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Chargicon: learn from others like you - and help us chart the future

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Come to Chargicon in Austin, July 30-31.

Learn how Chargify can help manage a big part of your recurring revenue business.

And learn how Shopify and Chargify work together with our new Shopify App!

And, of course, influence the folks working on upcoming features like data visualization.


Register

Register with Twitter - it’s super easy


Format

Chargicon will provide the top things people have been asking for:

• Meet other merchants
Learn how they tackle business challenges - ie, one will demonstrate how they generate metrics on churn & lifetime value.

• Meet the Chargify software dev team
Learn how to use this or that feature or API call, hear about upcoming features, and push for the features you want. Ask us about merchant accounts and payment gateways, etc. Anything & everything.

• Meet Chargify partners and “merchant/partners” (they use Chargify to bill for something cool):
Shopify (market leader for managing an online store, integrated with Chargify)
Zferral (affiliate management & payouts, integrated with Chargify)
Zapier (data sync Chargify signups to MailChimp, Salesforce, & many more)
Copperegg (server & website monitoring)
Merchant Focus (convenient source of payment gateway + merchant account)

• Two special topics we’d like to find merchants to discuss/present are:
- How you get Chargify data into your accounting system.
- How you produce metrics like churn and LTV after exporting data from Chargify. We have one merchant who’s agreed to come (on us!), but we still welcome more who can show how they’ve answered this need.

ANALYTICS & VISUALIZATIONS: Some nice folks from Mutually Human in Grand Rapids, Michigan, will be joining us at Chargicon. They’re going to help us create better analytics & visualizations that Chargify merchants need to run their businesses more effectively. Come meet them and discuss your priorities.


Space

We’ve reserved this large room at the W Hotel in Austin. It seats 300 people, which is far more than we expect. But it should work well used the following way:

• Groups of people can break off and do small discussions/presentations. We’ll provide 40-inch TV/LCD displays that anyone can use to display their topic.

• Seating/lounging areas for working on your laptop, chatting with others, eating, etc.

• There will be simple food & drink all day long. Someone said we should have tacos because tacos are popular in Austin.

• At the end of Chargicon, we’ll give away those 40-inch TV/LCDs! We haven’t decided how we’re going to determine who gets them, but we’re definitely not taking them back with us!


Hours

Chargicon hours will be 12pm - 5pm each day.

We realize that most of you have a business to run, just like we do, so mornings are for coffee and work over at Halcyon (1 block away).

Evenings will be whatever we want… we’ll walk to coffee/dinner/drinks nearby and we’d love to have you along.


Need a Room?

If you need a room at the W during your stay in Austin, here’s the link:

Austin W Hotel Reservations


Contact Us

If you have any questions or comments, just let us know:

(800) 401-2414
support@chargify.com

Lance Walley, co-founder/CEO
lwalley@chargify.com


New Trial-Ending Options!

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We got blocked by a few other things recently that we had to do first (mainly anti-fraud stuff the last couple of weeks), but they’re finally here!...


Trial Period Ending Options

Now you can set your product trials to end in 1 of 2 ways:

a) With no obligation by the customer when the trial ends,
- OR -
b) With the expectation of payment for the regular product period.

Option (a) is going to be loved by many merchants!

It means when a product’s trial ends (presumably a free trial), we won’t send a statement or try to charge your customer. The trial will just quietly end.

(There is an exception where we will still try to get payment… if there is a card on file, it’s assumed you do want payment.)

Option (b) is the path that’s been there all along.

This path assumes your customer should pay the regular product fee once the trial expires, so we will email them a statement and charge their card and send them into dunning if we can’t collect payment.



New “Trial-Ended” Subscription State

Along with the older subscription states like “Active” and “Trialing”, etc., there is a new “Trial Ended” state. Subscriptions that went through their free trial (with no-obligation trial defined on the product) will end up in this state.

You can then find these subscriptions by using the filter on the Subscriptions tab. You’ll probably want to follow up with marketing to convert these customers to a paid plan, or to get their feedback, etc.

This new state is also available via the API and webhooks, so it’s pretty easy to set up a simple program on your system that responds to any “Trial Ended” state-change webhooks and does whatever marketing you think is best.



Enjoy!

Congrats Chargify merchants… You are growing like crazy!

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We had to pull some data this week for Visa (for good things!), and it hit us… our merchants are growing nicely!

Look at these top-line stats:

2011
1,079,804 transactions (all types)
$27,900,000 to merchants ($3,184/hr)

2012 (projected)
2,423,982 transactions (all types)
$70,400,000 to merchants ($8,036/hr)

That makes us very happy!

Not because we make any money from their transactions or their revenue (we don’t!!!), but because good news for Chargify merchants is, well, just cool and it’s good news for Chargify.

When everyone (or at least most people) prosper, then everyone benefits. I love to see that.

Our base of merchants is growing nicely year-over-year AND our merchants are growing each of their businesses at an EVEN FASTER rate, which makes us happy to be a part of it.

Congrats, everyone!

Chargify + Shopify = Manage Any Kind of Business!

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Chargify + Shopify = Manage Any Kind of Business!

Shopify is the leading choice to manage your ecommerce store. They’ve been around for many years and they have over 30,000 merchants running on their platform. And if you’re part of the Ruby on Rails community, you know they play a special role.

And, of course, Chargify is the leading choice to manage a recurring revenue business!

Some of you already use both services side by side, so we got together with Shopify to make this even easier.

The new Chargify app in the Shopify App Store gets you up and running quickly. It assumes you already have a Shopify store and you want to add recurring products.

New Chargify/Shopify App does this…

  • Provisions a Site in Chargify
  • Allows you to create products in Chargify
  • Copies those products back to Shopify
  • Makes “Signup” buttons appear in your Shopify store for each recurring product
  • Manages/bills your recurring product customers in Chargify

Ecosystem will Grow

We know the ecosystem will grow around this, and we know there are a few rough edges to iron out:

  • You (the merchant) must use a different email address as your merchant contact info in Shopify and Chargify.
  • The app will create a new Site in Chargify, in which you’ll create your new recurring products. There’s no way to utilize products that you already have in an existing Chargify Site.
  • When Chargify renews/bills your customers for recurring products, that will not be reflected in Shopify… instead, Chargify will interact with your customer and you’ll know through Chargify via things like our daily summary email, activity feed, BCC emails of statements and receipts, etc.

