Your payments infrastructure is the foundation that determines whether you can scale globally, retain customers, and actually make money on each transaction. AI app builders face unique monetization challenges — from evolving regulations and taxes to the potential for more frequent chargebacks — that require more than a basic payment processor can solve for.

Below, we walk through:

• The SaaS fundamentals every AI app business needs to master.
• Monetization challenges unique to AI businesses.
• How to monetize a web app versus a mobile app.
• How FastSpring can help.

FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT/GST and sales tax compliance, consumer payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time building groundbreaking AI products! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Start With SaaS Fundamentals

At their most basic, the majority of AI apps are still fundamentally SaaS businesses. Whether it’s a monthly subscription to your writing assistant or an annual plan for your analytics platform, the majority of AI tools run on recurring revenue.

So while you may be selling AI services instead of project management software, the core monetization principles are similar to those of subscription businesses.

Before diving into AI-specific challenges, you should nail the basics — things such as:

• Communicating well with customers around subscription terms, payments, and any changes to your business or delivery model.
• Managing and mitigating churn.
• Choosing a payment provider.

But subscriptions come with complexity. You also need to handle free trial conversions, manage failed payments through dunning processes, and deal with upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations.

Companies that have navigated this model (such as FastSpring customer Stardock) know you need a payment partner built specifically for subscription management — not just one that can process one-time charges.

Things to Consider When Selling Software or Apps Globally

When you’re selling AI apps worldwide, you need to solve several problems simultaneously:

Preferred payments and checkout that vary by region. Localized payment methods are critical for conversion. Customers expect to see prices in their currency and be able to pay using familiar methods. Customers in the U.S., for example, expect to see Apple Pay and Google Pay, while customers in Brazil prefer to pay with Pix, and customers in India want to use UPI.

Global tax calculation and remittance. If you’re selling digital services to customers based in the EU, you need to collect VAT at each buyer’s local rate and file those taxes accordingly. In the U.S., sales tax requirements vary state by state, and some states even let individual counties or cities set their own rates and rules. Each requires separate filing. Handling this yourself means registering with tax authorities in, potentially, hundreds of jurisdictions. Plus, you’re liable for any fines or penalties resulting from doing so incorrectly.

Data and platform governance. You need to process payment data securely according to regional requirements, meet data residency rules in certain jurisdictions, and maintain PCI compliance. These aren’t optional — they’re legal requirements that can shut you down or cost you hefty penalties if not followed.

Why You Want a Merchant of Record (Not Just a Payment Processor)

When choosing how to handle payments, your first and crucial choice is whether to use a basic payment service provider (PSP) or partner with a merchant of record (MoR).

A payment service provider (such as Stripe) gives you the tools to process transactions, but you remain legally responsible for every transaction. You’re in charge of calculating, collecting, and remitting taxes — in every jurisdiction where your customers live — and you carry the liability for any fraud. (Stripe is launching an MoR service, but how it will perform is still unknown.)

A merchant of record, on the other hand, becomes the legal seller of your product. FastSpring is an MoR, so we assume liability for transactions — meaning you can spend less time worrying about managing taxes and chargebacks and more time building a great product.

As the liable party for the sale, an MoR such as FastSpring handles:

• Global tax compliance. You don’t need to figure out VAT rates across EU countries, navigate state-by-state sales tax rules in the U.S. (and in some cases even city-by-city variations), or file returns in those jurisdictions. An MoR automatically calculates, collects, and remits those taxes for you.
• Consumer support for payment issues. When someone’s card declines or they have a billing question, your MoR’s support team handles it.
• Fraud prevention and risk management. Using a simple payment service provider and acting as your own merchant of record could lead to less financial industry credibility, as AI services are often perceived as riskier than other tech verticals — and in turn, that could lead to lower approval rates. Conversely, the established credibility of an experienced merchant of record such as FastSpring (with over two decades of experience!) helps improve transaction approval rates, which means higher revenue and less headaches.
• Checkout and payment localization. Instantly offer global payment localization including currency conversion, checkout translation, global tax management, and localized payment processing.
• Global compliance. Your MoR maintains PCI-DSS certification, data protection regulations, and customer authentication requirements so you don’t have to. Learn more in FastSpring’s Trust Center.

FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT/GST and sales tax compliance, consumer payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time building groundbreaking AI products! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Questions to Ask When Evaluating Payment Solutions

Before committing to a payment solution — be it a payment processor or merchant of record — ask these questions to help you evaluate:

• Does it handle global tax collection and remittance automatically, or do you need to register, collect, and file in every jurisdiction where your customers live?
• Which payment methods are supported? Can customers in your target market(s) use their preferred options?
• How does it handle subscription management? What about usage-based or metered billing? Does it offer a portal for customers to self-manage subscriptions, billing, and payment methods on file?
• Does providing consumer payment support fall to you or to your payment provider?
• Does it integrate with your existing tech stack?
• What are your actual, all-in costs — including processing fees, tax filing, compliance management, and operational overhead? 

What Makes AI Different: Unique Monetization Challenges

Once you’ve nailed the fundamentals for subscription-based businesses, you can begin to grapple with the unique challenges of monetizing an AI app.

Operating in a Young, High-Growth Market = Constant Change

AI companies are scaling globally faster than almost any previous software category. You’re not gradually expanding into new markets over several years — you’re able to serve customers worldwide pretty much from day one.

This creates challenges that more mature software categories simply didn’t face when they were at the same stage. Burgeoning AI companies are now faced with:

• Regulatory landscapes that vary dramatically by region, especially as they apply to digital services businesses. Evolving tax regulations (especially on digital goods or services) create compliance requirements that change based on where your customers are located — and these regulations will continue to emerge, grow, and evolve across the globe. For example, in 2024, five U.S. states simplified their criteria for tax nexus, which meant more businesses might meet the criteria for nexus sooner than they expected to — including digital goods businesses. And in 2025, the Philippines extended its VAT legislation to cover digital services supplied by foreign companies to consumers in the Philippines. If you use an MoR such as FastSpring, the MoR will worry about staying up to date with those types of regulations so you don’t have to.
• Evolving customer expectations and pricing norms. Unlike established software categories where pricing patterns are well understood, AI pricing is more fluid. Customers aren’t yet sure what they should pay, and you may not be sure what you should charge. To quickly and easily pivot your pricing as needed, choose a payment partner with agile pricing tools. For instance, FastSpring’s flexible Store Builder Library makes it easy for software and app sellers to update their product pricing quickly.
• Overly cautious payment processors. As we mentioned above, because the category is new and patterns aren’t established, some payment processors may be more likely to treat AI as high-risk. But since FastSpring processes billions of dollars across numerous software categories and has been for 20+ years, partnering with us means that you’ll benefit from better approval rates. Banks see transactions coming from a known, trusted entity with a proven track record, not an unproven AI startup.
• Technical challenges with usage-based billing. Unlike SaaS products that have been more commonly monetized with traditional monthly or annual subscriptions, AI services are particularly well served by usage-based billing, so support for that feature is something you’ll likely want from a monetization partner. If you want to be able to charge users in combination with real-time metering and tracking of usage, your backend needs to integrate with your payment systems. FastSpring supports usage-based billing through API integration and webhooks.

Monetizing AI Web Apps vs. AI Mobile Apps

Your monetization strategy will differ depending on whether you’re building a web app, a mobile app, or both.

AI Web Apps: The Direct Approach

Web-based AI apps have built-in advantages for monetization:

• No mandatory iOS and Android platform fees.
• Full control over the customer relationship.
• Direct access to first-party customer data.

To make web monetization work, you need:

• An optimized checkout experience with multiple payment methods, localized currencies, and trust signals that convince customers you’re legitimate and secure.
• A subscription management portal where customers can self-serve to upgrade, downgrade, view usage, update payment methods, and access their billing history.
• Integration flexibility through APIs for usage-based billing, webhooks for entitlements, and backend system connections that tie everything together.

FastSpring’s JavaScript Store Builder Library lets you quickly create a branded, seamless checkout experience that feels native to your app environment, while handling all the back-end complexity for you.

AI Mobile Apps: The App2Web Opportunity

If you’re building a mobile AI app, you’re facing 15-30% platform fees that eat into your margins. For AI apps with high compute costs, losing nearly a third of revenue to platform fees can strain the calculus at best  —  or make the economics totally unworkable at worst.

But that’s the cost of doing business with iOS and Android, right?

Not necessarily.

With app2web and web2app monetization strategies, you can sell an AI app outside popular app stores. You can recover some of that lost revenue by building a web store to monetize via the web and offering customers some kind of incentive — discounts, upgrades, in-app usage bonuses, etc. — for buying directly from you.

By doing so, you:

• Minimize the transactions on which you incur those hefty commission fees.
• Gain access to valuable first-party customer data that enables smarter acquisition campaigns, personalized promotions, and better lifecycle marketing.
• Improve margins, which is crucial when you’re paying for compute on every transaction.

