Stripe review

Often you're already using it without noticing: Stripe sits underneath many platforms as the thing moving the money. You'd reach for it directly when payments need to happen somewhere your platform doesn't reach: a custom application, an invoicing system, a membership flow you built. If a hosted store handles your checkout and you're happy, use what's built in.

Yes, and it's a common reason to use it directly. We've built exactly that: a parent portal where monthly invoices generate from booked attendance and move through draft, sent, and paid, with Stripe handling the billing and receipts families can download. If your business bills rather than sells from a cart, Stripe supports that shape properly.

It collapsed a process that used to be painful. The traditional route meant a merchant account, a separate gateway, often a reseller in between, application forms, setup fees, and a wait: layers of intermediaries, each taking a cut and adding friction. Stripe replaced that with an account you can open and take real payments from in a day. Anyone who set up online payments before it existed remembers the difference.

Less than its reputation suggests, up to a point. The hosted pieces (payment links, the checkout page, the billing portal) are no-code and very good, and plenty of businesses never go further. Beyond that, it's developer-first by design: the moment you want payments woven into your own product, that's an integration, not a setting. That's exactly why it turns up in every custom build we do.