Stripe integration

The Stripe integration creates licenses automatically when your customers pay with Stripe. You keep selling with the Stripe tools you already use, Stripe Checkout  or Payment Links , and LicenseManager listens to the payments: each time a customer pays a price you chose, it creates the licenses they bought and emails them their keys.

You don’t write any code, and LicenseManager never touches your money: payments, invoices, taxes and receipts stay in Stripe.

How it works

1. You connect your Stripe account with a restricted API key. LicenseManager creates a webhook on your Stripe account, so Stripe notifies it of payments.
2. You map Stripe prices to policies: “paying this price creates licenses of this product, with this policy”.
3. A customer pays one of these prices with Stripe Checkout or a Payment Link.
4. Stripe notifies LicenseManager, which creates one license per unit bought, for the customer of the checkout’s email, and emails them their keys.

What the integration does

• Creates licenses for one-time payments of the prices you mapped, made with Stripe Checkout or a Payment Link, including the ones paid with a delayed payment method like a bank transfer or SEPA Direct Debit, once the payment succeeds.
• Creates one license per unit bought: a customer buying 5 seats gets 5 licenses, each with its own key.
• Creates or finds the customer from the checkout’s email, and links them to their Stripe customer when there is one.
• Emails the license keys to the customer, in one email per checkout.
• Records the price paid on each license, after discounts and before taxes, so your revenue stats are accurate.
• Links each license to its Stripe payment, and each customer to their Stripe customer, so you can jump from one to the other.
• Watches your prices and products: when a mapped price or product is archived or deleted in Stripe, the mapping is flagged so you know it no longer sells.
• Checks itself every day: when the API key is revoked or loses a permission, or the webhook is deleted, the integration is flagged and the owners and admins of your organization are emailed.
• Keeps live and test mode apart: a live mode key for your live products, a test mode key for your test products.

What the integration doesn’t do

• Subscriptions and recurring prices aren’t supported. Only one-time prices can be mapped, and subscription checkouts are ignored. There are no automatic renewals: to sell a license for a year, use a one-time price with a policy that expires after a year. See renewals.
• Refunds aren’t handled. Refunding a payment in Stripe doesn’t change its licenses: they stay valid until you expire or delete them. See refunds.
• Disputes and chargebacks aren’t handled. A disputed payment doesn’t change its licenses either, whatever the outcome of the dispute. See disputes.
• Failed payments create nothing. A delayed payment that fails never creates licenses, and nobody is notified by LicenseManager: Stripe handles telling the customer.
• Other ways of charging aren’t supported. Payments made with Stripe Invoicing, the Payment Intents API in your own code, the Stripe Terminal or created manually in the Stripe dashboard don’t create licenses: only Checkout Sessions do, which Payment Links create too.
• Missed purchases aren’t created afterwards. While the integration is broken, for example after the API key is revoked, customers can still be charged without getting a license, and these licenses aren’t created once it’s fixed. See when the integration breaks.
• Nothing is written to your Stripe account, except the webhook. LicenseManager doesn’t create products, prices, customers or payments, doesn’t add metadata, and can’t refund or charge anyone.
• One Stripe account per mode. An organization connects one Stripe account for its live products and one for its test products. Two products can’t sell through two different Stripe accounts.

New to Stripe?

New to Stripe, or don’t have products and prices yet? Start with the Selling licenses with Stripe guide: it walks through creating them in Stripe, then setting up the integration, end to end.