While regulations around in-app steering and promotion of outside payment options vary from region to region and are ever evolving, you can always:

• Distribute your product through a web store. Selling your app’s solution directly to your consumers through your own store is an increasingly common and effective monetization strategy.
• Market your web store outside the app through social media, Discord communities, Reddit threads, email campaigns, and other channels where you aren’t restricted by app store rules.
• Build a web presence for existing users, and incentivize web store visits through exclusive offers or better pricing.

Making User Acquisition Smarter With First-Party Data

When you monetize through the web, you unlock first-party data that holds the power to supercharge your user acquisition strategy.

You can track attribution accurately, understanding which campaigns drive conversions.

You gain access to email addresses, payment preferences, referral sources, and session behavior — data points that enable sophisticated segmentation.

Then you can turn that valuable data into:

• Localized user acquisition strategies with geographic and behavioral segmentation, region-specific pricing and promotions, and language/payment method optimization.
• Targeted social campaigns where you build custom audiences from web purchasers, create lookalike audiences based on high-intent users, and retarget with actual conversion data instead of guesswork.
• Email marketing automation that drives users to web purchases, re-engages lapsed customers, and converts free users to paid plans.

Monetize Your AI App With FastSpring

FastSpring is built specifically for digital-first businesses that need to monetize globally, without getting bogged down building their own global payments infrastructures — or cobbling them together via disparate payment tools.

Our platform offers:

• Complete merchant of record services covering global tax compliance across 200+ jurisdictions, local payment methods and currencies, fraud prevention and risk management, and PCI compliance and data security.
• AI-friendly billing capabilities including out-of-the-box subscription management, flexible product catalog management, multiple pricing models (flat, tiered, hybrid), and support for usage-based billing (with proper integration).
• Developer-first integration through RESTful APIs for backend connections, webhooks for real-time event notifications, our JavaScript Store Builder Library, integration with RevenueCat for mobile apps, and backend integration for usage-based billing.
• Customizable checkout experiences with branded checkout; your choice of embedded, pop-up, or web storefront experiences support for trials, coupons, and promotions; and management of multiple subscription tiers.
• Fast implementation with quick setup for standard configurations, flexibility for complex requirements, pre-existing  compliance infrastructure, and the ability to focus your engineering resources on AI instead of payments.

FastSpring helps AI app developers navigate the complexity of global monetization and scale successfully. We’ve spent over 20 years helping digital-first companies grow, and we’ve built our platform specifically for businesses like yours.

FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT/GST and sales tax compliance, consumer payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time building groundbreaking AI products! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post AI Monetization: How AI App Builders Can Handle Pricing, Global Expansion, and Compliance appeared first on FastSpring.

3 Key Benefits of FastSpring’s Trial Hopping Prevention Feature

1. It Prevents Abuse

Repeated exploitation of free trials can lead to revenue loss and skewed metrics, making it harder to gauge genuine interest in your product. FastSpring’s Trial Hopping Prevention feature helps prevent users from repeatedly accessing free trials, protecting the integrity of your trial strategy and supporting healthier subscription performance.

2. It Delivers a Fair Trial Experience

Providing a free trial should be about allowing genuine users to explore your product and determine if it’s right for them. Trial hopping can undermine this experience by filling your trial funnel with non-serious users. Trial hopping prevention helps maintain a fair experience for customers sincerely exploring your product.

3. It Encourages Conversions

When free trials are limited to genuine first-time use, users who see value in your product are more likely to upgrade to a paid subscription to maintain access. By restricting repeated free trials, this feature can help support better trial-to-paid conversion outcomes.

How Does the Trial Hopping Prevention Feature Work?

FastSpring’s Trial Hopping Prevention feature helps reduce repeated free-trial abuse by preventing the same email from being used for unlimited retrials, helping guide repeat trial attempts toward a paid plan instead. Businesses can enable the setting within their store’s subscription configuration as part of their broader subscription strategy.

Best Practices for Leveraging the Trial Hopping Prevention Feature

Communicate Clear Policies

Transparency is key to maintaining trust with your users. Clearly outline your trial policies, including any restrictions, in your terms of service and marketing materials. This helps set expectations and reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings.

Use Incentives to Encourage Upgrades

To complement the Trial Hopping Prevention feature, consider offering incentives such as discounts or bonuses for users who transition from a free trial to a paid subscription. Highlight the value of your paid plans, and demonstrate how they can enhance the user’s experience.

Monitor Trial Metrics

Track trial-to-paid conversion rates and analyze user behavior during trials. FastSpring’s Trials dashboard can help you monitor signup volume, conversion performance, and lifecycle trends so you can refine your trial strategy over time.

Combine With Other Retention Strategies

Pair the Trial Hopping Prevention feature with other retention-focused tools, such as Pause a Subscription or a cancellation survey, to maximize customer satisfaction and reduce churn.

Protect Your Business and Enhance Customer Experience

FastSpring’s Trial Hopping Prevention feature empowers businesses to maintain the integrity of their free trial offerings while supporting stronger conversion outcomes. By preventing abuse, ensuring fairness, and encouraging upgrades, this feature helps you deliver value to genuine users and protect your subscription revenue.

FAQs

Partner With FastSpring

FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment and subscription platform for thousands of SaaS, software, video games, and digital products businesses, including VAT, GST, and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. 

Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post Maximizing Subscription Value With FastSpring’s Trial Hopping Prevention Feature appeared first on FastSpring.

Example: You want to create a subscription. You can ask:

“How do I create a subscription?”

The AI responds with step-by-step guidance:

“To create a subscription, go to Catalog > Subscription Plans and click Create Subscription. You will need to define the price and interval.”

From there, you can follow up:

“Can you explain the interval options in more detail?”

The AI keeps context and replies:

“Certainly. The interval determines how often the customer is billed. You can choose Adhoc, Day, Week, Month, or Year.”

This conversational approach helps you explore features in depth without having to repeat questions or scroll through multiple pages.

Key features of the new AI search:

• Context-Aware Follow-Ups: Keep the AI “in the loop” so follow-ups build on previous answers.
  
• Use Your Own AI Tools: On any doc page, you can use your own ChatGPT or Claude with that page’s content as context and even copy Markdown for internal use.
  
• Faster Navigation: Quickly find the right docs and related topics without guesswork.
  

Note: The AI works from documented content only. If a topic isn’t covered yet, it may not have an answer. Documentation remains the source of truth.

The new AI search turns documentation into a conversation — making answers faster, exploration easier, and learning more intuitive.

Explore the Ask AI documentation to discover features, tips, and best practices.

The post AI-Powered Answers, Right in the Docs appeared first on FastSpring.

• App2web flows enable mobile app and mobile game developers to steer users to their own external web store to complete transactions outside the “walled gardens” of Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.
• Doing so allows developers to avoid hefty commissions paid to app stores — but also to more directly own their relationship with users and gather invaluable first-party data.
• Steer Safe™ from FastSpring offers a quick, simple way to launch app2web with secure, localized checkout and the most popular global payment methods.

For over a decade, the mobile app economy was defined by the walled gardens of two tech behemoths: Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store. For developers of digital-first businesses — including mobile apps and mobile games — hefty commission fees of 15% to 30% were par for the course, a necessary evil to gain access to these marketplaces and consumers who frequent them.

Today, that’s changing. A series of landmark legal rulings and shifting regulations around the world are breaking down those walls, making mobile monetization outside of app stores possible and offering developers a way around those hefty fees.

App2web flows, which steer users from within an app to your external web store to complete a purchase, are a big part of that.

Below, we cover:

• The regulatory and legal landscape — and why app2web is emerging now.
• The benefits of app2web.
• A step-by-step guide to launching app2web in the U.S.
• In-app steering with Steer Safe™ from FastSpring.
• How to leverage your App2Web first-party data.
• How to monetize with web2app in addition to app2web.
• Creating one connected commerce experience with FastSpring.
• Frequently asked questions about mobile app app2web monetization.

Prefer to watch a video presentation about app2web monetization? Our experts presented an earlier version of this content at a Business of Apps event in Oct. 2025. Watch the full video here.

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT and sales tax compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The Shifting Regulatory Landscape Around App Stores and Mobile Monetization

The transition to web-based monetization is powered by a number of legal decisions that have redefined what steering looks like for mobile developers. These rulings have effectively legalized and protected the practice of guiding users to a website to find a better deal or additional options.

• Epic v. Apple (U.S.): In April 2025, rulings established that Apple cannot prevent iOS developers in the United States from including links in their apps that direct users to an external website for payments. Further decisions clarified that Apple cannot charge developers commission fees on external purchases made outside the App Store.
• Epic v. Google (U.S.): Similar steering capabilities for Android apps in the United States became available in late 2025 after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Google’s request for a stay on the deadline to open the Google Play Store to alternative options by October 22, 2025.
• Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act: This regulation, which went into effect in December 2025, unlocks steering on both iOS and Android platforms for developers in the Japanese market.

These changes mean that, for the first time, you can explicitly message users in-app about better deals or exclusive content available on your own web store without fear of account suspension.

Why Go App2Web? (Hint: It’s About More Than Fees)

While saving on marketplace commissions is a significant driver, they aren’t the only reason top-tier developers want to sell outside app stores. In a 2025 survey of mobile gaming companies, top reasons for adopting a direct-to-consumer (D2C) web store included:

• Improved access to customer data and insights.
• More control over pricing and promotions.
• Improved brand visibility and loyalty.
• The opportunity to build a direct relationship with players.

