Frequently Asked Questions

International

  • I'm not in the US. Can I use Spreedly?

    Absolutely! We may not support a payment gateway in your country yet, but we're happy to add one for you.

  • Does Spreedly support currencies other than USD?

    Yes: when you create your Spreedly site, you can choose what currency you'll transact business in on that site. If you don't see your preferred currency in the drop-down get in touch - we'd love to add it for you.

  • Can subscribers who have a different native currency buy from me?

    Yes, what happens is that Spreedly submits the charge in whatever currency you've chosen as your primary, and either your gateway or the subscriber's credit card will take care of converting the transaction into the subscriber's native currency.

  • Can I price my plans in multiple currencies?

    Not yet, but it's something we plan to support down the road. Stay tuned!

  • Can the Spreedly payment interface be localized?

    Check out our Payments API - it allows you to provide a fully custom experience that you can localize as you see fit.

Payment Collection

  • What payment gateways does Spreedly support?

    See the latest list of supported payment gateways.

  • Can you add support for any payment gateway?

    We do have some minimum requirements to support a payment gateway, the primary one being that we can charge against an account on an ongoing basis without requiring any intervention by the account holder. Google Checkout and 2checkout are examples of two payment gateways that are nearly impossible for us to fully support.

  • How does Spreedly pay me?

    Spreedly never touches your customers' money - it goes straight into your merchant account. So the real question is: how do you pay Spreedly? The answer is that we charge your credit card or other payment method every month for your monthly and transaction fees.

Integration

  • Can I integrate Spreedly with technology X?

    Spreedly only requires the ability to do standard HTTP calls, so absolutely. For more details, check out our integration page.

Specific Features

  • How do free trials work?

    Spreedly supports two different kinds of free trials: payment info up-front, and no payment info required. In the former, customers sign up for a paid plan, enter their payment details, but don't get charged until their initial period expires. In the latter, customers subscribe to a plan and have access until it expires, at which time they can enter their payment details and get a paid subscription. Both forms of free trial ensure that the customer does not get more than one trial.

  • Can one subscriber buy a plan for another subscriber?

    Yes, using a Gift Plan. There was a detailed discussion about Gift Plans on our support site recently.

  • Can I charge clients usage fees on top of their regular subscription?

    Soon; we're currently in the process of implementing the ability to add one-time fees onto a recurring subscription.

  • Can Spreedly charge my customers a one-time setup fee?

    Not yet, but we have definite plans to add support for it.

  • Does Spreedly support charging for usage rather than time?

    At this point our focus is on being world-class at time-based subscriptions, but usage-based subscriptions are an area we've talked a lot about internally and would like to support down the road. So not for awhile, but there's a good chance we will someday.

  • Does Spreedly have VAT support?

    Not explicitly, but we can easily accommodate it; see the recent support discussion for details on implementing VAT with Spreedly.

Customization

  • Can I host the Spreedly payment process on my own domain?

    Yes, using the Payments API.

  • Is it possible to customize the look of the payment screens?

    If you need a custom look, for now you'll want to use the Payments API. Down the road we plan to allow customization of the Spreedly payment pages so you don't have to host them yourself, but we're not there yet.

Stability & Security

  • Is Spreedly going to be around for the long haul?

    We're low on overhead and high on passion, so we'll be doing this for years to come. We run side businesses of our own on the Spreedly platform, so we're vested in its success in lots of different ways. Of course we can't guarantee the future, but at this point we spend a lot more time worrying about how to help our clients succeed than we do about whether Spreedly will make it.

  • Who's using Spreedly?

    For a few examples check out Ars Technica, Neobudget and Weewar.

  • What if I need to move to a different service?

    We'll work with you to get you a full export of data, including credit card information. For obvious reasons we have to do some high-ceremony security before releasing the data, but we will make it happen.

  • What about security?

    The security of your customers' information is a *big* deal for us. We're extremely motivated to keep it safe, as one of the big advantages of using Spreedly instead of doing billing yourself is that security becomes our concern instead of being yours. One of our founders is focused on nothing besides the security and stability of our platform, and he has extensive experience with keeping financial data safe.

    Can we guarantee security? No, unfortunately no one can do that. But we're doing everything in our power to keep data safe since we know all of our clients are depending on us to have their backs.

    Also, if it helps, we think Bruce Schneier is the man. Just sayin'.

  • Is Spreedly PCI DSS compliant?

    Short answer: Spreedly is fully PCI compliant. Long answer: right from the start, we've built Spreedly to meet and exceed the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). We have achieved PCI DSS compliance by addressing and fulfilling all the requirements laid out in the SAQ-D by the PCI Security Standards Council. While we are pleased to be fully compliant, our "gold sticker" is simply a point-in-time measurement of our efforts to date. The whole Spreedly team pledges to consistently improve our security efforts and be continually vigilant in protecting all types of sensitive financial data.

More Questions?

We provide additional support via Get Satisfaction and you can always email us at support@spreedly.com.

Our integration page contains everything you need to integrate Spreedly with your site.

You might also want to have a look at a sampling of our features.

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