We’ll improve the integration over time, PLUS we’ve already heard from top Shopify developers who are planning to build atop this.

As the ecosystem grows, Shopify and Chargify merchants will benefit from better and better solutions for almost any kind of business. That’s very exciting!

Watch the following 3-minute screencast. It’s fun, it has good music, and it gives you an overview of the app…

 

Chargify is Profitable!

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I’ve waited a long time to write this blog post, and I know this will be bittersweet to some because we had to raise prices to get here, but most people we’ve told (merchants and other business owners) see this as a wonderful thing and one of the key reasons they rely on Chargify…

CHARGIFY IS PROFITABLE

Chargify is a great team of 10 people plus some outside help. We started much smaller and grew with the number of merchants we support.

After setting initial pricing much too low and then going through two adjustments since 2010, we got our prices in line with the real costs of supporting 900 businesses.

It feels very good after 3 years to NOT be burning cash each month.

And we still have a nice chunk of Mark Cuban’s investment from last summer. As I said to Mark early this year, “We want to invest that capital, not burn it on operational losses.” To which he replied, “Amen.”

Most people, upon hearing this, give us a high five or say something similar. Most entrepreneurs know that it’s usually a long road from idea to profitability.

But we couldn’t have done it without you, and the journey is still early - we have to maintain and grow Chargify to keep up with the needs of our merchants, affiliates, partners, dev/design shops, and eveyrone else who’s helped us get this far.

So with a small and growing profit, plus some money in the bank, we’re making Chargify better.

PROFIT AFFORDS A BETTER CHARGIFY

  • We hired our first full-time systems engineer last month. We jumped the gun on this a little bit, but keeping our systems healthy and growing is one of the most important things we do for you.

  • We’re testing data centers to set up our second set of infrastructure. Right now, we run in one data center, and that presents risks. We aim to run two data centers in geographically diverse areas.

  • Our second Level 2 tech support person starts in 2 weeks.

  • We’ve retained a highly regarded U.S. development firm (Mutually Human) to help us get large features out faster. They kicked off their first project with us at Chargicon, starting with conversations with merchants.

  • I’ll start collecting a moderate paycheck. I invested in Chargify when I joined the team in 2009 and I’ve been working for free ever since, but I don’t want to do that forever, and the things I do need to be paid for, whether it’s me doing them or someone else. (For those who care, my deal was: I’ll invest and work for free until we get this thing profitable.)

THANK YOU

Again, thanks to all of our merchants, affiliates, partners, dev/design shops, and eveyrone else who’s helped us get this far.

It’s your monthly payment to Chargify that makes this all possible.

We’ll continue developing Chargify to help you run more and more interesting parts of your business.

Thanks.

—- Lance Walley, co-founder/CEO
—- Chargify
—- lwalley@chargify.com
—- 415-244-0349 cell

 

Choosing a new datacenter - Part 1

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A few months ago, Lance posted about our continuing plans to improve the robustness and availability of our architecture.

Step number one in that process was hiring.  I (Drew Blas) have been very pleased to join Chargify and have definitely hit the ground running.  Together, we’ve identified a very aggressive roadmap to turn our service into the most bulletproof site you use.

We’ve already implemented a slew of small internal changes that will help us in many regards.  These represent the ‘low-hanging fruit’ that are the easy and quick actions we could take before beginning our implementation of the number one priority in our life.  We’ve added a lot of additional monitoring, logging, testing, and analytics to help ensure that as we execute major changes we don’t cause any disruption in ongoing operations.  We also hope to bring some of these internal insights to you directly in the form of improved automated status checks & uptime history that will help you to see how well we’re doing.

Our next big hurdle is to actually begin using a second data center.  We’ve talked to a variety of datacenters and providers with a wide range of skillsets and specialities.  We’ve tested, demoed and evaluated their offerings from many different perspectives, including performance, support, & security.

Ultimately, the approach that resonates most with us is the simple philosophy that “manual operations are most prone to cause problems or to fail to respond quickly in an emergency”. Instead, a properly built & tested architecture that can automatically monitor, scale, and heal itself is the ultimate paradigm that ensures our site can keep running no matter what.  This approach demands a highly dynamic and flexible environment with significant automated infrastructure behind it.

Of course, the best known provider of such an environment is Amazon Web Services.  AWS is also a PCI Level 1 Service Provider, meaning they have already completed an audit of the internal & physical security controls that are required in order for us to be confident that our partnership will allow us to continue maintaining our PCI Level 1 compliance.

We have not been exploring these options in a bubble.  We’ve taken input and advice from several experts in the field who have first-hand experience with many different providers.  One in particular that I’d like to point out is Tom Mornini, Co-founder and CTO of Engine Yard.  Several years ago, Engine Yard switched from internally managed hardware in a colo datacenter to hosting their customers on AWS, where they now run many thousands of systems.  In doing so, they saw the reliability and robustness of their customers’ sites skyrocket.  These types of anecdotes have been repeated time and again by many others.

AWS is not without issues.  They have had several high profile outages (indeed, when you host as much of the internet as AWS, any issue is going to be high-profile).  You can be sure that we have studied each one in detail, as well as how others have successfully and unsuccessfully planned for these failures.  At the top of that list is that we’ll be running simultaneously in as many different Availability Zones and Regions as possible.  I, personally, have run several sizable operations on AWS and have found it can be extremely robust when executed properly.  Also, a review of their documentation, technical papers, and architecture descriptions give us cause to be confident that a multi-region failure is no more likely than with any other pair of datacenters we might choose.  We’ll also be using every technology available (both inside and outside AWS) to make Chargify as redundant and highly-available as possible.

Our decision on a new provider is not yet final: we want to get your feedback.  We want to learn how you feel about this process and what we can do in order to ensure you that your data is secure and that the availability and performance of Chargify will only improve.  Please contact us and let us know what think!  It’s important to be clear that our choice for AWS is NOT for ease-of-use, nor is it for price.  Our exploration has focused on security & reliability and in these two areas, AWS is well ahead of its competitors.

