To bill a design subscription you need a monthly charge, a way to pause or cancel, and a plan for the day a card fails. For most studios under ten clients that means Stripe Billing on its own, which takes 0.7% of each payment plus card fees. Below, see what each alternative takes from a $3,995 payment and when a portal's billing is worth paying for.
The four billing events your setup has to handle
Whatever tool you pick, it has to represent four moments. Write down what the request queue does at each one before you connect anything.
| Event | What billing records | What the queue does |
|---|---|---|
| New subscription | First charge succeeds and the service period starts | The client can submit their first request |
| Renewal | Next month's charge succeeds | Nothing changes; the active request carries on |
| Failed payment | The charge declines and a retry or reminder follows | The active request continues through a short grace period; the next request waits until payment recovers |
| Pause or cancel | The client asks to stop from a given date | Your policy says whether the active request is finished, parked or handed back |
The failed payment row is the one studios get wrong. If Stripe says the invoice is past due and your Trello card says "in progress", who decides what happens on Tuesday morning? Name that person now. The billing and retention guide walks through the policy, and the article on what to do when a client pauses or cancels mid-request covers the half-finished job.
DesignJoy is a good test of your terms. Its homepage offers "Pause or cancel anytime" and "75% back, no questions asked" within 7 days, at $4,995 a month, as listed on designjoy.co. If you copy terms like those, your billing has to handle a pause, a partial refund and a restart without you editing invoices by hand.
Stripe on its own: what it takes from a $3,995 payment
Stripe Billing is the subscription layer on top of Stripe's card payments. You set up one product per plan, for example "Standard, $3,995 a month", save the client's card once and let it charge every month. The pay-as-you-go tier has no monthly fee: Stripe takes 0.7% of billing volume. That is the rate shown on the EEA-served Stripe Billing pricing page and on Stripe's UK pricing page.
Card processing comes on top, and it depends on where your Stripe account is registered. Stripe's UK page lists 1.5% + 20p for standard UK cards, 2.8% + 20p for premium cards and 3.15% + 20p for international cards. Add 2% when a currency conversion is needed. We could not read a US rate: every US address served us the European page. If you are in the US, open Stripe's pricing page from your own country and use the number it shows you.
Here is an illustrative month for Marcus, charging $3,995 from Austin:
- Stripe Billing at 0.7%: $27.97.
- Card processing: your own country's rate on top. Look it up before you fix the price.
And for Dana, charging a Manchester client £3,000 (about $4,000) on a standard UK card:
- Stripe Billing at 0.7%: £21.00 (about $28).
- Card processing at 1.5% + 20p: £45.20 (about $60).
- Total: £66.20 a month (about $88), or 2.2% of the fee.
Stripe also sells Billing on a 1-year contract, starting at £450 a month (about $600) on the UK page. That only pays off once 0.7% of your monthly volume passes £450, which is roughly £64,000 a month (about $85,000). Ten clients at £3,000 is £30,000 of volume (about $40,000) and £210 (about $280) in pay-as-you-go fees, so stay on pay-as-you-go.
Is Stripe on its own enough? For one to ten clients on one plan each, usually yes. Stripe also offers a customer billing portal, which is a place for a client's billing details, not an agency-style portal for requests. Before your terms promise that clients can pause or change a card themselves, check in your Stripe dashboard what that portal allows.
If your clients are UK companies, ask whether they would rather pay by Direct Debit. GoCardless charges 1% + 20p per transaction, capped at £4 for domestic payments on its Standard plan, as listed on GoCardless's pricing page. On a £3,000 payment that is £4 (about $5.30) instead of £45.20 (about $60) on a card. The cost is a second payment record to reconcile against Stripe, so switch only if most clients prefer it.
