Billing

A set of tools for billing and subscriptions

Stripe Elements logo Stripe Elements

Beautiful, smart checkout flows 💳💸
  • Stripe Billing Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-22
  • Stripe Elements Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-03

Stripe Billing features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    The interface is user-friendly and easy to navigate, even for those who are not tech-savvy. This makes onboarding and day-to-day usage straightforward.
  • Automation
    Stripe Billing offers robust automation features for recurring payments, invoicing, and dunning management, reducing manual effort and error.
  • Integrated Suite
    As part of the broader Stripe ecosystem, it seamlessly integrates with other Stripe services like payment processing and financial reporting.
  • Customization
    Highly customizable billing logic, enabling businesses to tailor subscription plans, metered billing, and one-time charges to their specific needs.
  • Global Reach
    Offers support for multiple currencies and localized payment methods, making it ideal for businesses operating internationally.
  • Developer-Friendly
    Comprehensive APIs and excellent documentation make it easy for developers to integrate and extend the platform’s capabilities.
  • Security
    High level of security and compliance with standards like PCI-DSS, ensuring that customer data is protected.

Possible disadvantages of Stripe Billing

  • Cost
    The fees can add up, especially for smaller businesses. Although the pricing is transparent, it can become expensive with higher transaction volumes.
  • Complexity for Non-Developers
    While developer-friendly, some features may require a level of technical expertise that non-developers might find challenging to deal with.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    Primarily focused on online transactions, making it less ideal for businesses that also need robust offline payment solutions.
  • Geographic Restrictions
    While Stripe is available in many countries, it is not available everywhere, which can be limiting for some businesses.
  • Customer Support
    Customer support, while generally good, can sometimes be slow to respond or less helpful for more complex, non-standard issues.
  • Tiered Pricing Complexity
    Understanding the tiered pricing for different features and services can be confusing and time-consuming.
  • Integration Overhead
    Integration with some third-party systems can require additional development effort and may not always be straightforward.

Stripe Elements features and specs

  • Customizability
    Stripe Elements provides a highly customizable UI that allows developers to match the payment forms to the look and feel of their website, offering flexibility in design and user experience.
  • Security
    Sensitive card data is securely handled by Stripe, ensuring PCI compliance and reducing the security burden on developers while also minimizing risk.
  • Ease of Integration
    The library is easy to integrate with existing systems thanks to comprehensive documentation and easy-to-use APIs, reducing development time.
  • Cross-browser and Device Support
    Stripe Elements support a wide range of browsers and devices, ensuring a consistent user experience across platforms.
  • Pre-built UI Components
    It provides pre-built components that are tested and optimized, which can speed up development and maintain a high standard of user interaction.

Possible disadvantages of Stripe Elements

  • Learning Curve
    Despite its ease of use, developers may face an initial learning curve to fully leverage the potential of Stripe Elements and its customizability options.
  • Dependency on JavaScript
    Stripe Elements relies on JavaScript, which could be a limitation if the web project prefers or requires minimal JavaScript usage.
  • Limited Out-of-the-box Features
    While it offers pre-built components, some businesses may find that these elements need additional development work for more complex or unique use cases.
  • Ongoing Costs
    Using Stripe Elements involves transaction fees, which could sum up significantly for businesses with high transaction volumes.

Analysis of Stripe Billing

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Stripe Billing is generally considered a good option for businesses looking for a robust and flexible billing solution. It is praised for its ease of use, comprehensive documentation, and excellent customer support.

Why this product is good

  • Stripe Billing is a popular choice for businesses because it offers a range of features designed to simplify the billing process. It supports various billing models, including subscriptions, invoicing, and one-time payments. Additionally, Stripe is known for its reliability, strong security measures, and extensive API, allowing for a high level of customization and integration with other systems.

