Stripe Isn't the Hard Part—Everything Around It Is

"Just integrate Stripe. How hard can it be?"

Famous last words.

Creating a Stripe account takes 10 minutes. Adding a checkout button takes an hour. Getting payments to actually work in production? That takes weeks.

Because Stripe isn't the hard part. Everything around Stripe is.

What Stripe Doesn't Handle

Stripe processes payments. That's it. Everything else is on you:

• Webhook handling — What happens when a payment succeeds? Fails? Gets refunded?
• Subscription status — Is this user still paying? Did they cancel? Is their card expired?
• Trial management — When does the trial end? What happens then?
• Plan changes — Upgrading? Downgrading? Pro-rating?
• Failed payments — Retry logic? Dunning emails? Grace periods?

Stripe sends webhooks for all of this. Catching them, processing them, and updating your database correctly? That's the work.

The Webhook Gauntlet

Here are the webhooks you need to handle for a basic subscription SaaS:

• checkout.session.completed — New subscription started
• customer.subscription.updated — Plan changed, status changed
• customer.subscription.deleted — Cancelled
• invoice.paid — Payment succeeded
• invoice.payment_failed — Payment failed
• customer.updated — Email or card changed

Miss one and you have users with access they shouldn't have, or paying users locked out. Both are bad.

The Edge Cases Nobody Warns You About

• Double webhooks — Stripe sometimes sends the same event twice
• Out-of-order delivery — Events don't always arrive in sequence
• Test mode confusion — Webhooks have different endpoints for test/live
• Signature verification — Skip this and you're vulnerable to spoofed events
• Customer portal — Users can change plans outside your app

Each edge case is a support ticket waiting to happen.

The Smart Approach

Instead of building all this from scratch, use a production-ready SaaS foundation that already handles:

• ✅ All critical webhook events
• ✅ Idempotency for duplicate webhooks
• ✅ Subscription status synced to database
• ✅ Customer portal integration
• ✅ Test/live environment handling

You focus on your product. The payment infrastructure just works.

Payments Without the Pain

LaunchKit is a Next.js SaaS starter with Stripe integration done right. Built-in CRM and payments, webhooks included.

Get LaunchKit →