Thanks!
- Drew Blas - “Keeper of the Uptime”

Some Little New Features, and Some Big Ones

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We’re always devoting some dev cycles to new features - some little, some big.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve released a few little features that will make your lives better.

And over the past few months, we’ve been working to satisfy another segment of merchants, who need better reporting tools to manage their growth. These are not released, yet, but they are close enough for a peek.

(A note about all images below: you can click to see a larger version.)

Little Features (available now)

Stripe payment gateway. New merchants have started requesting this at an increasing rate, so we got this added last weekend. Now you can have the convenience of easy credit card processing through Stripe, plus the rich features of Chargify to manage your business.

Delete subscription, and optionally, a customer and credit card. This has been an annoyance for merchants. No more!



Big Features (available soon)

As merchants grow, some of them want to watch things like churn and lifetime value, so they can make better decisions. We’ve had a small team working on this for several months, and we’re in the final weeks of optimization and bug fixes.

We’ll open this up to a handful of larger merchants first, to make sure the reports yield accurate and expected results, and then grow the group size as we implement feedback.

It’s important that we get these right (and quick in terms of rendering time) before we release them to many users. That’s why we’re approaching this slowly and methodically.

As these new features come out of beta, they will be added to various Chargify price plans. For instance, things like churn and lifetime value will probably be added starting at our $239 or $459 plans, and new revenue reports will probably be added starting at our $129 plan.

Our focus has been on churn and lifetime value, since they’ve been getting the most demand from merchants. Both are right around the corner. Then comes new & improved revenue reporting.

Reporting is an area that will continue to grow indefinitely. In time, some of our smaller segments of merchants will see industry-specific reports.

New datacenter switchover planned

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Today we’re very excited to announce the next step in our datacenter operations expansion.  We’ll be switching primary operations from our current datacenter to the Amazon Web Services cloud in order to allow us to continue to expand our service reliability and capacity.  We have been successfully running AWS as a backup site for two months and are comfortable that we’ve built a resilient new architecture that will allow us to greatly increase our quality of service and reduce outages. 

What to expect

We will be executing this switch on Saturday Dec 1st from 06:00-10:00 EST.  During this window, we expect all of Chargify’s services to CONTINUE TO RUN and are working to reduce any impact on availability to an absolute minimum.  If everything goes as planned, you’ll experience no interruption in service.  However, Chargify has a large number of moving parts, so if we run into any issues, there is the possibility for a small period where the site is unavailable to you.  If this occurs, our aim is to keep this interruption to less than 15 minutes.  We’ll be keeping you updated on the entire process at http://status.chargify.com/ and @chargifystatus

Background processing

In addition to serving web and API requests, Chargify is also constantly running renewals for your customers in the background.  For safety during the switch, these jobs will be paused.  This is a very regular part of our operation: We often pause job processing during any kind of maintenance and we’ve got a battle-tested system for ensuring that nothing is double-billed and nothing is missed.  This switchover will be no different and we expect to resume renewal processing immediately afterward.  This is a well tested process on our end and we’re confident that there is no long-term negative impact on our renewal handling.

The technical details

We’ve developed our new infrastructure to handle simultaneous operation across multiple datacenters.  However, one region must remain the ‘primary’.  The primary region is where our DNS is pointed and all requests to our service begin.  Because the DNS will be changing, you’ll be routed to new IP addresses whenever you make a request to Chargify. 

Our DNS TTL is set at 5 minutes, so for a short period, you may still be routed to the old datacenter.  The old datacenter will CONTINUE TO RUN, and will seamlessly forward your request behind-the-scenes to the new datacenter.  You may experience increased latency as your request bounces from one region to another, but your requests won’t be lost or rejected.

We’ll be operating in all three availability zones in us-west2 (Oregon) region.  Every piece of our infrastructure will be running simultaneously in 2a, 2b, & 2c.  We’ve also done significant testing to ensure we can handle an outage of an entire availability zone.  Finally, we’re also bringing online our THIRD regional backup in us-east1 that will be ready to take over on short notice if there is an extended outage of the entire us-west2 region.

New IP Addresses

Adding a new datacenter also means that the source we use for outgoing payment processing requests and webhooks will be coming from new locations.  We have set up several new IP addresses as potential sources for traffic coming from Chargify.  The latest set of IPs can always be referenced here: http://help.chargify.com/entries/20559136-chargify-ip-addresses  We know six looks like a lot, but that is ONE per datacenter, so six IPs allows us to expand into six more zones without bugging you again.  We’ll be notifying our merchants separately about this change, especially those using QuickPay.

Finally, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us.  Drew is our migration lead in charge of the switchover and you can reach him directly at drew.blas@chargify.com.


Trendslide Mobile Dashboard Integrates with Chargify for Business Metrics On The Go

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This is a guest post from Jeffrey Vocell at Trendslide
He can reached at jeffrey@trendslide.com

Revenue and new customers are at the heart of your business, and as a result, so are metrics that you want to watch closely. That’s why Trendslide, a mobile business dashboard app, has integrated with Chargify to provide you the ability to keep track of these metrics from anywhere.

We’re a startup in Manchester, NH, that has built a mobile business dashboard app for eCommerce and SaaS companies to easily get key business metrics on the iPhone or iPad.

Our iOS app is free to download and only takes about two minutes to setup, and can get information from Chargify, Shopify, Google Analytics, and much more.

We currently support these Chargify metrics:
New Customers
Total Payment
New Subscriptions.

Here’s how you can get your Chargify metrics within Trendslide app:
1. Download the Trendslide App from the iTunes App Store.
2. Open the app and go to ‘Add Trend’
3. Enter your site subdomain from your Chargify control panel, listed under Sites.
4. Enter your API Key found under the next tab in the control panel, API Access and click Log in.
5. Turn on the metrics you would like to view from your iPhone or iPad!

Once you have added your store, easily share graphs with colleagues and have discussions around metrics rather than waiting for meetings!

Check it out Trendslide on the app store, and let us know what you think. If you have any questions, feel free to email us using the email address at the top of this post.

