Meteor & Chargify

help
1

Has anyone here ever used Chargify (https://docs.chargify.com) with Meteor? I have found a couple of Node.js packages, but I’m not really sure how easy it is to get setup. If anyone know anything that would be awesome.


Thanks

2

Hi,

I work at Chargify and also love developing in Meteor.

Fermata or node-chargify both work very well with our API and will allow you to do all sorts of things. The integration can be either very simple or very complicated depending on what kind of advanced functionality you’re looking for.

The #1 piece of advice I’d give is to be caution to keep your secrets and billing-handling code ONLY in your server/ files, so that it is never leaked to the client-side.

Most people creating web apps have three main requirements:

  1. Sign up new customers and collect their payment info
  2. Accept card updates to keep their payment info up-to-date
  3. Allow your app to know about the state of their subscription (active, past due, cancelled) and display that to the user.

The recommended setup then is:

For #1 & #2:

  • Send your customer to our Public Signup Pages or use Chargify Direct. This way you never collect CC numbers on your site. There are separate pages for both new signups and card updates.
  • Then listen for incoming webhooks. This is usually done using Server Side Routes
  • When you receive a webhook, use the info to update a local copy of the subscription’s state (is it active, how much did they pay, etc).

For #3:

  • Use the local subscription info you stored after receiving a webhook. You can display all the locally cached info to the user with no API calls at all.

You’ll notice that up until this point, you actually didn’t need to use the Chargify API at all. There are some things that you will need the API for though:

  • Changing plans - The customer selects a new plan and then you’ll make a server-side API call to change their plan in Chargify.
  • Cancellation - This also requires a server-side API call from Meteor.

I hope that helps, please let me know if you have any questions!
Drew

1 Like
3

Hey just wanted to reply back and say thanks for the response. We are still working through all the possibilities, but this is great info.

4

Ok, so I think I have settled on using the Chargify platform, but I’m not sure what the best way to get started is. I like to host my own sign up pages so I am guessing I need to use Chargify Direct. What’s the easiest/best way to connect to this API from within Meteor. I’ve looked at the NodeJS libraries, but they seem outdated (haven’t been updated in 2 years).

Any help would be much appreciated. Or even a nudge in the right direction.

Thanks again

5

Hi are there any good examples of Chargify using Meteor?

6

@yankeyhotel: how did your journey with Chargify end? I would be really thankful for some tips as I am just starting up and I am searching for a good saas payment solution. It would be great if you could share your experience :slight_smile: