Platform risks everywhere
jasonleow • 11 Feb 2023 •
Woke up this morning to news that Flurly got shut down by Stripe with zero notice. All my Carrd plugins are on Flurly, so that means no one can buy my products! Not the 5am morning I expected, but dived into crisis mode. Scrambled all day to move my Carrd plugins over to Lemon Squeezy.
Quickly researched the top payment providers I knew from previous conversations – Lemon Squeezy, Payhip, Thrivecart. In the end, decided on Lemon S because:
- The UX was more fresh and modern. Saw a tweet before that it converts better – 9.6% conversion rate vs Gumroad 2.8%.
- All the features I need for handling digital downloads, plus more. I like that I can define variants for 1 product for my single license and unlimited license versions.
- Merchant of Record, which in finance dummy speak, safer and more protection for sellers.
- Heard they have an affiliate program coming up… something which I want to explore this year.
- Sadly, fees are higher on Lemon S. Flurly is 1% + 3.7%, compared to Lemon S $0.50 + 5% of total, with extra +1.5% for international payments, extra +1% for PayPal transactions, and +0.5% if I have subscription payments. Napkin calculations shows I got to pay 6.5% at least, and 7.5% if customer pay through Paypal! Trade-offs I guess… hope the benefits outweigh the costs.
Thrivecart’s lifetime deal was tempting though… maybe I can consider that if sales figures and volume go up. Payhip has good community features where members can log in to view premium content, which I might explore for my communities (Lifelog, 5am club) in the future.
Implications for indies
After all is said and done, can’t help feeling worried for JR who made Flurly. I used Flurly all this while from the start, and if anything, not sure he deserves such a ban and a hefty, mysterious $425k fine, and with zero lead time for customers to react, when he had been transparent and trying hard to resolve it.
It’s disconcerting to ponder the implications for the rest of us indies.
Reading the Twitter discussion, I also realised a few things:
- Never crossed my mind there’s platform risk on Stripe
- Clueless about US/international financial regulations
- Clueless about Stripe T&Cs to prevent getting deplatformed
It feels like the ground is shifting beneath our feet for us indies. Nothing feels safe these days… first an economic recession, then blatant copycatting in the indie scene, then Twitter platform risks, now Stripe.
How can an indie solopreneur prepare for all this?
Comments
@therealbrandonwilson Disturbing is the word. It felt really disconcerting for me… I feel like I don’t know these platforms anymore. And for something as universal as payments like electricity is to modern life, it’s a scary thought indeed, that they can ‘cancel’ you on a whim.
Exactly re: the typos. What’s that about hah.
I would never have thought of platform risks when talking about Stripe too.
It feels like the only way I can deal with this is just to be more comfortable with uncertainty. It reminds me a lot about what Nassim Taleb try to convey through his book Antifragile.
but is your money hold by Stripe as well ? as in those your client pay to Flury for you.
Why not just hook stripe and sell directly ?
@andrewtsao In this specific case, technically, the platform risk is with credit card networks in general. But not a stretch to imagine Stripe can do that too (many such stories on Hacker News), just like how Paypal randomly freezing funds. I just wrote about what we indies can do.
@knight Yes technically I can just use Stripe if it’s a simple payment. But I would have to code my own app where they can directly download the file after paying. Flurly (like Gumroad, Lemon S) have all the other features that make selling digital downloads easier, managing variants, license codes, customer portal etc
a gated site that based on Stripe purchase record work!
Bro too much work for a smallish digital download biz 😅 Not that good a coder haha
I’m not affected by this particular action, but the fact it happened is disturbing. What’s with the spelling errors in Stripe’s first email? I would have thought it was a scam until the faucet got shut off. I’ve always considered content platforms when talking about platform risk, but perhaps financial platforms are even more important to consider.