July 2011
2 posts
Moving the Changelog
We’ll soon be shutting down this changelog. Instead, please visit the Changelog forum on our support site for all your latest Chargify release news: http://help.chargify.com/forums/20053862-changelog
P.S. You might want to check out our latest release: v1.7.2 adds the ability to add coupons to existing subscriptions via the admin UI!
Release v1.7.0: Taxes
Version 1.7.0 brings a brand new feature to Chargify: Taxes!
The ability to define taxes in Chargify is something that many of you, especially those in the EU, have been asking for awhile.
Check out the documentation here: http://docs.chargify.com/taxes
As always, If you have any questions, give us a shout on twitter (@chargify /cc @npverni).
May 2011
1 post
Release v1.5.0: Component Enhancements
Version 1.5.0 brings a bunch of component enhancements to Chargify. These enhancements include:
Fractional cent component pricing
Price bracket support for Metered Components (already available for Quantity Components)
The ability to archive components
The ability to create components via the API
The ability to view component allocations/usages in the Admin UI
The ability to record usage and...
March 2011
4 posts
Changing the default API page size
Currently, if you fetch from the API and don’t specify a per_page parameter, you will get a default batch of 2000 resources. Which is, basically, just way too much.
We’re making improvements to Chargify tonight which will make a fetch of 2000 subscriptions 10 to 20 times faster. However, a sample set of 2000 subscriptions results in a JSON response that is 3.2MB of text. And...
Short Downtime Tonight
Chargify will be down tonight (Friday night/Saturday morning) for a short time while we make some database optimizations. This change will result in faster site and API response times.
When: Saturday, March 19, 2011 at 01:00EDT Duration: Approximately 15 minutes Why: Database optimizations to improve response times Expectation: During the downtime, Chargify will return a “503 Service...
Release v1.2.6: Card Expiration Emails
Want to notify your customers when their credit cards will expire? Now you can! Check out the settings tab to configure card expiration emails. Your customers will be notified 3 times in the month leading up to the expiration.
Release v1.2.4
Added support for Statements in the API (http://docs.chargify.com/api-statements)
Updated gateway operations to authorize credit cards on storage and update
http://docs.chargify.com/release-notes
February 2011
6 posts
Release v1.2.3 (Part 2) - Coupon Enhancements
A few weeks back we asked for your feedback on ways to improve the current coupon functionality in Chargify. We are happy to announce the release of the 3 features that got the most votes.
Recurring coupons: Now you can configure coupons to continue to apply after initial signup. This is a great way to give customers a permanent discount. Recurring coupons can be configured to...
Release v1.2.3 (Part 1) - Cancel at end of Pay...
One feature that many users have asked for is the ability to delay the cancellation of subscriptions until the end of the pay period. This especially comes in handy when you have a product that customers pay for in advance.
You can now accomplish this in Chargify via the Admin Interface as well as the API. For more info, check out the relevant docs:
Cancellation...
Release v1.2.2
Fixed a bug that caused blank return params when the signup was completed without a credit card
Changed statement language for “Balance Due” to “Ending Balance” to clear up confusion over having a positive “Balance Due” and a “PAID” stamp at the same time
Fixed a bug that resulted in an Internal Server Error when search results returned enough...
Chargify Release Notes
We’ve started publishing public release notes to our docs site: http://docs.chargify.com/release-notes
We didn’t keep formal “version” numbers before this, so we started the list with a very arbitrary “v1.1.0”.
Statements
Statements are a great way for both you and your customers to see a line-item breakdown of the charges, payments, credits, and activity for a subscription account on a period-by-period basis. We “pre-released” this feature 2 weeks ago and on Friday we finalized that release.
For any subscription, you can switch to the Statements view and then page between the usage periods for an...
Zferral integration
One of the long-standing most requested features on our feature request forum has been referral tracking. We were always hesitant to build this into Chargify because it was outside of our realm of expertise. After all, we’re always urging companies to focus on what makes their product unique, and offload the hard, boring billing stuff to us.
We’ve been working with the fine folks...
January 2011
1 post
Customizable Dunning
Chargify Dunning strategies just got a whole lot more customizable! Our latest release gives you more control over how long failed renewals are retried, and what action to take at every step along the way.
How it used to be…
The old Chargify dunning strategies lacked the ability to truly customize when customer communications were sent. Either you had us send the dunning emails or you...
December 2010
1 post
API Change - "Credits" become "Adjustments"
We’re making a small change to the Chargify API and we wanted you to know about it. If you use the API to pull Transactions or create Credits, then you’ll want to read on to see what’s changing. If you don’t do either of these things, you shouldn’t need to change anything. Read on to learn about the details of the change and the new functionality that’s...
November 2010
1 post
Activity Stream and Gateway Logs
Early this morning we released a new view on your Chargify Dashboard! Now, when you sign in and access a Site you will see a stream of recent “Activity” that includes all of your signups (both successful AND unsuccessful), renewals, payments, and more, to give you a better overall view of “What’s Happening”. You’ll also see a breakdown of your signups and...
September 2010
5 posts
Modify the next billing date
We recently launched the ability to modify the next billing date associated with a subscription. Possible use cases for this feature include:
Extending a customer’s trial period
Adding extra time onto a customer’s subscription
Aligning subscription renewals with a date that makes more sense to your business’ lifecycle
For documentation on what dates Chargify tracks, and how...
3 tags
Webhooks released
Over the weekend, we formally released our new Webhook system! The eagle-eyed of you may have noticed an early release of Webhooks as far back as 2 weeks ago, but now there are more events to which you can Subscribe.
From the Webhooks documentation:
Webhooks offer a way to quickly find out about changes to your Subscriptions that happen within Chargify. You can subscribe to events of...