Read the results of our entire gaming industry survey here.

The Value of First-Party Data

When a user transacts through a traditional app store, the marketplace owns the relationship, often providing the developer with anonymized data only. By moving the transaction to your web store, you capture the most valuable piece of data for any business: the customer’s email address.

Having direct access to user data — including geography, platform, language, name, and purchase history — allows you to move from reactive to proactive marketing. You can implement automated onboarding flows, renewal reminders, and win-back campaigns to enhance adoption, promote loyalty, and mitigate churn.

Solving the Attribution Gap

One of the greatest challenges in mobile marketing is the attribution gap created by walled garden ecosystems. Web stores allow you to embed tracking pixels from platforms such as Meta and Google — so you can see exactly which ad campaigns drive paid conversions, rather than just app installs.

This feedback loop is essential for optimizing your ad spend, allowing you to double down on high-performing campaigns and create lookalike audiences based on your best customers.

Pricing and Bundling Flexibility

The web offers freedom and flexibility that app stores just can’t match. On your web store, you can experiment with tiered pricing, custom bundles, or loyalty rewards, with no requirement that they fit into Apple or Google’s rigid SKU structures.

For example, you might offer a “Buy Direct” bonus, such as offering a discounted subscription  or a month of free service, to incentivize the jump to your web store.

How to Launch App2Web in the US

Launching app2web monetization doesn’t require building a massive ecommerce platform. You can start with a simple, secure checkout loop that integrates with your existing back-end systems.

Step 1: Add In-App Buy Buttons

Place clear calls to action (CTA) buy buttons in appropriate places within your app or game — such as your paywall, your in-game store, or a settings menu — that link to your checkout experience or web store.

In the U.S., you can use explicit messaging such as “Buy direct and save” to guide users.

Step 2: Pass Dynamic URL Variables

To ensure the transition is seamless, your app needs to pass data over to your web store. When a user taps the Buy button, use dynamic URL variables to pass their User ID, product tokens, and authentication details to the back-end system.

This allows your web store to recognize the user instantly without requiring them to log in again and adding unnecessary friction to the checkout process. It helps you track who that person is, what they’re doing, and their entitlements.

Then you can use that data to leverage segmentation, for example, or to offer promotions or discounts as related to that user.

Step 3: Localized Web Checkout

With web checkout, you can control the design, data collection, and payment methods you accept. It doesn’t have to be complicated — it can be as simple as your logo, the product they’re purchasing, and the payment methods offered.

It’s crucial to offer localized payment methods that are familiar to your users in different jurisdictions. For example, U.S. users are familiar with mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, which offer quick, seamless checkout for them. In Brazil, users may prefer Pix, while in India, UPI (Unified Payments Interface) is more popular.

Beyond payment methods, your web checkout may also need to be translated into other languages and prices converted into the user’s currency.

Step 4: Communicate With Back-End Systems to Allow In-App Entitlements

Once the purchase is complete, your commerce platform sends a signal — typically via a webhook or API — to your back-end.

Your internal systems then update the user’s account and unlock the digital product or subscription. At the same time, a deep link redirects the user back to your app, where the purchase is reflected in near real-time — as few as 10-15 seconds.

In-App Steering With Steer Safe™ From FastSpring

In addition to circumventing app store fees and collecting user data, another key goal of the flow is driving value for your users. That means creating a smooth, secure loop where the user finishes their checkout on the web, your systems automatically sync, and the app reflects the purchase in near real-time.

If all of that sounds a bit complicated to pull off, FastSpring can help. Our approach to app2web steering — called Steer Safe™ — makes it simple for you to steer users from in-app experiences to secure, localized checkout, and back to your app, all in a matter of seconds. It’s a much faster and easier way to deploy app2web as soon as possible.

It’s back-end agnostic — meaning it works with whatever back-end system you’re using — and is available for both iOS and Android mobile apps.

Learn more about Steer Safe™ from FastSpring.

Leveraging Your App2Web First-Party Data

When you’re just operating in app stores, it can be very challenging to identify who your users are, collect their email addresses, and create a conversation with them. By using the app2web flow, you unlock a lot of that data.

Once you’ve established that direct line to your customers through your web store, you can transform your growth strategy from generic to highly personalized.

Ad Targeting and Retargeting

With a web store, you’re no longer flying blind. By connecting your first-party data to your ad platforms, you can:

• Identify high-value campaigns: Know which creative assets and which audiences are driving the most revenue.
• Automate targeting: Ad platforms like Google and Meta can automatically use this data — along with their own algorithms — to better target your ads to the users most likely to convert.
• Effective retargeting: Show ads specifically to users who visited your web store but didn’t complete a purchase.
• Build “lookalike” audiences: Upload your list of converted web buyers to find new users with similar characteristics.

Email Marketing

Your email list is your most direct channel for retention, and — as we mentioned above — email addresses are the most valuable piece of data you can collect via app2web.

When you connect this and other first-party data to your email marketing platform, you can easily tailor and target your email campaigns.

• Personalized onboarding: Send tutorials and tips based on the specific product or bundle they purchased.
• Automated renewals: Remind subscription users of upcoming renewals with a link to manage their account on the web.
• Win-back and re-engagement flows: If a user hasn’t logged in for 30 days, trigger an email offer with a web-exclusive discount to bring them back.
• Segmentation: Segment users to deliver the right message, to the right people, at exactly the right time.

Monetizing With Web2App In Addition to App2Web

Whether you’re in a region where app2web isn’t allowed, or you simply want to improve revenue and user acquisition, web2app is a valuable addition to your toolbox.

This flow creates a funnel through which you can drive user acquisition, and helps avoid fees on the app store. To do this, you’ll need a few parts: social ads or organic posts, a website landing page, and a checkout.

Instead of using the app store as your primary user acquisition channel, you can leverage paid social platforms like Meta, TikTok, or Google Search to send traffic directly to your website. Instead of being reliant solely on the app store listing, you can take ownership of the entire user journey.

When a user clicks on an ad, they land on a high-converting page you’ve designed without the distractions — or limitations — of the app store pages. This also allows you to implement other features like robust A/B testing, pixel tracking, and retargeting strategies that contribute to additional access to user data.

Then at checkout, you gain the benefit of bypassing the standard 15%-30% platform commissions and can offer features on your site that decrease customer churn, such as saved payment methods and account management. You can also offer flexible pricing, bundle products, or discounts that wouldn’t be otherwise feasible if you were paying the cut to the app store.

Once the transaction is finished, you’ll send your user to an app store page link to download and log in, where their purchase is already waiting for them.

Ultimately, this strategy transforms your app from a discovery-dependent product into a conversion-focused powerhouse, where you’re able to control user acquisition from channels outside of the app marketplaces while still keeping the flows that already work for you.

Other Web2App Tips

Funnels aren’t the only way you can improve user acquisition on your website with web2app. Below are a few more tips for how you can use it to improve website conversions and user acquisition:

Incentivizing the Web Visit

To encourage users to leave the app and visit your site, offer additional value that isn’t available in the mobile app interface:

• Additional free assets: Templates, PDFs, exclusive in-app themes, or resource libraries.
• Industry content: Educational content, industry insights, and tutorials.
• Site-exclusive events: Webinars, livestreams, Q&As, or site-exclusive challenges.
• Community: Forums, community showcases, leaderboards, etc.
• Loyalty rewards: Badges or loyalty currency for in-app purchases.
• Reports and tracking: Exportable data summaries and personalized dashboards.

How to Launch Web2App Store Flows

1. Create a product page with the products available to purchase for your customers. If you only offer a single product, this can be a single, simple page. For more extensive product catalogs, a full web store may work better.
2. Integrate the checkout experience into your product page as a simple pop-up checkout, for example, or a more customizable embedded checkout. A shopping cart feature may be worthwhile if you offer many products or add-ons.
3. Process user payments on your web store using Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other popular, preferred, and localized payment methods, depending on the jurisdictions where your users live.
4. Communicate with back-end systems via webhooks and APIs to allow in-app entitlements — confirm purchases, deliver subscriptions, unlock content, etc. — and send users back to the app as quickly as possible following a purchase.

When done well, checkout should feel like a part of a more holistic experience that users have with your brand. Ensuring the process is seamless and quick — and that the design is consistent across your app, web store, and checkout flow — will help guide users through the payment process and mitigate any drop-off or abandonment.

One Connected Commerce Experience With FastSpring

App2web isn’t a standalone channel or strategy. Think of it more like an additive layer to your existing app and web strategy.

Together, app2web and web2app flows unlock new revenue and richer first-party data. It’s not just about billing, but about developing a direct relationship with your users.

The question is no longer whether you should launch direct monetization on your website, but how quickly you can get it live to start owning your customer relationships. With FastSpring, it’s easier than ever to connect app2web and web2app flows to your app, helping you convert more, everywhere.

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT and sales tax compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions About App2Web Monetization for Mobile Developers

What Is App2Web and How Does It Benefit Mobile Developers?

App2web flows enable mobile app and mobile game developers to steer users to their own external web shop to complete transactions outside the walled gardens of Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.

Benefits for developers include:

• Improved access to customer data and insights.
• More control over pricing and promotions.
• Improved brand visibility and loyalty.
• The opportunity to build a direct relationship with players.

Can I Steer iOS and Android Users to My Web Store?

As of this writing, direct and explicit steering is allowed for users in the U.S. and Japan.

For users outside these jurisdictions, developers can deploy web2app flows: Instead of linking directly to a payment page, you can steer users to non-payment pages — i.e., pages that provide some non-transactional value.

It’s less direct, but this strategy works as a one-two punch: you bring them to the web for content, and once they have an account, you can market the store to them directly.

Ready to try FastSpring? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post Beyond the App Store: A Guide to App2Web Mobile Monetization appeared first on FastSpring.

For example, using a one-size-fits-all approach to pricing and packaging tends to be less fair for players located in countries with lower disposable income, which also limits your ability to increase revenue and profit driven by players in those countries.

We know there is potential to make things more fair for players and increase profits at the same time — but how can we localize pricing without making players angry at a lack of pricing parity between countries?

In this article, we explore how optimizing global pricing and packaging is a delicate balance between driving transaction volume, profitability, and pricing parity. We’ll take you through a crawl-walk-run approach to finding the best formula for your game’s global P&P strategies that can deliver the most value to you and your players — without making them angry.

The ROI of Global Flexibility

Optimizing for profitability with your global P&P strategy is a fairly straightforward concept. The lower your price is in any particular country, the more transaction volume you’ll have, but with a lower profitability per transaction. If your transaction volume increases enough, your total profit for that country will increase, even if your profit per transaction is lower. Easy peasy.

The more complex part of global P&P is when pricing parity across countries is considered. 

For example, gaming is a global and social business. Your players are everywhere and likely interact with each other on Discord, Reddit, or other social media. If you offer players in India a lower price than you offer to players in the U.S., then your U.S. players may learn of your lack of pricing parity between countries and get angry with you. They may even try to game the system by using VPNs or other techniques to try to get access to the lower pricing. Not so easy… peasy.

So how do you localize your P&P globally to maximize profits without making players angry? 

I like to recommend a crawl-walk-run approach to price localization, starting with the least aggressive options and testing into more aggressive options over time.

Global Pricing and Packaging Strategies

(Ordered by Least to Most Aggressive)

1. No Localization: You offer the same currency and price globally.

2. Localized Currencies: You charge the same price in all countries, but offer local currencies pegged to the current exchange rate for that currency.

Pro tip: Changing prices frequently due to shifting exchange rates can be confusing for players. I recommend evaluating exchange rates about once a year to set prices instead of changing prices frequently or dynamically. That said, you should take note that exchange rates can change quickly depending on the country and world events, so prices that make sense in January might not make as much sense in March.

3. Localized Discounts and Promotions: You offer the same products at the same list price (adjusted for local currencies) in all countries, but you offer a limited time discount for that country (e.g., “We’re celebrating our growth in India with 20% off our June battle pass for India-based players!”). Players tend to be more forgiving of celebratory regional discounts causing a lack of price parity vs. a lack of parity for everyday list prices.

Pro tip: Use geo localization on your web store to gate offers to only show to players located in the countries you’re targeting. You can use IP addresses or the player’s billing address (for logged in players) to power geo localization on your web store.

4. Localized Products: You offer slightly different products for a lower price in specific countries (e.g. “Buy BattlePass Lite for a 50% discount. Excludes bonus skins included in the main battle pass.”). The logic behind this strategy is that if players in one country notice a cheaper price in another country, you can point out that this is because those players get less for that price. Lower price = less entitlements.

Pro tip: Try acknowledging that you’re offering players in certain countries cheaper options with less entitlements to help all players enjoy your game regardless of their access to disposable income. There’s nothing sneaky or wrong about trying to be inclusive and fair.

5. Localized Pricing: You offer the same products globally, but price differently per country. This is the most extreme example, in which your battle pass costs maybe $20 in the U.S., but only the equivalent of $5 in India. This comes with the greatest risk of player dissatisfaction due to the lack of price and value parity between countries for the same product.

Pro tip: As the most aggressive approach, this should be the last option you experiment with; however, this approach also offers the highest degree of control when optimizing for profits within a specific country. Additionally, if you are monetizing a casual game where players rarely if ever speak with each other, you may have lower risk of localized pricing causing players to be angry at a lack of price parity between countries.

So, What Is the Best Approach for YOUR Game?

The best global P&P strategy for your game — and your players — depends on a near-infinite number of variables, from your type of game, the type of in-game items for sale, player concentrations, and so on. This means that the true best approach is to iteratively test, measure your results, and listen to your players at every step of your journey. 

My advice is to take a crawl-walk-run approach, starting at the top of the list of strategies above, and making your way down the list until your ability to drive profits clashes with your ability to keep players happy. Once you find the right global P&P strategies, the result should be a more fair experience for your players and higher profits for you.

If you’d like help with monetizing your game D2C including advice on your global P&P strategies, request a FastSpring demo or check out FastSpring for gaming.

The post A Crawl-Walk-Run Guide to Global Pricing and Packaging for Games appeared first on FastSpring.

This does not replace your responsibility to report income earned through FastSpring. You’re still responsible for meeting any local income reporting requirements in your country.

Under IRS regulations, FastSpring is required to report certain payment transactions to the IRS. As a result, FastSpring will issue Form 1099-K to U.S. sellers who meet the applicable IRS reporting thresholds.

Where Can I Find My Total Earnings?

To view your year-to-date gross sales:

• Go to FastSpring App Dashboard > Account Summary.
• Weekly Summary Reports, when totaled, show your Gross Sales for the calendar year.

Gross Sales are calculated as gross proceeds minus discounts, returns, and FastSpring fees. Taxes are excluded, where applicable.

For more detailed reporting, you can also use Payout Statements, which include orders, refunds, fees, chargebacks, and adjustments.

Where to Find Your Payout Statements

Payout statements are available in the FastSpring App Dashboard:

1. Go to Account Summary.
2. Select Payout History.

From there:

• Click a date range under Payout Cycle to view a specific payout.
• Select Generate Statements to create monthly or annual statements.
• Use the download icon to save or share statements.

These statements are commonly used for reconciliation and year-end tax preparation.

1099-K Reporting: What’s Current for 2025 Reporting Year

Under updated IRS guidance, Form 1099-K is generally issued to U.S. sellers only if both of the following thresholds are met:

• More than $20,000 in gross payments, and
• More than 200 transactions in a calendar year.

Receiving a 1099-K does not mean you owe additional tax. The form reports gross proceeds, not net taxable income. You are taxed on net income after refunds, fees, and allowable deductions.

For more information, please see our Tax information reporting: Form 1099-K page. 

Update Your Tax Information (W-8 / W-9)

All sellers are required to complete and maintain a valid Form W-9 (U.S. sellers) or Form W-8 (non-U.S. sellers) in the FastSpring dashboard.

Sellers must promptly review and update their tax information whenever there is a change that could affect tax reporting or withholding, including but not limited to:

• A change in legal entity name or classification.
• A change in tax residency or country of incorporation.
• A change in authorized signatory.
• A change in permanent address or business address.
• Any other change that impacts the accuracy of the information provided on the W-9 or W-8.

Failure to keep tax information current may result in incorrect tax reporting, backup withholding, or delays in payment processing.

To update your tax information:

1. Log in to the FastSpring App.
2. Go to Account Summary > Manage Tax Information.
3. Complete or update your W-8 or W-9.

If your tax details or mailing address change after a 1099-K is issued, contact
support@fastspring.com.

Quick Tips for a Smooth Year End

• Track earnings consistently using weekly summaries and payout statements.
• Understand gross vs. net income when reviewing 1099-K data.
• Keep records of refunds, fees, and expenses.
• Reach out early if you need help accessing reports or tax documents.

The post 2025 Year-End US Tax Reporting With FastSpring appeared first on FastSpring.

At FastSpring, we’re here to help you handle the surge, delight customers, and maximize sales well beyond the weekend itself.

Here’s your step-by-step game plan to stay ahead of the competition and maximize every opportunity.

1. Lock In Website Performance

• Stress-Test Your Site: Simulate peak traffic to make sure your store won’t slow down or crash.
• Streamline the Checkout: Eliminate friction so shoppers can move from cart to confirmation in seconds. Reduce checkout to as few clicks as possible — no unnecessary forms or fields — and offer plenty of different payment methods.

2. Play to Win With Conversions

• Optimize Product Pages: Use A/B testing to refine layouts, calls-to-action, and copy.
• Maximize Conversation Rates: Offer local currencies, payment methods, and regionalized experiences. The more familiar the journey, the higher the likelihood of conversion.

3. Prep Your Fulfillment and Inventory

• Forecast With Data: Review past sales to anticipate this year’s best sellers.
• Stock up on Licenses: Ensure that you have sufficient licenses uploaded to meet the increased demand.
• Check Your Systems: Confirm fulfillment workflows are ready to deliver without bottlenecks.

