Services - Stripe billing system development that holds up in production.
Stripe looks easy in the docs and turns into a billing system you can't trust in production: dropped webhooks, double charges, customers on the wrong plan, proration that's just wrong. Stripe billing system development is the part the tutorials skip. This is one senior, founder-led engineer who builds the whole billing system — subscriptions, usage, webhooks, entitlements — one priority at a time, and ships it as reviewable code.
Plans tailored to the build
One senior engineer, one priority at a time
One senior, founder-led engineer takes this build week by week and ships production-ready code as pull requests you review and merge. Time and cost vary by plan and scope, and we’ll cover both before you start.
What's included
- Subscription billing wired end to end: Checkout, the customer portal, plan changes, upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations with correct proration, not just a checkout button.
- Idempotent webhook handling that survives retries and out-of-order events, with signature verification and an event log so nothing is dropped or processed twice — the core of a billing system you can trust.
- An entitlement layer that maps subscriptions to what a customer can actually access, so plan and feature gating stays correct as customers move between tiers.
- Usage-based and metered billing: usage reporting, tiered pricing, and invoices that match what customers actually used.
- Dunning and recovery: failed-payment retries, recovery emails, and grace-period handling so you stop quietly losing revenue to churned cards.
- Reconciliation and safe rollout: a test-mode suite, reconciliation against Stripe, and a migration path with rollback when you're moving off a broken or home-grown billing setup.
How we build it, week by week
One priority at a time, shipped in reviewable increments you merge as they land — not one big drop at the end.
Week 1 — map the billing architecture
We model your plans, entitlements, and the events that move money, then design the billing architecture — the data model, the webhook flow, the source of truth — before writing the integration.
Weeks 2–3 — subscriptions and idempotent webhooks
Checkout, the customer portal, and the idempotent webhook handlers that keep Stripe and your database in sync, shipped as PRs with an event log and test-mode coverage.
Weeks 3–4 — usage, entitlements, and dunning
Metered billing, the entitlement layer that gates features by plan, and dunning so failed payments recover instead of silently churning.
Ongoing — reconcile, migrate, and extend
Reconciliation against Stripe, a safe migration off any old billing setup with rollback, and new plans or pricing as they come — shipped weekly, paused when billing is stable.
Stack
- Stripe (Billing, Checkout, Connect)
- Node / Express
- Next.js / React
- PostgreSQL
- Idempotent webhook workers
- Stripe test mode + reconciliation
Is this the right build for you?
A good fit when
- You need a real Stripe billing system — subscriptions, usage, entitlements, webhooks — that stays correct in production, owned by one senior engineer.
- Your billing is broken, home-grown, or half-built and quietly losing revenue, and you want it fixed and rebuilt properly.
- You want the billing code in your repo, reviewed and tested, not a black box you can't audit when money is on the line.
Not a fit when
- You just need a single checkout button on a static page — Stripe's own no-code tools do that.
- You want us to own your Stripe account, payouts, or compliance decisions — we're code-only; that stays yours.
- You need a full finance and RevOps team, not a billing system — that's a different hire.
Builds like this
Real month-plus builds you can read end to end, delivered on the same subscription.
Why on a subscription
Billing is never one-and-done: a new plan, a proration edge case, a webhook that starts failing at 2am, a pricing change. A flexible monthly plan you can pause gives you a senior engineer to build the system and stay on tap for the edge cases — instead of a SaaS-development agency's fixed bid, and without carrying a specialist salary between changes. A billing system is a month-or-more build, not a same-day fix shop.
Frequently asked questions
- Can you fix and rebuild a Stripe setup someone else broke?
- Yes — most billing work we take on is inherited. Send the repo and the symptoms: double charges, stuck subscriptions, webhooks timing out, wrong plans. We trace it, reconcile against Stripe, and rebuild the parts that can't be trusted, with a migration path and rollback so we don't make it worse mid-flight.
- Do you handle the money side or just the code?
- Just the code. We build and ship the billing system — Checkout, webhooks, entitlements, usage, dunning, Connect — as PRs in your repo. We don't touch your Stripe account settings, payouts, or compliance decisions. That stays yours.
- How do you make sure webhooks don't drop or double-process?
- Every handler is idempotent and signature-verified, backed by an event log so retries and out-of-order events are safe, and covered by a test-mode suite plus reconciliation against Stripe. Idempotency and the event log are the foundation, not an afterthought — it's the difference between a demo and a billing system.
- How is this different from a general SaaS development agency?
- A broad SaaS development agency treats billing as one line item and staffs whoever's free. This is a senior engineer who builds billing systems specifically, on a flat monthly you can pause. You get the depth — idempotency, entitlements, reconciliation, migrations — without a fixed-bid contract, and Stripe Tax or Connect slot in as line items rather than the headline.
Got a project? Let's ship it.
3 spots open. Tell us what you need shipped. We’ll match the plan and timeline to the work on a short sales call, then deliver it in reviewable increments.