I’m looking for recommendations of tools or toolkits, for managing a (currently) small scale start-up web design business. At present we are talking a handful of clients, but i’d like to be ready to automate some processes, in particular tracking of payments and invoicing. (I’m avoiding Webflow client billing for now, until I can bill a set rate per month in GBP)
hellobonsai.com looks impressive, streamlining from qoute to contract to invoice - and it looks like @SidneyOttelohe and @jwburkhard have experience using it - anyone else used it?
All-in-one tools would be ideal, but if anyone has suggestions of different products that work well together for their business (and don’t break the bank) i’d love to know.
Good question. I guess it’s just their fee, so you pay the %age once, and they pay back a rev share to Stripe for using their payment engine. It would be ridiculous to pay the fee twice, but I guess best it to ask them to be 100% sure.
Bonsai also uses Strip tech, so I guess it would work same for them as well as other Stripe based payment solutions.
I love hellobonsai! Super awesome support too. I requested a few tiny features in the chat window and the dev team jumped on it and updated the entire software for it within a week. Pretty awesome.
Also the invoices are really pretty looking to send to clients to pay online easily.
In years we’ve tried a lot of things and currently we are using Perfex and it’s seriously the best! it’s a self-hosted web app and it’s open-source! I think it’s worth the try!
I’ve been using Hiveage for awhile, especially for the zero processing fees when using Braintree (for the first $50k), but may pivot to Wave or Hellobonsai at some point.
We have an easily integratabtle solution that other freelancers are using to track payments and issue invoices. Plasso has a No Monthly plan which is great for startups. New integrations and features are being released on Product Hunt soon for our Recurring/One-time Payment payment cart that can live on your webflow site.
Just to update on this thread, i’m opting for Wave - certainly for the first few months of business, so if anyone wants to ask me about the experience over the next few months, and as my business grows, feel free to drop me a line. I’ll likely review things at 4-6 months to see if a subscription based service like @Aaron mentioned (FreeAgent) is suited for me longer term.
@Pasint - Wave clarified that for me (UK based) it is just the Stripe fee that is paid - as you thought.
Hey! I’m struggling with something similar, but more related to PM/collaboration tools. How are you dealing with communication with different clients when they all require different types of communication channels/collab tools? I find that information easily falls between the cracks. Any thoughts? Solutions?
I use peopleperhour for communication and invoicing, I highly recommend it. Hook up Payoneer and you have access to your funds within 1-2 hours of payout.
Another option that you could check out is ZipBooks. There is a free option for processing credit cards (not including the processing which is the same as Stripe). Recurring or scheduled billing is a paid feature, I’m pretty sure.