4. Create Offers That Stand Out

• Bundle and Discount: Craft compelling promotions and bundles that shoppers can’t ignore.
• Offer Smart Coupons: Use multi-discount options and FastSpring’s Combine Discounts feature for maximum impact.

5. Run Practice Drills: Test Everything (Twice!)

• Be Thorough: Products, coupons, checkout flows, and license keys — test them all.
• Prepare for Scale: One small glitch at scale can cost a lot of money. Don’t leave it to chance.

6. Kick Off Marketing Early

• Go Live Before the Rush: Launch campaigns now — across email, social, and ads.
• Build Buzz: Use countdowns, sneak peeks, and reminders to generate excitement.

7. Defend Against Threats

• Secure Your Site: Cyber threats spike with higher traffic. Protect your data and your shoppers.
• Trust FastSpring’s Defence: Our fraud prevention engine is your shield at checkout.

8. Coach Your Support Team

• Prepare for Game Day: Train your team to resolve payment and order questions fast.
• Tap Into FastSpring: Keep customer interactions seamless with our extensive resources. From detailed documentation to OwlBot, our AI-powered support tool, we’ve got everything you need to resolve queries quickly and confidently.

9. Manage Payment Hurdles

• Expect Some Declines: High volume = higher likelihood of declines.
• Have a Backup Plan: Guide customers to alternate payment methods while FastSpring filters out risky transactions.

10. Play the Long Game: Post-Purchase Retention

• Follow Up Strong: Thank-you emails, loyalty discounts, and re-engagement campaigns build lasting connections.
• Think Beyond the Weekend: Convert Cyber Weekend shoppers into holiday-season regulars and year-round fans.

FastSpring: Your Partner for the Full Season

Cyber Weekend is just the starting whistle. With FastSpring’s all-in-one payment platform — from checkout, to fraud protection, to global tax handling — you’ll be ready to win the weekend and the extended sales season ahead.

Sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

The post Your Cyber Weekend Game Plan: Maximize Conversions and Minimize Stress appeared first on FastSpring.

In this episode of Growth Stage, we speak with Hank Hoffmeier, email deliverability evangelist at Kickbox, about how authentication, verification, and deliverability impact your bottom line. Listen to learn:

• Why deliverability is no longer a “set it and forget it” process.
• How to fix common mistakes that are silently killing your campaigns.

Jump to video.  |  Jump to transcript.

Listen or watch now!

Podcast Full Interview: Audio

Listen online or find it on more podcast services.

Podcast Full Interview: Video

The post EP36: The Hidden Science of Email: Authentication, Deliverability, and Trust appeared first on FastSpring.

Your potential customers are no longer just Googling “best project management software” or “CRM for small business.” They’re asking ChatGPT to compare your product features, getting personalized recommendations from AI tools, and discovering solutions through conversations rather than traditional search results.

Google still handles more than 5 trillion searches annually, but that dominance is beginning to fray. As highlighted by recent industry research from Pubcon 2025, we’re experiencing a foundational shift: Search is no longer synonymous with search engines. From ChatGPT to social platforms, potential customers are finding software solutions outside of Google — and AI is accelerating this trend.

According to recent survey data, 66% of consumers believe AI will replace traditional search engines within five years, and 82% say AI-powered search is already more helpful than traditional search. 

This shift represents both a challenge and an opportunity for SaaS companies trying to reach customers earlier in their decision-making process.

How AI Search Changes SaaS Discovery

AI search doesn’t behave like traditional search engines, and this has significant implications for how customers discover and evaluate software solutions.

As industry expert Ryan Jones of Razorfish noted, “We used to optimize for humans who use Google. Now we’re optimizing for AI that reads Google for humans.” For SaaS companies, this shift changes everything about customer acquisition.

1. AI Search Provides Direct Answers

Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini synthesize information about your software directly in their interfaces. When someone asks, “What’s the best email marketing platform for ecommerce?,” they often get a comprehensive answer without ever visiting your website. 

Your product pages are no longer the destination — the conversation is the destination.

2. AI Uses ‘Query Fan-Out’ for Software Recommendations

When potential customers ask AI tools about software solutions, these tools don’t just process the exact query. Instead, they generate dozens of related sub-queries to gather comprehensive information about features, pricing, integrations, and use cases. 

This means that your content needs to address not just primary keywords, but the entire ecosystem of questions around your product category.

3. Product Information Is Atomized

AI doesn’t treat your website as a collection of pages. Instead, it ingests and references specific passages about features, pricing, integrations, and benefits. 

Every piece of content on your site — from feature descriptions to help articles — must be self-contained and structured for AI comprehension.

“We used to optimize for humans who use Google. Now we’re optimizing for AI that reads Google for humans.”

Ryan Jones, Razorfish

What This Means for SaaS Marketers

The ground is shifting rapidly, but SaaS companies can take specific actions now to maintain visibility and capture customers in this new landscape:

1. Optimize for AI-Driven Product Discovery

Traditional SEO still matters, but SaaS companies need to think beyond basic optimization. Your technical foundation — site speed, structured data, clean internal linking — remains crucial. But success now requires:

• Structuring product information for AI comprehension: Create clear, self-contained descriptions of features, use cases, and benefits. Avoid marketing speak that obscures actual functionality.
• Eliminating content bloat: Remove or consolidate weak product pages, outdated feature descriptions, and redundant content that confuses AI models about your core offerings.
• Thinking in terms of buyer intent: Structure content around the questions potential customers actually ask, not just the keywords they might search for.

2. Create Content That Answers Software Buyers’ Questions

If your product descriptions are vague, rely on industry jargon, or require context from other pages, they may be ignored by AI tools when customers ask for software recommendations.

Instead, focus on:

• Clear, benefit-focused feature descriptions that stand alone without additional context.
• Comprehensive FAQ sections addressing common software evaluation questions.
• Comparison content that honestly positions your product against alternatives.
• Implementation guides and use case examples that demonstrate real-world value.
• Integration documentation that’s easily discoverable and understandable.

The goal is to ensure AI tools have complete, accurate information about your software when making recommendations to potential customers.

3. Track AI Visibility and Expand Your Presence

Only 22% of B2B marketers currently track their brand visibility in large language models, representing a significant missed opportunity for SaaS companies where word-of-mouth and recommendations drive significant growth.

• Monitor AI mentions: Use tools like SERP Recon and BrightEdge to understand how often your product appears in AI-generated responses. Track whether these mentions are accurate and favorable.
• Build authoritative presence beyond search: Strengthen your visibility across channels where software buyers gather information:
  • Develop thought leadership content for industry publications.
  • Participate actively in relevant communities (Reddit, Discord, industry forums).
  • Create educational content for YouTube and podcast platforms.
  • Engage with software review sites and comparison platforms.
• Invest in digital PR and partnerships: Build relationships with industry influencers, participate in software roundups, and collaborate with complementary tools to increase your citation potential.

The New SaaS Marketing Playbook

AI search is no longer emerging — it’s here, and it’s already changing how customers discover software solutions. Organic traffic patterns are shifting, traditional keyword strategies are losing effectiveness, and customers are getting recommendations from AI before they ever reach your website.

This doesn’t mean traditional marketing is dead. It means SaaS marketing is evolving toward a more distributed, conversation-focused approach.

Focus on being discoverable across channels where your customers seek recommendations, not just via search engines.

Focus on content that educates and informs rather than just on converting visitors that are already on your site.

Focus on brand visibility that transcends individual marketing channels and builds authority in AI knowledge bases.

The companies that thrive in this new landscape won’t be those that game the algorithm, but those that consistently provide clear, helpful information about their software solutions wherever customers are looking for answers.

For SaaS, software, and digital product companies, this shift represents an opportunity to build more authentic relationships with potential customers by meeting them where they are — in conversations with AI tools, community discussions, and educational content — rather than waiting for them to find you through traditional search.

The post How AI Search Is Revolutionizing SaaS Marketing, and What You Should Do About It appeared first on FastSpring.

Here’s an in-depth look at how this feature works and why it’s beneficial.

6 Key Benefits of FastSpring’s Subscription Pause Feature

1. Flexibility for Customers

Life can be unpredictable, and sometimes, customers temporarily may not need or be able to afford a service. The subscription pause feature allows them to disable billing and services temporarily without canceling their subscription. This flexibility builds trust and shows that your business values customer needs.

2. Retention Strategy

Rather than losing customers permanently due to cancellations, the pause feature provides an alternative. By allowing customers to pause their subscriptions, businesses can retain them over the long term, improving customer lifetime value and reducing churn rates.

3. Automatic Resumption

Once a pause is initiated, subscriptions automatically resume on the configured date. This eliminates the need for customers to take additional action, making the process seamless and ensuring service continuity when they’re ready to return.

4. Customization Options

FastSpring’s subscription pause feature is highly customizable, allowing businesses to:

• Define the maximum pause duration.
• Determine whether customers can initiate pauses themselves or require assistance.
• Tailor the experience to match their subscription model and customer needs.

5. Reduced Churn

By providing an alternative to cancellations, businesses can significantly reduce churn rates. Customers facing temporary financial constraints or changes in service needs are more likely to return after a pause than if they had canceled altogether.

