Archive for December, 2024

How to Charge Recurring Fees with a Stripe Subscription

The Stripe integration supports two types of recurring payments: subscriptions and payments in installments. A subscription charges a customer at regular intervals until it is canceled, while a recurring payment in installments allows customers to pay in a set number of installments.

If you’re familiar with FormSmarts’ PayPal integration, the syntax for subscriptions and payments in installments remains the same. Simply add your Stripe API key to FormSmarts and set the form’s Submit Action to Integrate with Stripe.

Stripe Subscription

With Stripe, you can easily charge your customers a recurring membership or subscription fee. Once a customer has set up a Stripe subscription through FormSmarts, Stripe automatically charges them yearly, monthly, weekly, or even daily. The subscription runs indefinitely until cancelled.

In the example below, customers are charged $25 (Individual Membership) or $45 (Family Membership) monthly. They also have the option to make a donation each month.

Stripe Subscription Example

Try Stripe Subscription Demo

Paying in Installments with Stripe

You can as easily allow your customers to pay in installments with Stripe. Once a customer has set up a Stripe subscription though FormSmarts, Stripe charges them for the installment amount monthly. In this example, individuals can choose to pay in two or four monthly installments.

Pay with Installments with Stripe

Try Payment in Installments with Stripe

Advanced Recurring Payment Use Cases

Subscription for Multiple Products

FormSmarts enables you to combine multiple recurring fees on a form, provided they have the same recurring period (i.e. yearly, monthly, …) and recurring times (number of installments). For instance, you could offer your customers options to pay in installments for both Days and Overnight Stays as shown on this demo. However, both must be paid in the same number of installments and recurring period (e.g., monthly in this example).

Recurring Donations

In addition to charging your customer recurring fixed amounts on a form, you can also invite them to make a donation with each payment by adding a donation box to the form. For instance, on the first demo presented on this page, we use a donation box to suggest our members make a monthly donation when they renew their membership. You can create multiple donation boxes to allow contributors to support different causes or projects.

Trial Subscriptions

The PayPal integration allows FormSmarts members to offer a trial period before a customer starts a paid subscription. However, we’ve noticed that few FormSmarts members ever use trials, so the Stripe integration doesn’t support them. If you need to use trials for your recurring payments, please reach out to our support team.

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The Online Form Builder Blog is published by FormSmarts, a web form service providing all you need to create a form and publish it online in minutes. FormSmarts makes it easy to build a form and embed it on your site. You can then get form submissions by email or store them on FormSmarts and download an Excel report. Learn more about the many other benefits of FormSmarts.