Just wondering if there are plans to implement an internal subscription payment manager into Sharetribe Go instead of using external providers like ChargeBee. I know of the work around with ChargeBee, but this involves a fair bit of manual work and time to approve people for posting when they subscribe and disapprove when a subscription runs out, especially with potentially 100’s or 1000’s of sellers on the site, it could definitely be automated and streamlined internally. This would also make different subscription packages possible, such as one for photoless listings and another which allows sellers to add photos to listings.
We’re seriously considering using your marketplace service but this is the one thing missing, as we aren’t that keen on charging people a commission fee for each sale when so many other marketplaces already do that.
Is this something ShareTribe Flex could accomodate? Obviously with technical knowledge required to implement it.
And good to hear about your business model, this is an approach that totally makes sense.
Right now, we’re not working on supporting such a feature in Go. That would be a great addition though, I agree! We’ll keep it in mind for future development, but I can’t promise any timeline.
Note that many Sharetribe Go customers have been able to grow real far even with just the manual workaround. Sure, it can be a significant amount of manual work as you grow however it is a great and cheap way to test your idea and adjust your model on the go. I wouldn’t discard that approach too fast
If you’re already sure that this business model is the way to go for your marketplace, Flex could be a great way to automate things, yes. It would require a bit of custom development, still, but you’d still benefit from all the great things that Flex offers and it would still be 10 times cheaper and faster to build versus starting from scratch, even with that unique customization to adjust to your flow. Don’t hesitate to get started with Flex if you haven’t already!
