Ed and Steve discuss:
- the return of Microconf Europe as an in-person event
- working out if a new feature is worth the effort
- weighing the risk of becoming a customer of someone’s side project
Suggestion for Ed: use Stripe’s built in charts! They’re under Billing…they have MRR, Churn…it’s free and no frills, and it’s not another 3rd party vendor.
Hi, yes, the idea is good, but the problem is many of our customers pay outside of Stripe, via bank transfer. Particularly larger European customers. In general this is great as there is no reason to pay Stripe 2% every month for a large customer I have had for years. But the downside is it makes it hard to have a clear overview of just what the MRR is. Hence why we want use a service like BareMetrics or one of their competitors.
Yes, I do the same thing — especially for EU customers, invoices + SEPA wire transfers are quick and easy, and saving 3.2% or so is rather nice as well. I offer this option for annual billing that I’m very happy with it.
One thing worth noting is that this also mitigates risk: one day you will get flagged for review and your credit processor will block your accounts until the procedure is done. This can take anywhere from several days to several weeks. It’s nice to not depend 100% on their benevolence.
For analytics, I use ProfitWell, but then enter the numbers into my own spreadsheet, which also takes into account customers paying via wire transfer. It’s ok, because the spreadsheet does much more than just MRR: I get my complete P&L from it as well.