Here are a few screen shots:

The Eventful Weekend that Wasn’t Eventful… the new Chargify “water system”

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About 7 months ago, we decided that we needed to hire someone to focus on making our infrastructure better.

And we not only needed a better version of what we had, but we also needed to create a better architecture for the future, one in which Chargify and our merchants’ businesses could rely on multiple data centers in geographically diverse locations.

We hired Drew Blas (@drewblas) in July, 2012, and he’s been working on these goals ever since.

With his work and help from much of our tech team, the system has gotten a lot better (faster, more stable) than it was a year ago.

And then a few days ago, we took a big step forward: we moved Chargify to new data centers, and we added the first layer of geographic diversity in a plan that includes more in the coming months.

It’s all part of our long-term plan to support our merchants and their customers with systems that run more efficiently and with less risk from data center problems and natural disasters.

I’m very happy to say that this big Saturday change was very uneventful (which is not an easy task - thanks Drew, Michael, Nathan, Kori, and everyone who was part of it in the wee hours Saturday morning).

Here’s a summary of the past, present, and future:

Phase 0:  2009 to Now

For the past few years, the Chargify app and database have been hosted at a PCI-specialized hosting provider in Kansas City. This system includes multiple web servers, “job” servers (like emails and webhooks), and database servers (master & replica).

This system is still running, but we moved all active processing to new systems on Saturday, December 1st.

 

Phase 1:  December 1, 2012

The Chargify app and database are now hosted at 2 locations within Amazon’s AWS hosting service.

Each installation of our system includes the same number of web servers and job servers as our Phase 0 system.

Basically, we doubled everything and spread it across 2 locations. This reduces the risk inherent in depending on 1 installation and 1 data center (almost every data center has failures now and then).

More Details:

We’re in 1 AWS “Region” (US-West-2, Oregon)

Within that region, we’re installed in 2 “Availability Zones”, each of which has its own complete Chargify installation, along with completely separate data center facilities (power, cooling, networking, and connection to the world).

These installations may be in the same building or in separate buildings, but even if separate buildings, we believe that Amazon uses locations that are close to each other. We see this as lower risk than where we used to be (in 1 building), but still prone to risk from a natural disaster in the general area.

Regarding our database systems, each new Chargify installation has 1 database server (no replica), but each installation acts as a backup or replica for the other installations. My old friend and Engine Yard co-founder, Tom Mornini (@tmornini) told us about something called Continuent “Tungsten” earlier this year, and it makes a lot of database magic possible. That’s about all I know!

 

Phase 2:  January, 2013

We’ll add a 3rd Chargify installation in another Availability Zone (still in the same Region as Phase 1). This will be an incremental improvement - better, but still exposed to risk from a large disaster in Amazon’s US-West-2 Region (ie, a widespread and lasting power outage). Certainly unlikely, but not a risk we want to accept for very long.

 

Phase 3:  February, 2013

We’ll repeat Phases 1 & 2 in another AWS Region (probably US-East-1, Virginia). Then we’ll really feel safe! We’ll have 6 copies of Chargify running: 3 on the US West Coast and 3 on the US East Coast.

Not only will this offer really high redundancy in case of failure or disaster somewhere, but it will also allow us to do more interesting things, like sending web traffic to the closest data center, which should make your and your customers’ experience a little bit better.

 

We’re pretty excited about this, because even though it’s not visible and perhaps it’s even “boring”, it’s boring like a good water system is boring - boring is good!

And like a water system, this kind of thing is an investment. It’s one of the reasons we raised prices earlier this year.

We’ve released sexier, more visible things recently, and more are in the works, but solid infrastructure is one of the things we think our merchants will really appreciate over the long term.

If you have any questions or you notice something not working right that might be related to our move, please contact our Support team. We definitely want to work out any kinks or bugs that may arise from the move.

Thanks.

—- Lance Walley, co-founder/CEO
—- lwalley@chargify.com

 

How to Choose the Best Smartphone Credit Card Reader for Your Business

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If you can pay for a 95¢ pack of gum with your credit card, then you should be able to use your card for that antique mahogany desk at the craft fair! The new smartphone card readers, aside from looking super cool, are also highly functional. Being able to accept credit cards anywhere at any time, regardless of whether you have a brick and mortar store, or are a local artist, can dramatically increase your sales and streamline your invoice process as well.

While there are probably around a hundred card processing apps available for different smartphones (iPhones win out here), only a small number of companies have joined an app to a specific card swiping device.See how they all compare before you decide which one is best for your business.

Square

Perhaps the smallest card reader on the market, Square is also one of the most easily recognizable devices. About the size of a book of matches, Square plugs directly into the audio jack and can be used on most iPhones or Android phones. Both the device and app are free, and no contract or merchant account is required, so money goes straight into your bank account.

It looks sleek, is easy to use, and allows you to make refunds easily. Square’s pricing plan is equally as simple. For every card swipe, Square takes 2.75%. However, non-swipe transactions incur a fee of 3.5% plus 15¢.

There are tons of other non-swipe card processing apps for the iPhone. Some of these are: Pocket Terminal (can handle multiple business accounts), iPay POS (compatible with dozens of the most popular payment gateways), ProcessAway (recurring billing), SWIPE (cheap app with lots of features), and many more.

Intuit GoPayment

Intuit GoPayment is similar to Square but with two distinct differences. While Square only works with Apple and Android products, Intuit GoPayment is also compatible with BlackBerry devices (Note: only the app, not the card swiper). This service also gives larger businesses the option of signing up for a $13 monthly plan with reduced transaction fees of 1.7% (swiped) and 2.7% (non-swiped). The app and card reader are free, and money is deposited right into your bank account.

PAYware Mobile

Made by VeriFone, one of the leading developers of electronic payment systems, PAYware Mobile is one of the few card processing apps that will soon have international capabilities covering Canada and the UK. PAYware Mobile, like many other apps, can integrate itself to your already existing merchant account, and allows you to track your transactions geographically. The upgraded series, PAYware Mobile Enterprise, delivers multiple card processing devices that have a PIN pad and a bar code scanner. Now you can have multiple POSs and inventory management stations that can all be managed remotely.

