Ask HN: Is Braintree on its death bed?

13 points by buf 3 years ago

I've been using Braintree as a way to interface with Paypal subscriptions for 8 years now.

Paypal recently upped their subscription game with a better SDK, but I still prefer Braintree as I have 8 years of customer data sitting there. But I'm having second thoughts. Braintree seems like it's just waiting to die. My experience:

- I sent two support requests into Braintree 8 days ago. I received an auto-response but then nothing.

- I setup a couple issues on their github also 8 days ago and nothing. I don't assume that there needs to be any SLA here so this could be a moot point.

- Their documentation is out of date. Most of the features are completely undocumented and I have to go through the source code on github to understand what params I should be using

- Also on their docs, I would run into 404s.

Is it time to throw in the towel and just build subscriptions direct with PayPal? What is your experience recently with braintree?

codegeek 3 years ago

Isn't Braintree owned by paypal anyway ? If they do kill it, they will probably move customers to their new thing ?

I do agree that Paypal has become a clusterfk of things where they have created a mess of their own products and some they acquired. Now there is too much confusion with names like "Paypal Standard", Paypal pro and what not. Do I take credit cards directly with paypal pro or do i use braintree or ?? Confusing!!

athammer 3 years ago

I know Square is venturing into this space if it isn’t already in it with Square e-commerce.

It seems like right now the only viable option in this space is Stripe. I’m hoping Square e-commerce can provide be the next competitor in this space with good DX.

halfjoking 3 years ago

If Braintree doesn't have the resources, it's Paypal's fault since they acquired them.

I use Stripe for my SaaS, and I'm also thinking of accepting crypto with Bitpay. Users have requested using Paypal, but given Paypal's recent account bans [1] I won't be considering it.

[1] https://reclaimthenet.org/paypal-bans-free-speech-union/

  • buf 3 years ago

    I use stripe as well, but I found offering PayPal upped paid user conversion rate by 30%. I really have no choice but to support it.

droopyEyelids 3 years ago

All the braintree developments over the past years are to support enormous enterprise customers.

If you’re a SMB paypal doesnt care about your business in the braintree product line, cc processing is too small margin business for them to have even a single person updating documentation. Or phone support, or any kind of support really.

Remember they used to have better phone support than like any other company?