Recommended for

    Stripe Billing is recommended for startups, small to medium-sized businesses, and large enterprises that need a scalable billing solution. It is particularly well-suited for businesses operating in the tech and SaaS industries, as well as those that require international payment support.

Stripe Billing videos

Stripe Billing - Get Paid for your SaaS

Stripe Elements videos

React Stripe Elements Package (NEW 2020) + Charging Stripe in Node: Full stack tutorial

More videos:

  • Review - Stripe Elements with Laravel (and Vue)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Stripe Billing and Stripe Elements)
Recurring Billing
100 100%
0% 0
Payments
0 0%
100% 100
Recurring Subscription Billing
Online Payments
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Stripe Billing might be a bit more popular than Stripe Elements. We know about 5 links to it since March 2021 and only 4 links to Stripe Elements. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Stripe Billing mentions (5)

  • Using API Usage Data to Build Flexible Pricing Tiers
    Stripe Billing for subscription management. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • How to tell a client to pay their bill???
    Stripe is pretty great for this, specifically: https://stripe.com/billing. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Apple and Google must allow other payment systems, new Korean law declares
    Stripe Billing[1] only charges 0.5% for this. Apple's offerings may have been good when the alternative was software sold on physical CD's in a store, but compared to the alternatives today there is no way 30% is by any means fair or reasonable. The 30% commission is essentially monopoly rents. 1. https://stripe.com/billing. - Source: Hacker News / almost 4 years ago
  • Testing Payments with Stripe’s New Postman Collections
    Stripe builds payments infrastructure for the internet and exposes APIs for a variety of use cases. To improve the overall developer experience, we recently launched our own team profile on the Postman Public API Network to help anyone explore our payment, billing, and identity APIs. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • Two months in: How the SaaS that was built in 7 days is going
    Yup that's what stripe does. Go check it out? https://stripe.com/billing. Source: almost 4 years ago

Stripe Elements mentions (4)

  • Building a Hybrid Sign-Up/Subscribe Form with Stripe Elements
    Stripe Elements is a set of prebuilt components that can be used during the payment processing flow of your application. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Solutions for creating Keys and IAM when developing a SAAS product?
    I am trying to spin up a saas product where I would ideally sell the "checkout page" ( think of the product as a mini-Shopify ). Right now the front-end is done in react where I think the elements of that page is probably going to be some NPM package ( most like https://stripe.com/payments/elements ). And the back-end API is built in NestJS ( Swagger ) connected to an AWS database. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Show HN: Automations for Tasks – Height.app
    I see now. Do you see this image [0] on https://height.app/compare/asana? Now that's what I wanted to see, now I understand it's some sort of task manager for teams that presumably integrates with GitLab, GitHub etc. --- Ok on a further look, I think I understand what happened. You linked directly to https://height.app/product/automations, but I and probably others who see this post would have thought that it was... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • How to accept payments in a Remix application with Stripe
    Stripe Elements is the option we’ll discuss today. Elements are pre-built form components that you can embed directly into your web application (there’s mobile versions too!). There’s an official react-stripe-js library that exposes the new PaymentElement. The PaymentElement supports several payment methods and is the best default. You should only implement individual elements (like one for Card and one for SEPA)... - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Stripe Billing and Stripe Elements, you can also consider the following products

Chargebee - Chargebee lets you manage subscriptions and payments at scale, handle custom recurring billing scenarios, reduce subscription churn and simplify accounting.

Balance Checkout - The first B2B checkout

Zuora - Zuora creates cloud-based software on a subscription basis that enables any company in any industry to successfully launch, manage, and transform into a subscription business.

Paylike - A modern full-stack payment platform

Chargify - Chargify is the best online billing software for all of your Recurring Billing needs. Learn more about simplifying your Subscription Billing today.

Stripe - Online payment processing for internet businesses. Stripe is a suite of payment APIs that powers commerce for online businesses of all sizes. Use Stripe’s payment platform to accept and process payments online for easy-to-use commerce solutions.