6. Improved Customer Experience

Offering a pause option demonstrates empathy and understanding of your customers’ challenges, or of even just their usage habits and expectations. Offering a pause feature enhances their overall experience and strengthens their loyalty to your brand. 

For example, a November 2024 Wall Street Journal article cites an Antenna report showing that the rate of streaming service subscribers who canceled one year and rejoined the next increased from a median of 29.8% in 2022 to 34.2% in 2023. Since more and more people may be regularly stopping subscriptions and then rejoining later, making the process easier for your customers can foster goodwill and loyalty, ultimately improving retention.

How to Implement FastSpring’s Subscription Pause Feature

Step 1: Configure Pause Settings

• Within your FastSpring account, configure the subscription pause settings to align with your business strategy. 
• Decide on the maximum allowable pause duration and whether customers can initiate pauses themselves. (This configuration setting allows you to choose the number of bill periods the customer can pause for.)

Step 2: Customer Communication

• Clearly communicate the pause option to your customers. Highlight the benefits, such as avoiding cancellation fees or preserving their subscription benefits upon resumption. The number of billing cycles for which a subscription can be paused is configurable, but it must be set in advance.
• If the pause feature is not enabled for customers, only sellers can pause subscriptions.
• The pause applies only to the configured number of billing cycles, and this setting must be saved in the subscription’s configuration.

Step 3: Monitor Paused Subscriptions

FastSpring provides webhooks to monitor and manage paused subscriptions. Use these to identify trends or common accounts, such as common pause durations or reasons for pauses, and refine your strategies accordingly. (FastSpring sends webhooks when a subscription is paused or updated to resume, such as subscription.paused and subscription.updated.)

Step 4: Leverage Automated Notifications

Set up automated email notifications to:

• Confirm the pause request.
• Remind customers when their subscription is about to resume.
• Offer incentives, such as discounts or bonuses, to encourage early resumption.

A Win-Win for Businesses and Customers

The subscription pause feature is a powerful tool that benefits both businesses and customers. By reducing churn, improving customer retention, and enhancing the overall experience, it positions your business for long-term success. Customers, in turn, appreciate the flexibility and understanding, fostering loyalty and trust. A “Pause” option reduces churn by catching these “non-permanent” cancellations.

Buyers feel less pressure and more positive about the brand, leading to higher lifetime value (LTV).

Start leveraging FastSpring’s subscription pause feature today and give your customers the flexibility they need while ensuring your business thrives in the subscription economy.

Are you looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your business internationally? FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, gaming, and other digital goods businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post Enhance Customer Experience With FastSpring’s Subscription Pause Feature appeared first on FastSpring.

Likewise, in the tech-meets-ecommerce space, there were very few SaaS companies out there, live service gaming didn’t really exist yet, and software companies wanting to sell their software globally had very, very few options.

And the options that were available left a lot to be desired. 

That’s why on June 28, 2005, four tech founders — including Dan Engel, current Founder and Managing Partner of Santa Barbara Venture Partners — got together to found FastSpring. 

Twenty years later, we’re still going strong! Now led by CEO David Nachman and backed by Accel-KKR — and with technology more advanced and stronger than ever — FastSpring is celebrating its 20th anniversary by looking back on how we got here, applauding today’s team for our current successes, and looking forward to a bright future in the payments industry as an experienced partner our customers can trust. 

In this special celebratory post, we share:

• A special twentieth anniversary episode of Growth Stage, interviewing both FastSpring’s co-founder & first CEO Dan Engel and FastSpring’s current CEO David Nachman. Jump to podcast.
• A brief history of FastSpring, with some fantastically nostalgic photos of the team throughout the years. Jump to history. 

Growth Stage Podcast EP34: What It Takes to Build an Enduring Business

Building a lasting business isn’t easy. 

Knowing what really makes a company succeed long term can be even harder.

That’s why it can be helpful to learn from companies that have stood the test of time.

In this episode of Growth Stage, we celebrate FastSpring’s 20th anniversary with insights from its first CEO, Dan Engel, and current CEO, David Nachman. They share:

• What has helped FastSpring thrive for two decades.
• What mistakes to avoid when building your own business.
• What it really takes to build something that lasts.

Whether you’re planning to exit in two years or fifty, take a moment to step back and think about the long term future of your business. Watch or listen now!

Jump to video.  |  Jump to history. |  Jump to transcript.

Podcast Full Interview: Audio

Listen online or find it on more podcast services.

Podcast Full Interview: Video

Transcript available at the end of this post.

A Brief History of FastSpring (With Photos)

FastSpring was founded in 2005 with only $30,000, by a distributed team of four tech founders who only all got connected “through the transitive property,” Dan explains. “I only knew Jason, but then he knew Ken, and Ken knew Ryan.” 

Dan had had an idea for a shopping cart upsell product — which didn’t come to fruition — but after meeting Jason Foodman in 2005, Jason pointed out that the upsell product couldn’t even exist unless they owned the shopping cart in the first place. So Dan asked, “Well, what if we create our own shopping cart?” 

And since Jason was already working with someone who wanted to create a product with the ecommerce infrastructure to compete with Digital River, FastSpring was born. 

Dan recalls that he, Jason, Ken White, and Ryan Dewell all connected remotely from four different U.S. states via email and messengers, not even meeting in person for about the first four years as they worked on FastSpring; “Maybe every six months there’d be a phone call.” Dan and Jason handled front-end sales, while Ken led “phenomenal customer service,” and Ryan “just was an awesome coder.” He recalls Ken describing Ryan as “probably the best guy on the planet to build what we were building.”

Since all four guys had been CEOs already, they were all familiar with working on their own areas without needing much guidance. “We split up the business into silos, Dan explains. “Ken handled support, Ryan development, me on the sales side and also all the CEO role, and Jason on the sales side and some other stuff too. And that worked really well.”

The First Mission of FastSpring: The Golden Rule

Just what were the founders of FastSpring trying to build? 

“I think we wanted to build a business that treated its customers the way we thought we should have been treated as software vendors,” Dan says. They each had felt wronged in some way when working with Digital River or with payment companies that weren’t built to work with software companies, so they set out to build a solution with a driving force to “put some good into an industry that had a lot of bad experiences.”

He also describes Digital River in 2005 — only about nine years old then — as already having become an inflexible “technology dinosaur.” 

“So we wanted to build that next generation system.”

“I think that’s really what our driving force was: to put some good into an industry that had a lot of bad experiences.”

Dan Engel, Co-Founder and first CEO of FastSpring

“And we thought if we were just normal, nice people that cared, we could accomplish that,” he recalls. “And we did. Took a while, but we did.”

FastSpring’s Growth Trajectory

After a humble start in 2005 with only four ambitious people and $30,000, FastSpring took a little while to get off the ground. Dan remembers that “Not raising capital, going slower, sticking with Java, sticking with one developer — all those things made us go slower.”

But FastSpring eventually began growing quickly when they became popular in the Mac software community, which became their initial niche. “Eventually, we took over for Digital River and others as kind of the leading provider for Mac developers,” Dan explains. “But until then, it was a very slow moving train and we didn’t know what was around the corner.”

Besides having next generation technology and blowing away customers with service, FastSpring also offered pricing that contemporary competitors couldn’t beat.

“So how do you get anyone to switch away from FastSpring? They didn’t. We had retained I think 98.7 % of our customers, year after year after year, in an SMB business with thousands of customers,” Dan recalls. “I’m a venture capitalist now; I invest in software companies. I’m yet to find a company in all these years that matches what FastSpring obtained in its metrics.”

“I’m yet to find a company in all these years that matches what FastSpring obtained in its metrics.”

Dan Engel, Co-Founder and first CEO of FastSpring

By 2010, FastSpring had grown significantly, with Deloitte & Touche’s 2011 Technology Fast 500 awards ranking FastSpring the #1 fastest-growing company in the Greater L.A. area and #13 in North America. 

Then in 2018, Accel-KKR purchased a majority stake in FastSpring. By then, FastSpring counted companies such as Microsoft and Adobe among its customers, with services provided by around 80 FastSpring employees. 

FastSpring’s Mission Today: Unleashing Innovation Around the World

Today, FastSpring is a global leader in the payments, subscriptions, and tax management space as a leading merchant of record. With offices in Santa Barbara, Amsterdam, Belfast, and Halifax, FastSpring has grown to have over 130 employees serving 3200+ companies throughout more than 200 regions, with support for 21+ languages and 23+ currencies — all while filing over 1,000 tax returns every year, so that the companies who use FastSpring don’t have to.

Providing an industry leading platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital products businesses to sell and monetize their products around the world is a privilege we’ve earned over the last 20 years, but we haven’t forgotten where we came from. 

Current CEO David Nachman echoes original CEO Dan Engel’s thoughts about FastSpring’s mission, but builds upon it. What gets David excited is enabling and democratizing the software industry so that people anywhere in the world can build software and compete with bigger, more capitalized players in highly developed markets.