Billing inside a portal: worth it when the portal already runs your requests
Several client portals and agency platforms say on their pricing pages that they take recurring payments. What you pay for is the subscription state sitting next to the request queue, so whoever schedules work sees a failed payment without opening Stripe.
| Tool | From | What the pricing page says about billing |
|---|---|---|
| ManyRequests | $59/month (Core) | "Automate recurring payments, create branded invoices, and get paid faster" |
| Wayfront | $129/month (Base) | Order forms, invoices, billing and subscriptions inside the portal; "no transaction fees" |
| Zendo | Free for up to 3 clients; Core $29/month | "Send Quotes, Invoices, and Payment Requests automatically", by Stripe or bank transfer |
| Agency Handy | $109/month (Freelancer) | "Subscriptions on Autopilot", with Stripe, PayPal, Wise, crypto or manual payment |
| Moxie | $12/month (Starter) | Invoicing and payments through Stripe or PayPal |
| Bonsai | $25 per user/month (Essentials) | Retainer and subscription invoices, from Essentials upwards |
Only Wayfront says on its pricing page that it adds no transaction fee of its own. The others did not mention one on the page we read, so ask during the trial. None of them removes card processing, because the money still moves through a processor such as Stripe or PayPal.
When is it worth it? When you are buying the portal for requests anyway. If ManyRequests or Wayfront is going to hold the queue, let it hold the subscription too, so one screen shows paid, active request and next in line. If all you want is nicer invoices, keep Stripe instead. The agency platforms comparison and the client portal guide cover the request side of that decision.
Memberstack and site memberships: the transaction fee changes by plan
If your offer lives on a Webflow site with a Subscribe button, you have probably met Memberstack. DesignJoy's 2021 stack, described by Brett Williams in an Indie Hackers AMA, was Trello, Webflow, Memberstack, Airtable through IFTTT, and Slack. Memberstack is still trading: its pricing page was live with current plans in September 2026, whatever older comparison posts say about it closing.
Memberstack charges a monthly plan fee plus its own transaction fee, with standard Stripe fees on top. The table shows one $3,995 client and three. Prices are billed monthly and; the totals are illustrative and exclude card processing.
| Option | Plan fee | Transaction fee | Fee on one $3,995 payment | Total, one client | Total, three clients ($11,985) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memberstack Basic | $29 | 4% | $159.80 | $188.80 | $508.40 |
| Memberstack Professional | $49 | 2% | $79.90 | $128.90 | $288.70 |
| Memberstack Business | $99 | 0.9% | $35.96 | $134.96 | $206.87 |
| Memberstack Established | $499 | 0% | $0 | $499.00 | $499.00 |
| Stripe Billing alone | $0 | 0.7% | $27.97 | $27.97 | $83.90 |
On the same payment the transaction fee alone runs from $159.80 down to nothing. Professional is the cheapest Memberstack plan with one client; Business overtakes it from the second. Basic's 4% costs more than its low plan fee saves at this price.
Memberstack makes sense when a login is part of the product: gated pages, a members' area, a paywall. For a studio whose clients pay monthly and send requests on a board, it is a fee on top of Stripe for a login nobody needs.
Test a failed payment before a client has one
Rehearse a failed payment and a later recovery in a permitted test environment, never by charging a real client for a trial. Use the test or sandbox setting your billing provider documents, then run these checks this week:
- Create a test subscription at your real plan and price, $3,995 or whatever you charge.
- Make the renewal fail. Note which emails go out, from whom, and when.
- Check that the person who schedules work hears about it the same day, not at month end.
- Recover the payment. Does the service period restart from the original date or from the recovery date?
- Pause the subscription, then resume it. Does the next charge date move the way your terms promise?
- Read every client-facing email once. Two messages that disagree, one from you and one from the payment system, cost more trust than the failed charge.
Record the results, with your currency, invoice format and payment methods, in the software evaluation and migration worksheet. An accountant checks the tax treatment; this page does not cover VAT or sales tax.
When a new billing layer is unnecessary
Do not add another billing system if the one you have can represent every event in the table at the top. That only works if a named person reconciles it every week. A second subscription record creates another place for dates to disagree. Replace billing only when a real event cannot be represented. Examples: a pause that must hold the client's price, proration when a client moves plans mid-month, or several people at one client who each need their own invoices or access. Any one of those is reason enough. Until one of those happens, keep Stripe instead.