Take your first payment with Stripe
The moment a stranger types their card number into your product is the moment it stops being a side project. You'll set prices you can defend, wire up Stripe Checkout and webhooks the safe way, gate features by plan, let customers cancel without emailing you, sort the tax question, and flip the switch to live.
- Feature gating that's enforced on the server, not just hidden in the UI
- A self-serve billing portal for upgrades, card changes and cancellations
- A straight answer on VAT and sales tax, and a go-live checklist
- The working MVP from Build your MVP in a weekend, not a quarter: Next.js App Router, Supabase with RLS, deployed on Vercel
- At least a couple of testers who've said they'd pay (or a strong signal from Validate before you build)
- A Stripe account (free to create; you can build everything in test mode before giving Stripe any business details)
- The Stripe CLI ↗ installed, for testing webhooks locally
Set a price you can defend
Pricing is the biggest lever you have, and most first-time founders pull it the wrong way.
Forget "what do competitors charge" for a minute. Start with what is this worth to the customer? ChaseUp gets a freelancer paid sooner and saves them awkward admin. If it gets one late £1,500 invoice paid a fortnight earlier, that's worth far more than £5 a month. Price against the value, then sanity-check against the market.
Why not to go cheapIt feels safe. It isn't. At £5 a month you need 200 customers to make £1,000 a month, and cheap customers tend to churn faster and email support just as much. A higher price means fewer customers to find, more budget to find them, and buyers who take the product seriously. You can always run a discount. Raising prices on existing customers is far more painful.
Two or three tiers, not sevenFor a first launch, keep it simple:
- Free (optional): enough to feel the value, with a clear limit. ChaseUp: track 5 unpaid invoices.
- Pro: the plan you actually want most people on. Unlimited everything a solo user needs.
- Team or Business (add later): only once someone asks for it. A higher anchor makes Pro look reasonable.
Annual discountOffer annual at roughly "two months free" (pay for 10, get 12). You get cash up front and customers who've committed for a year. It's a common convention for a reason.
Free trial or freemium?They solve different problems:
- Free trial (14 days, card up front): best when the value shows up quickly and you want serious users. Fewer sign-ups, but the ones you get are much more likely to pay. Good default for a small B2B tool.
- Freemium (free forever plan): best when free users bring you more users (sharing, invites, public pages) or cost you almost nothing. Risk: a big free tier you support for ever that never converts.
- Both: a small free plan plus a trial of Pro. That's what we'll build. It's a fine choice, just watch that the free plan doesn't do the whole job.
TipPick a number that makes you slightly nervous. If nobody pushes back on price in your first ten sales conversations, you're too cheap.