“It’s gotten dramatically easier to build software anywhere and do it in a really, really competitive way,” David explains. “What hasn’t gotten easier is selling it globally.” In fact, in many ways, thanks to increasingly complex tax codes, proliferating payments options, and the increase of fraud, selling software cross-borders or monetizing a game outside of an app marketplace has only gotten harder. 

“So you’ve got this paradox of, you can develop software now at any scale anywhere in the world, but it’s not easy to bring it to market successfully without a solution like ours,” he says. “And that’s what we do.”

“By democratizing software development and commercialization of it, ultimately, we’re playing into a trend of unleashing more innovation around the world.”

David Nachman, CEO of FastSpring

“By democratizing software development and commercialization of it, ultimately, we’re playing into a trend of unleashing more innovation around the world,” David continues. “That’s kind of the big lofty mission that excites me. And I think it excites a lot of people here.”

Twenty years is quite a milestone, so we’ll be celebrating all month! That includes cake cuttings and toasts with our team members around the world on June 28, our official incorporation day and 20th birthday. Check back later this month for photos, and here’s to the next 20! 🥂

Podcast Transcript

David Vogelpohl (00:04)

Hello everyone, and welcome to Growth Stage by FastSpring, where we discuss how digital product companies grow revenue, build meaningful products, and increase the value of their businesses. I’m your host, David Vogelpohl. I support the digital product community through my role at FastSpring, and I love to bring the best of the community to you here on Growth Stage. In today’s episode, I’m super excited. What we’re going to be talking about is what it takes to build an enduring business.

David Vogelpohl (00:32)

We’re going to do that through the lens of celebrating 20 years of FastSpring, the company that puts on Growth Stage and joining us for that conversation to celebrate FastSpring and talk about building an enduring business. I’d like to welcome first FastSpring’s original CEO and one of the original cofounders, Mr. Dan Engel. Dan, welcome to Growth Stage.

Dan Engel (00:53)

Thank you very much. I’m excited to be here and I’m excited we made it to such a successful 20 year journey.

David Vogelpohl (01:00)

I can’t imagine what it must be like to look back on your legacy and have this be something so enduring be part of that. And I know you’ve done a lot since then. And I’m kind of curious to learn a little bit more about that here in a bit. Also joining us for this conversation to kind of take a look at the past and where we are now. I’d like to welcome FastSpring’s current CEO, Mr. David Nachman. David, welcome.

David Nachman (01:23)

Great. Well, thank you, David. I’m also super excited to be here and I definitely owe some gratitude to Dan. Wouldn’t be in my role today if it weren’t for what he did 20 years ago today.

Dan Engel (01:30)

Mm-hmm.

David Vogelpohl (01:33)

Now it’s so interesting to think about those long-term effects our short-term decisions sometimes have. And so we’re going to try to peel back as much as we can here on this episode, ⁓ to give folks a view into what it takes to build an enduring business, what mistakes to avoid along the way and how to build a business that stands the test of time.

So ⁓ we’ll kick it off. David Nachman, I’d like to start with you. ⁓ For those, maybe this is their first time seeing the Growth Stage podcast or they’re not familiar with FastSpring. Could you explain what FastSpring is and what you do here?

David Nachman (02:13)

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. What we do is pretty straightforward. We are an end to end e-commerce platform for companies that sell digital goods on a global basis. So it’s often software companies, it may be gaming companies, maybe other forms of digital goods, but the commonality for everybody that’s selling on our platform is they’re trying to reach a global audience, which isn’t really an easy thing to do.

in commerce and payments. There’s a tremendous amount of complexity there. And they’re all selling digital goods. So that’s what we do. I am the CEO of the company. I joined the company about six years ago, just over about a month ago from six years ago.

David Vogelpohl (02:55)

Oh, wow. Congratulations on the six year mark there. A little over 25 % of FastSpring’s history, it sounds like. And then Dan, tell us about your connection to FastSpring and what you’re doing now.

David Nachman (03:01)

⁓ yeah.

Dan Engel (03:07)

Well, let’s see. It was ⁓ 2005 that ⁓ I met our co-founder Jason Foodman. And I had an idea for something we wanted to do having to do with upselling into shopping carts. And Jason said, well, that is a really good idea, but we’re not going to be able to do it unless we own the shopping cart. ⁓

And I said, well, what if we create our own shopping cart? And Jason said, well, it just so happens I’m working with a guy on that concept to compete with Digital River, which was the 800 pound gorilla at the time that had come out in 1994, went public, became worth a billion dollars. And so we decided that we would build that e-commerce infrastructure and shopping cart capability. We never ended up doing my idea

having to do with upsells, but obviously the foundational part that we needed is what became the business over time.

David Vogelpohl (04:05)

And this is you, right? Is this from around the time of the founding? These are the original founders, correct?

Dan Engel (04:11)

Yeah, that could be. I’d have to see exactly what year that was, but that’s uh — Jason’s all the way to the right hand side on the other opposite end of me. then Ken and Ryan. And what’s interesting is I only knew Jason, but then he knew Ken and Ken knew Ryan. So through the, I don’t know, transitive property or whatever it is, we all kind of knew each other. And that’s how we started working together. And we were all in four different states from one another.

And ⁓ we did it despite not being in the same place. And we actually went for about four years, I believe, without ever even seeing each other. Everything was just email and ICQ, which is chat. And maybe every six months there’d be a phone call. But some of the guys weren’t the type of people that were dying to get on the phone or meet in person that didn’t have the same personality as maybe Jason and I did as kind of the more salesy front of the business.

David Nachman (04:50)

Thanks

David Vogelpohl (05:05)

Was that the balance between you four where you and Jason were more on the business side and the other two for Ken and what’s the other person’s name? Yeah, Ryan. ⁓ and they were more technically focused.

Dan Engel (05:15)

Ken and Ryan. Yeah, totally. Yeah,

Ryan just was an awesome coder. He was probably the best guy on the planet to build what we were building. I mean, that’s what Ken said at the time, because he had built a company called RegNow, sold it to Digital River. By the way, all three of the other guys built and sold companies like FastSpring to Digital River. So we knew this space really well, and they knew it even better than I did. But yeah, Jason and I were on the business side, and Ken…

is amazing dealing with people through email. But he won’t pick up the phone. But we had phenomenal customer service that he led. And Ryan just wanted to code and wanted to own it himself. Didn’t want other coders. Didn’t want to spend time managing other coders. He just wanted to build his dream, again, the next generation of what he had built before using Java technology and doing things in a way that would be much more beneficial over the long term.

David Nachman (05:46)

answer.

you

Dan Engel (06:08)

over the existing solutions like Digital River, which became kind of the technology dinosaur that was inflexible. So we wanted to build that next generation system.

David Vogelpohl (06:17)

It sounds like there was a lot of synergy there between you four and a good balance. And it seems like you and Jason were able to kind of team up, I guess, on the business side and then Ken and Ryan on the technical and customer success side. It’s also interesting to hear about your virtual posture as co-founders back in that day and using ICQ and thriving in that kind of environment.

Um, of course, way pre pandemic, this was 2005 when the company was founded. Um, and then to hear about how much Digital River played a role in your company, in your lives back then, and to think of FastSpring’s enduring nature, even going beyond, you know, Digital River, um, uh, offering in existence, I guess, uh, recently kind of winding down there. Um, and to think about how that’s an interesting representation of FastSpring’s enduring

Dan Engel (07:06)

Mm

David Vogelpohl (07:13)

⁓ but maybe that’s one of the ways I might think about an enduring business. ⁓ I’ll start with Nachman on this question. David, to you, what does it mean to build an enduring business? What is that? How do you define that?

David Nachman (07:29)

Yeah, I think, I mean, the first thing I would say for a business to be enduring is it’s got to be adaptable. This business, like just about any business, there’s ebbs and flows and there’s times when everything is going great and there’s times when it’s a lot more challenging. And, you know, in my experience, like there’s a lot of things that need to go into strategy and execution to succeed as an enduring business. But I think the foundation of all of it is the team and the culture.

If you look at the businesses that I think have endured over time, it’s often the team and the culture that really, really stand out because the challenges are going to change over time. And you need a team that knows how to adapt to that. And if you’ve got the right team and people are passionate about what they’re doing, know, in my experience, generally they’re going to figure it out.

None of us have a perfect crystal ball. Certainly, I’m sure Dan, when you started this company 20 years ago, you had no idea what some of the challenges might look like today. But I think you built a great cultural foundation that I think still persists today. I think a lot of the elements of the culture that were there when you started it are still like a real, real strength for us. So to me, that’s kind of the foundation of all of it to build an enduring business.

David Vogelpohl (08:47)

Yeah. I like that idea of flexibility. What’s the saying — “Steady seas don’t make skilled sailors,” and like,

Dan Engel (08:48)

you

David Vogelpohl (08:53)

⁓ being able to roll with the punches and adapt and survive and thrive. I could see that being critical to building an enduring business. ⁓ Dan, what about you? What does it mean to build an enduring business?

Dan Engel (09:06)

Well, it’s kind of the same things because what he’s talking about there about adaptability and flexibility, that’s exactly what I was saying earlier. We specifically built a system from the ground up ⁓ that had the adaptability component that was missing from the competition.