ROAMpay

ROAMpay is especially unique because it is most likely the only service that offers an app-card swiper combination for the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. The app itself is compatible with a surprisingly wide range of mobile phones, including many flip phones. Pricing varies depending on your business, and you need to be a ROAMpay member to get exact figures.

WARNING: Before you go showing off your fancy new card swiper, there is (at least) one more thing to think about. Imagine you were buying a diamond ring, and the seller behind the counter pulled out his Iron Man-personalized iPhone to process your $3,500 purchase. How would you feel about that? Would you feel a bit nervous? Would you prefer the traditional cash register method?

Making card transactions easier (and chicer) isn’t an excuse to ignore customers’ joys and hesitations. Consumer fears about security are very real, especially when it comes to personal information and privacy. While making card transactions easier and more efficient is good business for everybody, consumers (and sellers) still need to know that their data is safe as well.

6 Easy Ways to Save Your Data (and Your Life)

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Backing up your data is real easy to do, so you should never need to curse the day when you decided to leave early instead of save your files. But eventually your system probably will crash, and you most likely will end up cursing that day.

Having backed up your data in the cloud (where it can be accessed from any device whenever you need it) could be the silver lining on that fateful day when you get the blue screen of death.

1. Dropbox

Dropbox is an easy and quick way to store, sync, and share important documents or presentations that you’ll want to keep safe and portable. It’s cross platform and works on basically any smartphone. You get 2GB free but can upgrade to 50GB for $10/month and 100GB for $20/month. To store a file, just drag and drop it (or a copy to backup) into your virtual Dropbox directory. Access it whenever, wherever. You can install Dropbox on an unlimited number of devices to see and edit your files. Only the changed parts are synced, so your Internet doesn’t slow down.

2. Mozy Pro

This backup solution is meant for storing and syncing your data only. Mozy Pro also offers businesses the possibility of backing up their computers and servers, but each unit will need its own license. One desktop licenses is $3.95/month plus $0.50/GB per month, while a server licenses comes out to $6.95/month plus $0.50/GB per month. You can schedule automatic backups on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Custom settings let you choose how much bandwidth to use as and which files, or sets of files, to backup.

3. Jungle Disk

Jungle Disk is kind of like a combination Dropbox and Mozy Pro, but with a more complex pricing plan. The Workgroup Edition for sharing, syncing, and backing up your data for groups of two to 100 costs $4 per user/month plus storage fees, while the Server Edition provides Windows- and Linux-based server backup solutions for $5 per server/month plus storage fees. Both editions have unlimited storage space where you only pay for what you use.

4. Carbonite

Carbonite is only intended for storing your files, no sharing or syncing. You pay one annual rate for the amount of storage that you decide your business needs, and the rest is automatic. Once you install Carbonite it begins to backup your files, and will automatically and continually backup as you edit as long as you’re connected to the Internet. A web-based dashboard lets you monitor and control the backup status of all your files from any computer.

5. Livedrive

Livedrive prides itself on offering both backup solutions and a collaboration tool called Briefcase. Products in the Business line get you both options allowing you to store and monitor your data, and oversee shared working spaces where multiple employees can edit the same file. As usual, you can view/edit your files from any computer connected to the Internet, and all your files are synced across computers. Livedrive offers two products within the Business line, so check to see which one is best for your company.

6. SugarSync

And last, but not least, we get back to the basics. SugarSync is like Dropbox in that its cross platform works on basically any smartphone, and is a lean backup, file sharing, and syncing program with a chic demeanor. You get 5GB free, and it offers different pricing plans with varying storage space, including a multi-user business option. SugarSync also makes it easy to stream music directly to your phone or share photo albums with others.

While the sensibility of backing up is obvious, the ramifications of cloud computing are less than clear to everyone.

When your backup is stored online yet offsite, an Internet outage on your end or a problem with the storage company’s server means your data is out of reach.

And even though every major data storage company takes steps to adequately encrypt and secure your information, there are always risks in handing over your personal and valuable data.

No technology is foolproof, which is why you backup in the first place.

Customer Spotlight: Consulto

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Shifting Tides Reveal Opportunity

Having been in the web design industry since 1995, Matt Certo, co-founder of WebSolvers (a 12 person Orlando web design firm), has seen the technology landscape evolve dramatically. Back in the early days of his company, most Websites were built from scratch using Notepad. If a WebSolvers client wanted a website, it was built in pure HTML and content update requests were sent via Fax machine.

As time went on, content management systems, dynamic Web applications, and API feeds broadened the landscape dramatically.  Clients wanted it faster, cheaper, and more powerful than ever.  As Certo explains it, “we began to see a portion of our prospects asking for the functionality of a $25,000 Website with only a $2,500 budget.  They needed the time of our best folks, but were turning to less expensive alternatives and settling for a lesser result.”  As it turned out, that was both a problem and an opportunity.

Conceiving a Product

Among all of those shifts, Certo and the team at WebSolvers saw an opportunity to build a product.  “We wanted to figure out a way to meet that client need in a way that made financial sense for them and us,” he explains.  They crafted Consulto, a Web design platform for professional firms (i.e. law firms, accounting firms, and general consultants), the segment of clients with which they had experienced this common set of demands.

The crew set out to build a product that met its most common requests from prospects who all seemed to want:

  • a professional design and layout
  • custom colors and fonts
  • control over content updates
  • the ability to associate news releases, service areas, and biographies dynamically
  • integration with social media tools
  • the whole thing finished quickly and inexpensively

They ended up with Consulto, a tool that would enable everything their prospects were looking for, packaged in a Web app / Software as a Service fashion.  Instead of building these sites for clients over several months, they could simply “turn them on” for them.  As Matt explains it, “we are now able to deliver a commonly requested project without incremental labor costs.”

Not Trying to be All Things to All People

While the team at WebSolvers was excited and ambitious, they were careful not to try to be all things to all people.  “We didn’t want to build another broad content management system that works for any industry.  There are plenty of general platforms that can be used from one industry to the next,” Certo explains.  Instead, the team focused on building Consulto in a way that addressed the deeper needs of the target market.  In turn, this freed them from worrying about the needs of every other industry.