Bugfix: Product 'handle' uniqueness and behavior...
We’ve just released a bugfix for the Product API ‘handle’. Most of you shouldn’t notice, but just in case it causes unexpected behavior for some of you we wanted to make note.
There was a bug that allowed non-unique Product handles within a single Site. This could cause unexpected behavior when doing a Product lookup via the API, or when creating an new Subscription via...
Improved access to your Chargify transaction...
Late last week we launched a new feature that will give you more insight into how Chargify is interacting with your Payment Gateway.
When you visit the Transactions tab in the main navigation, you will now see “View Details” links next to each transaction. Clicking this link will bring you to the Transaction detail page.
This page includes:
Basic information about the transaction
...
Export your data
Need easy access to your data stored in Chargify? You can now export your data to a comma-separated values (CSV) file. Look for ‘Export’ links on the Subscriptions, Products and Customers tabs. Click the link and you will be prompted to download the file.
CSV files can be opened in Excel, Numbers, or your text editor of choice.
For more info on CSV files, check out:...
August 2010
12 posts
On/Off Components
Chargify now offers support for a new component type called ‘On/Off’.
On/Off Components come in handy when you want to have your customers opt in or out to an ancillary feature of your product or service. For example, if you run a hosting business and want to offer “24/7” support for an additional charge of $29.99 a month, you could create an On/Off Component for it.
...
Version 0.3.5 of the chargify_api_ares gem...
Version 0.3.5 of the chargify_api_ares gem has been released. This release includes support for the following Chargify features:
Migrations
Refunds
Thanks to @ryansch and @aeden for the contributions.
Check it out here: http://rubygems.org/gems/chargify_api_ares
Failed Post-Backs? View your Post-Back status and...
We’ve just added some visibility in to our Post-Backs. If you’ve dealt with failed Post-Backs (followed by a period where we back off before resending) then you’re going to like this one.
There’s a new “Post-Back Status” section beneath the existing Post-Back settings. If we’ve experienced failures while trying to send you a Post-Back, the details of...
Euro (EUR) support for PaymentExpress
This morning we released an update that allows PaymentExpress users to bill their customers in Euros. To configure your site to accept Euros, begin by hovering over the arrow next to your site name. This will reveal a dropdown menu with the option to ‘Edit current site’. On the edit screen, select “EUR: Euro”.
While not always needed, we have found that it is a good idea...
Still having issues with SSL connectivity?
We received a few reports today from users that pointed to an issue related to not having the TLSv1 cipher enabled on our servers. After clearing the change with our security team we have re-enabled TLSv1 for Chargify.
For reference we currently support SSLv3 and TLSv1 for ssl connectivity. We have disabled SSLv2 due to security requirements related to PCI Compliance.
This should resolve the...
2 tags
SSL cipher upgrades may have caused .NET issues
We are usually pretty good at catching anything that might cause adverse affects for our users. However it appears that we missed such an event a week ago when we increased the security on our web servers by enforcing only SSLv3 for SSL communication.
On Friday we learned that this change caused issues for those who are using .NET to connect to Chargify. The reported issue was that the SSL...
1 tag
Better email deliverability
Email deliverability is a continuing challenge for any business with a web presence. The last thing you want is for your email targetted at customers and leads to be stopped by spam folders, or worse, blocked entirely by an email service.
We have upgraded our email process to allow both increased deliverability in general as well as better visibility into the entire email process. This will...
Updating or adding a credit card attempts to...
It used to be that when someone added or updated a credit card on a subscription that had an overdue balance (i.e. the subscription was past due), there was a lag before we tried to capture that balance. This was because of auto-throttling we have in place for overdue subscriptions.
However, this could result in a less-than-optimal experience for everyone involved - if the customer updated the...
Support for Refunds in Authorize.Net
Last night we released support for creating refunds both in the Admin UI as well as the API. This feature allows you to issue refunds back to your customer’s credit cards for any payment that has been processed through Chargify. Support for refunds is currently limited to Authorize.Net, with the other gateways soon to follow. If you have a test site using our Chargify Test Gateway, you can...
Subscription and Stored Card Token Imports
This feature allows you to create subscriptions with “synced” future billing dates and/or existing stored credit card tokens from your vault of choice.
Here’s the docs: http://support.chargify.com/faqs/api/api-subscription-and-stored-card-token-imports
Feedback welcome!
2 tags
Bcc emails for customer notifications
Have you ever wanted to be notified when a customer receives any chargify-specific notifications from your site? Now you can.
The Bcc email feature was added to allow sellers to be notified whenever your customers are notified. Currently it is a site-specific setting so enabling it will allow you to see all notifications that are sent to all customers for your site.
It’s easy to enable....
Version 0.3.4 of the chargify_api_ares gem...
Yesterday, we released a new version of the chargify_api_ares gem. This release includes support for the following Chargify features:
One time Credits
Subscription Reactivation
Subscription balance resets
A new attribute, ‘transaction_type’, was added the transaction object to retrieve the type of the transaction (charge, payment, etc.) without conflicting with ruby’s built...
July 2010
2 posts
2 tags
Receipt Emails - Fixed Payment Amount
Our old default receipt email used to use the field {{product_price}} to tell a customer how much they just got charged. Trouble is, when you perform a one-time charge, its not necessarily in the amount of the price of their product!
So, we’ve introduced a new field: {{payment.amount}}
This field will return a currency-formatted representation of the amount the customer actually just...
New Tab for Customer Details in Subscription
Chargify has allowed you to collect some extra data about your customers for a while - phone number, shipping address, and billing address to name a few. But these were tucked away and only available via the API.
Not anymore.
You can now view these fields in the UI in the “Customer Details” tab of a subscription: