Hi Truman-
Braintree is good, and they have not required $100K/month for clients that I've set up with them. They also seem to like rails developers - see http://railskits.com/blog/2008/05/using-braintree
Thanks for the response. When was the last time you setup a client with Braintree?
If I go with CDGCommerce, I will also use Authorize.net's customer information module (CIM) for storing credit card information securely on their servers.
Last one I set up was in Sept of last year. I've been talking with them in the past few weeks though as I have 2 more that Ill be setting up in the next month - and they haven't mentioned the 100K minimum.
I have used SecurePay in the past for low-volume or seasonal businesses like Flea Market vendors with reasonable success. The transaction rates may be higher, but that was the trade-off we decided upon for convenience and the ability to "halt" the account during the off-season if needed.
They worked out particularly great for me, as they provide a Web Page that can accept "Card Swipe" data if you have the appropriate hardware. Other providers like Authorize.Net require you to program against their API to get equivalent card-swipe functionality. Furthermore, Authorize.Net treats "card-swipe capable accounts" as completely separate and incompatible with eCommerce Capable accounts -- which means you'll run into issues if you're tying a Brick n' Mortar operation (using card-swipes) to an eCommerce Shopping Cart that doesn't use swipes.
I didn't investigate Authorize.net workarounds to that separate-entity issue - we took the easy way out and just switched away from Authorize.net.
Very cool - chargify.com has an interesting business model, as it takes some work to develop a SaaS recurring billing with full tests etc. (and this is one area that you really, really, want full test coverage :)
We ended up going with Authorize.net for Menumill and ecoBorrow - using their CIM to store customer info - and we are happy so far.
I actually signed up as an Authorize.net reseller: https://merchant-apply.com/tastyloungemf
If you haven't already signed up with a gateway and merchant account - the link above will get you all setup (it also waves the $99 gateway setup fee, and 50% off the normal authorize.net monthly fee :)
Thanks for the replies. I still haven't changed my billing system yet. Chagrify looks very promising! However they don't yet have an API call to allow you to upgrade or downgrade a customer from one product to another or add on products. But they are working on that feature. That would be key for me as I would like to restructure my business model to allow for ala carte add-ons for the "up sell" rather than the "one size fits all" approach I currently use.
Mark, did you develop your billing system from scratch or are you using something like ClientExec or WHMCS?