Stripe
Payments, subscriptions, and billing primitives — the default when you want APIs and dashboards instead of gateway archaeology.
Why it earns a place
Why I use it
From checkout to invoicing and tax hooks — one stack when you outgrow “wire us and we will figure it out.”
Use cases
Best for
- Testing a real payment or monetisation path with Stripe
- Keeping checkout friction, tax/compliance responsibilities, and product access understandable
- Connecting a successful payment to one explicit downstream action
Start small
Quick start
- 01Create one product and test price
Set up the smallest real offer rather than an entire catalogue.
- 02Run the full test checkout
Use Stripe test/sandbox mode where available and verify success, failure, refund/cancellation, and the receipt/customer experience.
- 03Connect fulfilment explicitly
After payment, grant access, create the order, or trigger the workflow from a verified event — never from a browser redirect alone.
Repeatable workflows
Things I come back for
Test the money path end to end
Treat payment as a system, not a button.
- 1
Start from the public offer page.
- 2
Complete a test purchase and inspect the customer email/receipt.
- 3
Verify the backend event and downstream access or order state.
Handle a cancellation or refund
Make the unhappy path predictable before a real customer needs it.
- 1
Trigger the cancellation/refund in a test or low-risk case.
- 2
Confirm entitlements and accounting state update correctly.
- 3
Check what the customer sees and receives.
Reference