If you’re integrating Stripe for your SaaS product, here’s some help to get you going quickly while avoiding common pitfalls. Stripe is powerful, but handling webhooks, events, pricing tables, and the customer portal correctly can make or break your billing experience.
📡 Webhooks & Events – Essential for Running a Subscription SaaS App
Webhooks allow Stripe to communicate with your app when key subscription-related events occur. Here are some essential events you should listen for when running a subscription-based SaaS app:
✔️ invoice.payment_succeeded – Unlock premium features when a user’s payment goes through.
✔️ invoice.payment_failed – Trigger a retry mechanism or notify users about billing issues.
✔️ customer.subscription.updated – Adjust access when a customer upgrades, downgrades, or changes plans.
✔️ customer.subscription.deleted – Handle cancellations by revoking access, sending retention offers, or scheduling account deactivation.
✔️ checkout.session.completed – Used for one-time purchases or subscriptions created via Stripe Checkout.
✔️ customer.subscription.trial_will_end – Notify users before their trial expires, encouraging them to continue.
💡 Developer Tip 1:Serialize & save the transaction to your DB immediately, then move on to processing. If there’s an error in your code, you don’t want to lose the entire transaction. Having it in your database allows you to review the payloads that failed processing and manually retry if needed.
💰 Pricing Tables – Embedding Plans with Ease
Stripe allows you to embed prebuilt pricing tables directly into your SaaS app, making it easy for users to:
✔️ View different subscription plans (monthly, yearly, or tiered).
✔️ Select a plan and checkout securely via Stripe’s hosted payment flow.
✔️ Automatically apply coupons, free trials, or prorations for seamless upgrades and downgrades.
No need to build custom UI components—Stripe handles it for you!
🎟️ Free Trials & Coupons – Reduce Signup Friction & Increase Conversions
Why Offer Free Trials?
Free trials help users experience your product’s value before committing to a paid plan. They work well for:
🔹 Products with a learning curve – Give users time to explore.
🔹 Higher-ticket SaaS – Users are more likely to convert after seeing value.
🔹 Freemium-to-paid conversion strategies – Increase conversion rates by lowering the initial barrier to entry.
How to Enable Free Trials in Stripe:
1️⃣ Go to your Product Pricing in Stripe.
2️⃣ Select the subscription plan you want to offer a free trial for.
3️⃣ Set the Trial Period (e.g., 7 days or 30 days).
4️⃣ When users sign up, Stripe will handle the trial countdown and automatically charge them once the trial ends.
💡 Pro Tip: Use customer.subscription.trial_will_end webhook to notify users before their trial expires.
🎟️ Coupons – Easily Manage Discounts & Promotions
If you’re running promotional campaigns, offering limited-time discounts, or trying to retain customers at risk of canceling, Stripe’s built-in coupon system makes it easy to manage without additional development work.
✅ 100% No-Code Setup – Coupons can be created and managed directly in the Stripe Dashboard.
✅ Flexible Discounts – Set up percentage-based discounts (e.g., 10% off) or fixed-amount discounts ($50 off a plan).
✅ One-Time or Recurring – Choose whether a coupon applies to a single invoice or recurs over multiple billing cycles.
✅ Expiration Controls – Set time limits or usage caps to control how long a coupon is valid.
✅ Seamless Integration with Pricing Tables & Customer Portal – Users can enter coupons at checkout without needing any custom code.
How to Use Coupons in Stripe:
1️⃣ Navigate to Products > Coupons in your Stripe Dashboard.
2️⃣ Create a new coupon and set the discount type.
3️⃣ Generate a promotion code that users can enter at checkout.
4️⃣ Enable coupons in your Stripe Pricing Table and Customer Portal settings, allowing users to apply discounts without development work.
💡 Why This Matters for SaaS Product Managers:
No dev time required – Coupons work with Stripe’s hosted checkout out-of-the-box.
Easily run A/B tests on pricing promotions without engineering effort.
Quickly offer discounts to retain customers or drive sales during seasonal campaigns.
🆔 Mapping Stripe Customers to Your Users
When a user completes a payment or subscription, Stripe generates a Customer ID, which you’ll want to map to your users in your own database. Here’s how to handle it:
1️⃣ During account creation, call Stripe’s API to create a customer before checkout and store the Stripe Customer ID in your database.
2️⃣ Use the customer's email to link them to their Stripe account.
3️⃣ When handling webhook events, look up the user in your database using the customer field from the webhook payload.
💡 Developer Tip: If users can update their emails, create the Stripe Customer ID ahead of time using the API and map it to your user in your database. This prevents mismatches if emails change.
🔑 Creating Dynamic Authenticated Customer Sessions
To reduce friction when users navigate to the Stripe Customer Portal, generate a secure, authenticated session dynamically, so they don’t have to log in separately.
1️⃣ Use Stripe’s API to create a customer portal session.
2️⃣ Redirect the user to the session URL for seamless access.
💡 Why This Matters?
✔️ Eliminates extra login steps for users.
✔️ Allows customers to easily update billing details, download invoices, or change plans without contacting support.
✔️ Improves overall subscription management experience.
🚀 Final Thoughts: Simplify & Scale
By leveraging webhooks, pricing tables, free trials, coupons, and dynamic sessions, you can automate SaaS billing and reduce friction in your payment flows. This means:
✅ Less dev time wasted on custom billing infrastructure.
✅ Fewer manual support headaches.
✅ A smoother experience for your users.
🔹 Are you using Stripe for your SaaS business? What challenges have you run into with payments? Let’s talk! 💬
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