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FastSpring
Company blog · fastspring.com/blogbusinessweb
FastSpring is the company blog at fastspring.com, writing about business and web. Since 2009, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 31 times, most often “FastSpring, an online payment method that does not suck”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-26, and you can follow it by feed.
31mentions?
23HN people?
2009–2023first – last linked?
Too few sampled comments (27) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link FastSpring as a merchant-of-record payment service for selling software, handling VAT and issuing license keys. The linked pages are mostly product, pricing, VAT and docs pages rather than essays.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 27 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Sell globally and stay compliant with our merchant-of-record model. Get top payment methods in 200+ regions, enterprise-grade service, and expert support.
Most-linked posts?
- FastSpring, an online payment method that does not suck6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2010-01-25
- /5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-06-20
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-12-14
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-04-14
- /vat2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-09-17
What Hacker News says?
I recently came across Fastspring, they let you generate a license key upon purchase. I'm not using it myself, but it might be helpful https://fastspring.com/docs/fulfillments/
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on “Stripe Payment Links”Submitted Marketing Idea – Taking a Buck Off: The Neverending Coupon as a story · 5 points
HN discussionAnother comment mentions http://www.fastspring.com/vat
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on “The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)”Submitted FastSpring, an online payment method that does not suck as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDepending on the kind of service, a good solution is to use a third party provider that handles VAT payments for you; FastSpring, for example: http://www.fastspring.com/vat (disclaimer, I am a happy FastSpring customer in the US, but have no other relationship with them)
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on “The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)”Just looked at fastspring. Their pricing page is horrendous: https://fastspring.com/pricing/ I want to get some idea of how much it's going to cost but they dance around the issue completely. All they do is recommend jumping on a call, which judging by the language on their site, will sound alot like talking to a stereotypical used car salesman.
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on “Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled”http://www.fastspring.com/ Never had problems with them. They have a great customer support and a neat admin interface. They take payments from PayPal too, so you don't have to renounce to those.
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on “PayPal robbed my bank account”FastSpring is another alternative for SaaS & international taxes. I'm sure there's more besides Paddle & FastSpring. The idea is to look for a company that will act as the "merchant of record", not just a payment processor: https://fastspring.com/tax-management/ You end up paying more to them than Stripe would charge, but it might be worth it if you just don't want to deal with that administrative headache. (I'm not…
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on “Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup”We had a great experience w/ Fastspring: https://fastspring.com/ It has been a few years though since we sold the company. Super easy to set up, super reliable. Never had any issues w/ them.
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on “Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation”I don't know about your jurisdiction but in most EU countries, the sale proceeds from Apple lie outside the scope of VAT. Thus, you need to subtract your effective VAT rate and the net effective rate that you end up paying on the MAS is about 10-15%. Which is very close to what you would pay for, say, FastSpring ("You have the option to pay either 8.9% flat or 5.9% plus $.95 per transaction" [1]). The biggest advant…
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on “The Financial Side of Building Mac Apps”SaaSy is a service from FastSpring, just to clarify. To see what people say about FastSpring, try searching online or you can view what they're saying here: http://www.fastspring.com/clients.php Some samples: "I'm going to come out and say it: FastSpring is awesome. I haven't experienced customer service this good in my life. Every query I've had, from stupid questions to difficult questions to bug reports has been…
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on “Ask HN: How are lean startups easily accepting CC payments?”I have been considering FastSpring ( http://www.fastspring.com ), which has recently added subscription payments as a feature. I'm interested to hear about anyones experiences with them.
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on “Ask HN: How are lean startups easily accepting CC payments?”Hi Inapis, You’re right about payment processing being only the tip of the iceberg! Often times, companies are shocked to find out that there’s a lot more to ecommerce than just selling their products online. To avoid costly fines and maximize their revenue potential, companies selling their digital products online must also focus on fraud prevention and proper VAT/TAX management. You can learn more about digital ta…
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on “Payment gateways for startups: a guide for founders”Aren't there many other alternatives, too? Admittedly, I'm a bit out of the loop. When Kagi [1] changed their payment structure to discourage small prices, I started using Fastspring [2] for many years for an old shareware project. It works very well. However, I have almost zero sales now so there is not much to work with. Funny story: Just a few weeks ago, a a guy from Fastspring called me up in Portugal on my land…
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on “PayPal vs. Stripe for small businesses in 2019”If you can use stripe, that should be your first choice. Failing that, 2Checkout and http://www.fastspring.com/ are really good and 2Checkout works in many countries. The other option would be to just get your own merchant account and use something like WorldPay
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on “Ask HN: Paypal alternatives for vendors outside the US?”I recommend Fastspring ( http://www.fastspring.com ). Yes, it's more expensive than others but it has a lot of features that make it worth it. The main selling point for us was that essential you sell your product wholesale to Fastspring and they become the seller. This makes accounting and taxes much easier, especially for EU customers.
