Spreedly provides the logic, Paypal the gateway. It works, it took vanishingly little time to get working eight (a few hours, total), it is fairly inexpensive, and it didn't require a real merchant account, which would be difficult to get for my business. ("You live where? I see. And your business does what exactly? I see. And you have five figures in yearly sales? I see. Thanks, we'll pass.")
We did this for one of our startups but had major issues after the first month when it turned out that spreedly doesn't db the credit card cvv ('cause they're not allowed) and then paypal wouldn't let us bill without the cvv code. We've had numerous issues with paypal not letting us do some simple things just because they made a decision at some point that we were sketchy and shouldn't be allowed and they tell us they'll NEVER EVER change their mind.
That said, we still use paypal recurring billing on a few sites cause its just sooo easy to do, even if it is a bit user unfriendly.
And also, Paypal only allows transactions without CVV for US and Canadian accounts, so if you're in another country Paypal + Spreedly isn't an option for recurring billing. Took an hour on the phone with Paypal to find this out.
Both. Payments to have a totally on-brand signup. The regular "redirect them to Spreedly" to do account upgrades, etc, to save me a day of programming that wouldn't sell accounts.
I use Spreedly on TweetSaver.com ... like patio says, it works great and is easy to integrate... main downside is their reporting sucks really bad and they haven't added any new features in a really long time.
