If you are familiar with Stripe, you know how big of a player they are in the online payment processing field. Their API not only allows programmers to easily create one-time payments for sites such as e-commerce stores, but also provides quick integrations for monthly subscriptions and routing payouts. If new to Django and Stripe, check out our recent article on integrating one time payments. Otherwise, let’s get into setting up monthly payments with Django and Stripe.

Why a Monthly Subscription?

Monthly subscriptions are a common practice found across the web especially among companies who promote software-as-a-service(SAAS) as their delivery model. For example, SAAS companies such as Hubspot (marketing), Dropbox (data storage), and Mailchimp (email marketing) all offer tiered pricing options to their prospective customers. Many consider this model to be favorable given that revenue is easier to predict once basic metrics are calculated (customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, churn rate). Predictable revenue of course creates stability and produces more accurate financial forecasts.

Django Setup

Start by setting up a virtual environment and creating a basic Django project. We’ll create a new virtual environment called saas. Note: on Mac, use python3 instead of py for all commands

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\code>py -m venv saas

Next change directory into the virtual environment, install Django, and setup your project and app.

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\code>cd saas

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\code\saas>Scripts\activate

(saas) C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\code\saas>pip install Django

(saas) C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\code\saas>django-admin startproject mysite

(saas) C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\code\saas\mysite>py manage.py startapp main

#django #stripe #python #saas #web-development