Could We Really Take This On?

As president of WebSolvers, Matt already had a successful company. Like other entrepreneurs, Matt had conflicting feelings about maintaining focus on the core business while trying to do something new.  “There is a fine line between being innovative and straying from the things you do best,” he explains.

There were also logistical questions.  Big ones.  How will we budget for this project?  How can we free up the right personnel?  How can we do this right without losing focus from our core clients?  How are we going to tackle billing and cancellations? (This is where Chargify came in.) Thirteen years ago he tried to put a product like this out on the market, but never made it to the finish line because of some of these questions.  “We kept saying we would get to it soon but we never did,” he explains.

Launching Consulto

Matt reconciled many of these questions, thanks in part to the book Linchpin by Seth Godin, which happened to come out during the development process.  “Godin’s book helped me to look at creativity and innovation in a new way.  Product development is really art and it requires your focus and your energy to ship it out the door.”  In order to maintain focus on both WebSolvers and Consulto, Certo pursued it primarily on nights and weekends.  “It sounds like a real drag to spend your weekends working on software, but I really enjoyed it.  Shipping became a personal and professional challenge to me, Certo explains.”

This is a really great point for existing companies trying to launch another company or get a new product off the ground.  Without pursuing a hard date, it’s easy to get side tracked and put your product or company on the back burner.  Setting a hard date holds you accountable.  It takes a lot of personal will to get to the finish line, and treating Consulto like a client, with a deadline helped ensure the product made it out the door in just over a year.

Byproducts

One of the cool things that came out of Consulto was an entirely separate product.  Certo credits the book Rework for helping him identify what author Jason Fried calls byproducts, separate products that might spin out of things you’re already working on.  “We were working on a component of Consulto called the marketing dashboard, a roll-up of different performance APIs that would help site owners visualize their site performance.  We thought, ‘why not make this available to other sites as well?’”  From that, the product MetricPulse was born.  The Web app and iPhone app are available at http://www.metricpulse.com.  It was also another chance for WebSolvers to put Chargify to work!

About Consulto
Consulto is a software product from the team at WebSolvers whose goal is to help professional services firms quickly and easily create websites. Consulto puts the content of the sites in the hands of their users and helps them help themselves.  Consulto gives users the same functionality as a website but without the cost and hassle.  Consulto gives professional services what they need, right out of the box and without as they say on their website, a “120 day project to suffer through.”

Want to learn more about Consulto? Check out the product website or find them on Twitter.

Release v1.7.0: Taxes

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Version 1.7.0 brings a brand new feature to Chargify: Taxes!

The ability to define taxes in Chargify is something that many of you, especially those in the EU, have been asking for awhile.

Check out the documentation here: http://docs.chargify.com/taxes

As always, If you have any questions, give us a shout on twitter (@chargify /cc @npverni).

Chargify Grows, Mark Cuban Invests

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We’re happy to announce that there are now over 550 businesses using Chargify to manage their subscriptions & billing. We’re proud to have an amazing customer base and loyal Chargify fans. Some of you are even showing off your candy.

Feedback from our growing customer base has been great. We’re busy building more amazing features to help you grow your business with Chargify.

And in more good news, Mark Cuban has invested in Chargify. Mark’s experience and wisdom building great companies gets us even more excited for the future of Chargify. BRL Law Group represented Chargify in the equity financing deal.

Thanks for being great customers, and as always, good luck growing your businesses.

~ Lance


Great Stuff Coming! And TechStars Cloud wants you!

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It’s been a few months since we closed an investment from Mark Cuban, and we’ve been busy expanding our organization, growing our software, and adding merchants!

A lot of great things are in the works. Some things are invisible, like better infrastructure, and some will be very visible and will help our merchants do things they’re going to love!

And I’m honored to be a business mentor for the 2012 TechStars Cloud program in San Antonio, Texas. I was at their open house last week and it was great to meet a room full of entrepreneurs, other mentors, and all of the great folks from TechStars and Rackspace who are making this happen.

These kinds of events help us stay connected to the needs of startups. And it’s great to see people pursuing their ideas and, quite possibly, developing new companies and employing people across the country and in San Antonio.

If you’re interested in TechStars Cloud, check out the link above or hit up @seats on Twitter… he co-founded SliceHost several years ago and now he heads up TechStars Cloud. The program is meant for people who are building pieces of the cloud itself… not just running on the cloud, but actually building pieces of the cloud… see their site for more details.

And, finally, if you like pics, here’s a collection of pics from last week… mostly a group of us touring San Antonio in our cowboy hats! But a few of the pics are actually at the great Geekdom space that hosted the event.

Chargify Performance

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One of the main things we’re working on at Chargify these days is improving the user experience, especially with regards to the speed of the site and the API.  If you’ve been with us for a while, you’ve probably seen things slow down quite a bit over time.  If you’re new, Chargify probably just seems slow most of the time.  I’m here to tell you that we don’t find the current state acceptable, and we’re working on it.

Bottleneck

Our bottleneck is currently our database.  We made a decision long ago to house our data inside a database system managed by our PCI-specialized host.  This was a tremendous benefit at the time, and helped us achieve Level 1 PCI Compliance, which remains an important feature of Chargify to this day.

But, the benefits of being in this environment are now overshadowed by our inability to scale.  We allowed ourselves to get behind the growth curve and now we’re trying to catch up.

Here’s what we’re doing to alleviate this bottleneck and other performance woes:

Query Optimizations


There’s been enough low hanging fruit in query optimizations that we’ve been able to maintain our performance through the growth of the past few months.  But we’ve only been able to maintain, and not get ahead like we want.  We’ve added indexes, optimized paths, and simplified logic.

Right now we’re working on a change to the way subscriptions are created that should give a substantial boost to the speed of signups.  Over time, we’ve added features to the signup process (such as components, coupons, and taxes) which have made it a more and more complex path over time.  Now we’re stepping back and approaching signup from a more educated position to make it as fast as possible.  We’ll always be limited by the time of the external calls to the payment gateways, but we’re going to make the Chargify piece as fast as possible.