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on “Ask HN: Paypal alternatives for vendors outside the US?”And it's not all that bad. * For updates, use Sparkle framework. [1] * For licensing, use CocoaFob [2] or write your own. * For payments, use FastSpring like most other indie shops. [3] Only other detail is having to write a EULA yourself. [1] http://sparkle-project.org/ [2] https://github.com/glebd/cocoafob [3] http://fastspring.com/
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on “The Mac App Store Still Needs Paid Upgrades”Be sure to evaluate FastSpring.com as well. Before you go with PayPal, you may want to read up on some of the issues people have been having with PayPal: http://www.fastspring.com/blog/2008/...nt-processing/ Also, this post explains the difference in a full service e-commerce solution and a basic payment service like PayPal and the others: http://www.fastspring.com/blog/2009/...ng-e-commerce/ Keep in mind that one o…
Comment linking /blog/2009/...ng-e-commerce/
on “Ask HN: how do you process payments?”You can have a look at http://www.fastspring.com/ too. I use them to sell my plugins online. Their support is fantastic.
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on “Ask HN: Which service do you use to sell downloads?”I use http://www.fastspring.com/ . I too am UK based and this solution works nicely. They're US-based, but it means anyone with a credit card (US, UK or whatever) can pay for your software and FastSpring just wire the earnings to your UK account. I find this to be a far better experience than PayPal, Google Checkout and some of the others. They have great support and a really nice, intuitive backend admin interface.…
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on “Ask HN: I've built a product - how do I take payments in the UK?”Any thoughts on FastSpring http://fastspring.com ?
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on “Ask HN: Favorite payment processor?”All of the below is no professional advice, I’m just a programmer who looked into this a bit. The easiest thing in my opinion would be to incorporate in Croatia and then use Paddle https://www.paddle.com/ , Gumroad https://gumroad.com/ or FastSpring https://fastspring.com/ for payments. They take care of all your VAT/Sales taxes. If you want to go with a simple company outside of Croatia, maybe go with a UK Ltd, eas…
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on “Ask HN: What's your freelancing company/business setup?”FastSpring https://fastspring.com/ and Gumroad https://gumroad.com/ are two more alternatives to Paddle you can look into. Both handle VAT for you which makes global sales so much easier (worth it in my opinion for the higher rate you pay, but that depends on your project)
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on “Ask HN: SaaS Billing?”http://www.fastspring.com/
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on “Ask HN: Payment systems that don't suck?”have you considered http://fastspring.com and its associated subscriptions site http://saasy.com/ ? They can pay into uk bank accounts directly and I think they meet most of the other points. (disclaimer, uk based customer of fastspring, although not using subscriptions side)
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on “Ask HN: Looking for a UK payment provider - recommendations?”Maybe check out FastSpring: http://www.fastspring.com/
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on “Ask HN: Is there a startup that allows me to charge without a merchant account?”Is there some public info on FastSpring's beta subscription service? All I can find is: http://www.fastspring.com/faq.php#twentyone I am currently debating between FastSpring and rolling out my own PayPal based payment processing for a e-product site. If FastSpring will meet my future subscription needs, my choice would be easy to make!
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on “Ask HN: Payment Gateways?”FastSpring actually powers a few marketplaces, like the Adobe Exchange and Enfocus. Their sales line is 1-833-889-6777. https://fastspring.com/
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on “Ask HN: Is there a paddle/fastspring like service for marketplaces?”Take a look at this sample store which exists to demonstrate how you can optimize order pages in order to lead to the optimal revenue per order and site conversion: http://www.fastspring.com/slideshows/orderflow.php I hope this helps you.
Comment linking /slideshows/orderflow.php
on “Ask HN: Tips to improve payment page?”
