"Just use Stripe" is the most expensive advice in indie software.
Not because Stripe is expensive — Stripe is great. Their payment processing is world-class and their API is beautiful. The problem is what "just use Stripe" actually means for someone selling software.
Here are the 6 things you'll end up building yourself, and what they'll actually cost you.
1. Checkout Page
What Stripe gives you: Stripe Checkout — a hosted payment form. It works, but it's generic. Your buyers leave your site, land on a Stripe-branded page, and come back.
What you'll build: A custom checkout page with your branding, product information, pricing tiers, and payment form. Mobile-optimized. With upsells, discount code support, and trust signals.
Estimated time: 20-40 hours
With Revnu: Every product gets a hosted checkout page automatically. Your branding, your product info, integrated discount codes, mobile-ready out of the box.
2. License Key System
What Stripe gives you: Nothing. Stripe processes payments. It doesn't know what a license key is.
What you'll build: Key generation (crypto-secure, unique, non-guessable), a validation API, device activation tracking with limits, subscription-aware key expiry, a database to store it all, and an endpoint your app calls to check if a key is valid.
Estimated time: 40-60 hours
Hidden costs: Edge cases. What happens when a subscriber downgrades? When they hit their device limit? When they refund? When their card fails and the subscription enters a grace period? Each edge case is a half-day of debugging.
With Revnu: License keys are generated on purchase, validated via API, and automatically respect subscription state. Device activation limits built in.
3. Webhook Handler
What Stripe gives you: A stream of events. Invoice paid. Subscription updated. Payment failed. Dispute created. About 200 event types.
What you'll build: A webhook endpoint that receives these events, verifies the signature, handles them idempotently (because Stripe sends duplicates), and updates your system accordingly.
Estimated time: 15-25 hours initially. Then ongoing maintenance every time you add a feature.
The real problem: Webhook handlers are where bugs hide. A race condition in your handler means a customer pays but doesn't get access. A missed event type means subscription cancellations don't revoke license keys. You won't know about these bugs until a customer emails you.
With Revnu: We process the webhooks. When a purchase happens, the license key is created, the email is sent, and the access is granted. When a subscription lapses, access is revoked. You don't write a single webhook handler.
4. Customer Portal
What Stripe gives you: Stripe's Customer Portal — a generic page where customers can update payment methods and cancel subscriptions.
What you'll build: Either you use Stripe's portal (which doesn't know about your license keys, doesn't show your branding, and feels disconnected from your product) or you build your own portal where buyers can view their purchases, manage subscriptions, download license keys, and update their details.
Estimated time: 15-30 hours for a custom portal
With Revnu: Buyers get a management page where they can view their purchases, manage subscriptions, see their license keys, and contact you. Your branding, not Stripe's.
5. Storefront / Landing Page
What Stripe gives you: Payment Links — a URL that goes to a payment form. No product page, no feature list, no design.
What you'll build: A landing page (or hire a designer for one), product descriptions, pricing sections, testimonials, a domain, hosting, deployment.
Estimated time: 20-40 hours for a decent landing page
With Revnu: AI-generated landing pages tailored to your product. Provide a reference site for inspiration, or describe the vibe you want. Published to your custom subdomain.
6. Transactional Emails
What Stripe gives you: Receipt emails. That's it.
What you'll build: Purchase confirmation with license key, welcome email, subscription renewal notice, failed payment warning, subscription cancelled notification. Plus an email provider integration (Resend, SendGrid, etc.) and email templates.
Estimated time: 10-20 hours
With Revnu: All transactional emails are handled automatically — purchase confirmations with license keys, subscription notifications, and more. Sent from your custom domain if you set up DNS verification.
The Total Cost
| Component | DIY Time | Revnu |
|---|---|---|
| Checkout page | 20-40 hours | Included |
| License key system | 40-60 hours | Included |
| Webhook handler | 15-25 hours | Included |
| Customer portal | 15-30 hours | Included |
| Storefront | 20-40 hours | Included |
| Transactional emails | 10-20 hours | Included |
| Total | 120-215 hours | $12-49/month |
At $100-150/hour of engineering time, you're looking at $12,000-$32,000 worth of development work to build what a $12/month platform gives you on day one.
The Ongoing Cost
Building it is one thing. Maintaining it is another.
Every Stripe API change requires updating your integration. Every new product you launch needs webhook handlers, checkout configuration, and license key logic. Every edge case that surfaces — failed payments, disputed charges, mid-cycle upgrades — needs code to handle it.
A conservative estimate: 5-10 hours per month of ongoing maintenance. That's $500-$1,500/month in engineering time, forever.
When DIY Stripe Makes Sense
Let's be fair. There are cases where building on raw Stripe is the right call:
- You have a dedicated billing engineering team
- Your monetization model is truly unique and no platform supports it
- You're processing millions in ARR and need complete custom control
- Building billing infrastructure is literally your product
For everyone else — solo developers, small teams, indie hackers, AI builders — the math overwhelmingly favors using a platform.
The Bottom Line
Stripe is the foundation. It moves money reliably. But between "money moved" and "software business running" is a massive gap filled with license keys, webhooks, storefronts, portals, and emails.
You can build all of that yourself. Or you can sign up for Revnu, connect your Stripe account, and be selling in minutes.
Your Stripe account. Your customers. Your revenue. Our infrastructure.