Caching and Feature Degradation

You may have noticed that the Site stats (revenue, signups, expired cards, etc), that used to be on every page in the UI, are now only on the dashboard.  This is a feature that most people won’t miss being on every page, so it was an easy call to remove it and get a small performance bump.

Most of the values in those Site stats were cached values, but we realized our caching strategy for them could be better (especially the expired card count).  Once we get a handle on some of the bigger performance hogs, we’ll be revisiting this and doing a better job of caching this piece, as well as a lot of the rarely-changing information in the interface.

API Rate Limiting

We first talked about API rate limiting a few months back, but tabled the discussion for a while based on feedback from merchants.  What we heard was that we have to be very smart about the way we rate-limit, because no merchant wants a signup blocked in any case.  Our goal is not to ever block a signup, but to make sure there are no API hogs (aware or runaway-script-unaware) affecting the experience for everyone.

We have the technology in place to begin rate limiting when we have to, but currently we’re collecting data about usage habits so we can put smart limits in place.  When we do begin enforcing limits, these things will be true:

  • You’ll receive warning before being throttled, and we’ll help you find ways to reduce your usage
  • Higher paying plans will receive higher thresholds
  • You’ll have time to make changes to your code, and we’ll be able to show you your recent usage for reference

New Queues

A lot of the work Chargify does is in the background: sending webhooks, sending emails, renewing subscriptions, etc.  Our current queueing system (based on DelayedJob, for those curious) uses the app’s main database to store job information, only increasing the load on our main bottleneck.  We’re mostly done converting these jobs over to a different solution (Redis/Resque) that should help alleviate some stress and keep our status site squeaky clean.

“Social Engineering”

Did you know we currently renew every active subscription ever created in Chargify, since Day 1?  Sure, we separate the priority of “real” vs. “fake” subscriptions, but we try to keep doing work, without stopping, for every Chargify user.  We’re currently planning ways of limiting the lifespan of test data.  This will probably come down to asking you the merchant: are you still using this test data?  If the answer is “No” or we receive no answer for long enough, we’ll prune your data or scale back your resources.

New Database Cluster

The biggest change we’re making is a move to a spacious new database cluster that we manage.  It is still hosted inside of our PCI-compliant environment, but it will give us more control to scale and grow.

We’re on track to make this a New Year’s gift from us to you.  We’re planning for very minimal downtime, and you’ll have ample heads up for when your particular migration is scheduled.

Conclusion: Our Merchants Rock

We are very fortunate to have merchants as awesome as all of you.  We have many raving fans who are happy to spread the word about our subscription billing service.  Some of these same fans have been quite up front with us though - they aren’t afraid to point out the Chargify performance issues and what it means for their business.  They are also full of suggestions and offers to help, and for that we are grateful!

I wish this post was more about what we have already done and the results we’ve achieved.  But that post will have to come later.  You guys deserve to be informed, and I hope that’s what I’ve done.  Thanks for all of your support, and I’ll be back soon with a results post.

 

Chargify at 3 Years Old

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Wow, it’s been 3 years since Chargify got started.

It was early 2009. The folks at Grasshopper (below) recognized recurring billing as something more businesses wanted to do, but actually doing it is more complex than most people think. They launched Chargify within Grasshopper.

I was one of those people finding out the hard way.

At the same time Chargify was starting out, I was wrapping up my role as co-founder/CEO of Engine Yard after growing it to 80 people. Engine Yard experienced the pain that Grasshopper was aiming to solve. We solved it with labor and custom software, which was error-prone & expensive.

Long story short: we found each other and I joined Chargify later in 2009, around the time the first merchants started running on Chargify.

SO MUCH IN A FEW YEARS

We’ve grown our customer base, added software developers and support crew, added features, worked with partners, and generally done all the stuff a business does as it grows from idea into a real business.

When I think back to 2010, it’s amazing that we didn’t support coupons, taxes, or statements - all of which are big things to many merchants. And until early 2011, we didn’t have any Level 2 tech support separate from our software dev team.

Many areas have filled in, and yet we have at least another year of similar developments.

Fun Story: How Mark Cuban got involved: We wanted to jump ahead of revenue a bit, so we could develop features faster, and we wanted a smart outsider who could bring cash and wisdom. One of my Twitter followers (@MarshallHaas, a fellow motorcycle rider) rode his motorcycle from Dallas to Sacramento, and I showed him around town on our bikes. While out on the road, he suggested I email Mark Cuban re Chargify. I did, and a deal was done that night. I’ve done venture capital deals before, and this was very different! It was fast, as in a few emails and done! (Btw, other than Mark’s investment in 2011, Chargify is funded by founders & revenue.)

WE’VE MADE A FEW BAD CALLS

We changed our pricing in 2010 and didn’t carry it out as smoothly as possible. It was absolutely the right thing to do to get revenue in line with costs, but our execution left a bad taste.

And some technology choices that were right in early 2010 started being wrong in late 2011, as the number of merchants running on Chargify passed 700. We started running into capacity problems here and there. We spent December solving about half of the issues and the rest will be finished in January. (Read our system architect’s blog post from December.)

Details: Our data center provides a managed database as part of their PCI environment. It was great for a couple of years, until we noticed performance problems once in a while. At the time, we were focused on new features and integrations that merchants really want, so we only shifted part of our time to it. Other components needed to be changed, too, like replacing delayed_job with Resque (many of you won’t know what those are, and I only barely know).

A handful of systems have been upgraded with no downtime, but one change did result in some logging and webhooks not being processed for a few days, and that led to the need to create a new interface for merchants to replay missing webhooks. This may indeed be something useful in the bigger picture, but we didn’t intend to work on it right now.

So, the point is, December and January got swallowed up with improvements that are tremendously valuable, but at the cost of pushing off a few really useful new features that some merchants really wanted by now.

LOOKING AT THE NEW YEAR

We’ll wrap up January with the capacity improvements mentioned above, and then we have a backlog of fantastic features and integrations that we’ll get back to.

Can. Not. Wait.

Most of the team is meeting in Raleigh, NC, later this month. Several of our software developers live there, and they’ll be moving into our new Raleigh satellite office (see pics above & below… we just got the space, so it’s empty here, but that Starbucks right outside will help ensure productivity!).

We’ll be reviewing input from many sources as we decide priorities. There are hosted page improvements, MailChimp integration, and dozens of other things - some very small, others very large.

Priority will go to things that help the greatest number of merchants, as well as things that help partners and affiliates who support merchants.

Sometime in 2012, we’ll shift our focus from new features and new market segments to what I call “cruising altitude,” which is the point when we satisfy the needs of most of our core SMB customers, and then we just polish the product over and over. That’s how something gets really refined. It takes time.

It’s interesting how the process just works itself out. We attracted a certain segment of the market, and a feedback loop developed. We’re already at a point where some merchants are perfectly happy, but others still need things we don’t support. At some point, a large majority will be happy, and most new feature requests will be for niche things.

Of course, there’s a danger of getting stuck in a bad segment of any market, but it feels good where we are now… small & medium businesses run by genuinely nice people who are happy to pay a reasonable amount for us to manage a chunk of their business. That chunk is important and hard to do, but it’s not their core business.

AN ENJOYABLE STAGE

I really like this stage of a company: 10 people supporting other small and medium businesses. We’re small enough to be very friendly & self-managed, but we’re big enough that our future is far more predictable than it was 1 or 2 years ago. And every member of the team cares about our service and our merchants.

RADIO SHACK & THE LONG TERM

Over the holidays, I walked into a Radio Shack to get some audio stuff, and there on the counter were a half-dozen Basic Stamp computers. Parallax makes them, and the last thing I did as co-founder/CEO in 1996 was to finalize the contract with Radio Shack. I’m always happily surprised when I bump into them somewhere. It’s been almost 20 years since we started manufacturing Basic Stamps, and they’re still selling! Isn’t that amazing in any tech market?

The Radio Shack experience reminded me that Chargify is a long-term thing. The company may outgrow me in a few years, and then someday later, I’ll talk to someone in an elevator and they’ll mention that their business runs on Chargify!

THANKS, AND ONWARD!

Thanks to everyone who’s helped us grow this far! Let us know if you need anything, and let us know your priorities as we map out 2012.

Oh, and here’s a new screen cast that I made on January 1st. I’d love to hear your feedback. Some have said it helps them understand Chargify in a nutshell.

Chargify Expansion Update

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Back in early December, 2011, our system architect, Michael Klett, blogged about capacity limits we were reaching due to growth in the number of merchants running on Chargify and the number of customers they all support.

RECAP OF LATE 2011 & EARLY JANUARY 2012

* Over the second half of 2011, we occasionally noticed slower-than-acceptable system responsiveness, but it was just occasional, and most merchants were happy. There are many new features that merchants really want, so we stayed focused on features. By the Fall, that was a mistake!

* We let ourselves lose sight of how fast our merchants were growing, and sometime around November, resource utilization hockey-sticked. System performance got pretty bad, I’m sorry to say.

* Our tech team shifted focus entirely to system architecture and hardware improvements. We worked with our managed data center staff and outside consultants to move as quickly as possible to solve capacity problems without taking the system down. One merchant told me that he figured it was like, “Working on an engine while the car is moving.”

* Over the course of December and early January, we did things like:

- Renewed our PCI audit.
- Stopped processing test subscriptions older than 6 months.
- Replaced our JSON processor with a newer, faster version.
- Upgraded our current database server.
- Added another utility server for processing background jobs.
- Our data center staff upgraded firewalls to increase security.
- Replaced delayed_job with Resque, which uses Redis instead of MySQL.

* We did crack a few eggs while doing these things. For instance, when we first implemented Resque, there were a few problems that resulted in some charges being processed, but not logged in your merchant activity stream, and in some cases, webhooks not being generated. Or in another case, the firewall upgrades caused some SSL connections to time out. Both things were stressful and we apologize for that.

THINGS TODAY AND FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS

Things are definitely running better now, and we no longer hear from merchants regarding slow app & API performance.

However, we want even more headroom beyond current needs, so here’s what’s still coming between now and mid-Feburary:

* A larger database infrastructure. It will be more fault-tolerant and have a lot more capacity for growth. This is the single largest thing left, and may require some middle-of-the-night downtime. We’ll let you know as we get closer.

* We’re increasing the number of front-end servers and utility servers again, just for good measure.

I’m sorry we didn’t jump on this sooner. We just didn’t see the problem growing as quickly as it was, and we were too focused on new feature development. We won’t make that mistake again.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me via email or cell phone:

Lance Walley, co-founder/CEO
lwalley@chargify.com
+1-415-244-0349

Unplanned Downtime: Managed/Shared Database Failed Just 2 Days Before our Move

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UPDATE AS OF 11:20AM EST / 8:20AM PST: WE’RE BACK ONLINE, VERIFYING SYSTEMS

This is definitely not what we wanted or expected just 2 days before we move to our own database machines.

Here’s the summary:

1. Our data center runs a robust, redundant PCI-compliant managed/shared database system. It’s been a reasonable option for 2 years, but we’ve been outgrowing it - slowly at first, then quickly at the end of 2011.

2. In Q4 2012, we decided to move to our own dedicated DB system. This entails having the data center set up equipment, as well as bringing on a sys admin in-house as our general needs increase. Our new sys admin started earlier in January (thanks @sebastianstadil for the personal recommendation).

3. The move away from the managed/shared DB to our own DB system was scheduled for this coming Friday night (just 2 days from now), and we sent out a notice about it yesterday.

4. Our data center’s DB went down early this morning, and they have been unable to bring it back up, at least without losing some data.

5. We had data replication running 2 nights ago, and given the data center’s inability to restore their database quickly, we decided to expedite the work on our new DB… to move to our system now instead of Friday night. That will allow us to get back up around the same time, but with little or no data loss, and without another (albeit short) cutover downtime Friday night.

Sorry about this. We know our merchants depend on us to keep their businesses running!

We also have a solid recommendation for a new PCI data center, recommended to us by a respected ecommerce site that’s made the move through several data centers and seems to have found one that keeps them happy long-term.

—- Lance Walley, co-founder/CEO
—- Chargify
—- lwalley@chargify.com
—- 415-244-0349 cell

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