That’s why Digital River doesn’t exist anymore. That’s why we were able to ultimately leave them some degree in the dust because they weren’t able to change with the times. And we knew, because we all had been customers of Digital River. mean, everybody was back then. It’s a long time ago. And we knew that they couldn’t deliver when we needed new functionality and features. They were stuck. Right. So that was a really big part of it. But I think culturally, you know, the biggest advantage FastSpring ever had

was based on culture and how we treated our people, meaning like the employees, the partners we had, and then how that trickled down to how they treated the customers. And we had a theory, which is not too novel, but isn’t practiced as much as it should be, that customers should be treated like gold. And we had happened to be in an industry where the competition felt very much the opposite. ⁓ They just

A lot of these companies were led by kind of arrogant folks that didn’t think too much about the customers. And, you know, you’d write into PayPal, nobody had ever sent you anything back or Digital River couldn’t get your account manager to respond. So we came up with rules like you’re going to hear a response within, I think it was 24 hours, even on weekends, even on holidays, ⁓ guarantees like that. And we absolutely delivered on it. We strive to wow.

every single customer, both the end user and our merchants, you know, the software companies. And the kind of things that they were saying were, and I don’t know if it’s still on the website anymore, but the old testimonials that I used to throw up on the website were like, I feel like I just left the spa, or I’ve never had this kind of experience in a services business before. We were blowing people away. And how were we able to do that when we had like four support reps and our competition had like 250?

because we’re just normal people that cared. That’s all. And those were the kind of people that hired and people like themselves who gave a damn. And we had been in the shoes of the customers who were frustrated working with Digital River. So we tried to build a business that would be the opposite. And it totally worked. And also it’s an advantage that we had, which didn’t really cost money, that nobody could beat. No competitor could beat. They could try to match it.

you know, blowing away your customers and wowing them with the experience, but they couldn’t ever beat it. And so part of what made the company so enduring is we had low prices and couldn’t really beat us on pricing. We had next generation technology instead of kind of the inflexible dinosaur tech of our competitors. And we blew you away with customer service. So how do you, how do you get anyone to switch away from FastSpring? They didn’t. We had retained

think 98.7 % of our customers year after year after year in an SMB business with thousands of customers. I’m a venture capitalist now, I invest in software companies. I’m yet to find a company in all these years that matches what FastSpring obtained in its metrics.

David Vogelpohl (12:16)

I can attest that nature has lived on and we see similar levels of success in ⁓ our business today, including winning awards like a ⁓ gold Globee and silver Stevie for that customer success. I think that foundation you laid and the seeds you planted are still bearing fruit.

Dan Engel (12:37)

Good. That’s great to hear.

David Vogelpohl (12:39)

Excellent. Yeah. Super cool to see that, ⁓ endure the test of time. Cause I know service can be one of those areas that definitely erodes over time, especially over like a 20 year history. ⁓ it was also interesting to hear you talk about how, if you have a team, if you hire a team and develop a team who cares, that’s like so critical to building that differentiation in that enduring nature.

And I thought that connected well to what David had shared a little earlier around flexibility and developing teams in that same way to address challenges that you have no idea what’s coming around the corner. ⁓ and I thought that was an interesting connection there. ⁓ speaking of like how, speaking of missions by sake of example, what was FastSpring’s mission in the beginning, you talked about like being better than Digital River, but like, was it more than that? Like, how did you view the mission of the company at that time?

Dan Engel (13:33)

I think we wanted to build a business that treated its customers the way we thought we should have been treated as software vendors. Everything that was wrong with the experience of working with Digital River and its competitors and non-software specific platforms like PayPal, we wanted to correct that because we felt wronged ourselves.

⁓ So I think that was a big part of the mission. And we thought if we were just normal, nice people that cared, we could accomplish that. ⁓ And we did, took a while, but we did. And we did displace a lot of those alternatives. ⁓ mission-wise, I think that’s really what our driving force was, ⁓ is to put some good into an industry that had a lot of bad experiences.

David Vogelpohl (14:21)

David, 20 years later, how do you define FastSpring’s mission now?

David Nachman (14:26)

Yeah, so I think a lot of what Dan just shared is still very true and very important in what we’re doing. ⁓ What gets me excited is kind of the bigger trend we’re playing into in enabling. And for me, it’s about democratizing the software development industry. And what I mean by that is if you look over the last 20 years, since the company was founded, barrier after barrier has come down that allows people

to build software anywhere in the world at any scale and compete with much bigger, much better capitalized players in highly developed markets. going way back, open source, developer tools, cloud computing, online marketing, now we’ve got the AI boom. So it’s gotten dramatically easier to build software anywhere and do it in a really, really competitive way. What hasn’t gotten easier?

is selling it globally. It’s actually kind of gone in some respects in the opposite direction. Tax complexity around the world has gone up a ton. Enforcement has gone up a ton.  The regulatory environment around data has gone up. Payments has gotten a lot more complex. The proliferation of payment methods around the world uh is pretty incredible, and the adoption of a lot of these payment methods  is really high. Fraud

⁓ is going up. I don’t know if it’s exponentially, but it’s certainly going up at a high rate and the complexity of that fraud is going up. So you’ve got this paradox of, you can develop software now at any scale anywhere in the world, but it’s not easy to bring it to market successfully without a solution like ours. And that’s what we do. ⁓ and if you look around the world, there’s, know, no monopoly on development talent in places like Silicon Valley. And there’s talented developers everywhere in the world now.

but there were barriers to them competing. So By democratizing software development and commercialization of it, ultimately, we’re playing into a trend of unleashing more innovation around the world. That’s kind of the big lofty mission that excites me. And I think it does excite a lot of people here.

Dan Engel (16:18)

you

David Vogelpohl (16:39)

Excellent. Love hearing that. ⁓ Dan, so we’ve talked about like it’s a 20 year episode, right? So we’re doing like the worm and fuzzy stuff, but I want to go to like the stuff that made you lose sleep at night in the early days of FastSpring. Tell me about a big mistake you made that like almost tank the company or just like took you in a really bad direction. I mean, we are publishing this, so like take that into heart there, but

Dan Engel (16:53)

So.

David Vogelpohl (17:08)

Was it, was it deprecating this website? mean, this is a fire of a 2025 website, but like, me about the mistakes you

Dan Engel (17:11)

Ha ha!

looks a little pruney to me. ⁓ Well, obviously we made lots of mistakes. think, you know, one key decision was we kept coding really just within Ryan’s domain and didn’t hire a bunch of developers. And I think there were benefits to that and costs. And sometimes we were frustrated we weren’t going faster. ⁓ Because when we came out, a company also came out around the same time. unlike us who did everything

by the way, with $30,000, I put ten grand in, that’s all I ever put into FastSpring. We had a competitor, the head also sold their company to Digital River and they put like 35 or 50 million into their company and they started eating our lunch. So that made us kind of frustrated and concerned because they were getting a lot of clients we had hoped to get. So that was one decision. And also I think using

Java, think, had a lot of benefits, but also I think it slowed us down as well. Now, in the long term, it was beneficial and a great decision because it kept us flexible and extensible. But let’s see. So one of the scarier things that happen is, so when you’re processing payments, there’s risks that you might process in payments that are violations of, say, your relationship.

in your agreement with say a Visa or MasterCard. And we got really good at policing and avoiding any transactions going through the system that would violate any of those agreements. like with hackers, you figure out a solution to avoid the hacking and then the hackers find a way around it and then you find a solution to solve that and then they find a way. So it wasn’t perfect, you know, it’s life. And we had a particular incident where some

content got through that we did processing for is a tiny amount, but it still was very problematic. And that was very costly to us. We had to deal with MasterCard and you know, to have an angry MasterCard is a real problem because you can’t stop working with MasterCard if you’re accepting credit cards, right? That kind of got this duopoly or whatever you want to call it. So that was an example of a really scary experience when we had to deal with, you know, people like Visa MasterCard and

some of the risks around processing that could have really hurt our business and changed things. ⁓ And I would say, in terms of the team that we had, we got along incredibly well. It probably didn’t hurt that we weren’t in the same office and hardly ever saw each other. That can really have a lot of benefits. The biggest fight we ever had, and when we had it, I thought, my God, this is gonna be such a battle for years, was picking the name.

⁓ After we had that, that was like a real battle and I didn’t know what the future would bring. And we went years and years with really not having any fights, maybe until the end when we were selling the business and not everyone wanted to necessarily sell at the same price and money gets people to fight. But ⁓ other than that, ⁓ we really made a great call with the kind of team that we had as founders because we had a team of four former CEOs.

which meant we were all able to kind of do our own stuff without anybody needing to help us. Right. And so we, we, we, we, we split up the business into silos, Ken handled support, Ryan development, me on the sales side and also all the CEO role and Jason on the sales side and some other stuff too. And that worked really well. but, ⁓ anyway, so those are some thoughts on some of the things that were challenges over the years. and,

not, raising capital, going slower, sticking with Java, sticking with one developer. All those things made us go slower. And for me, made me anxious. ⁓ but some of the other partners, they were okay with waiting and having the business take a long time. And it sure did. My wife, ⁓ nicknamed it “SlowSpring,” ⁓ because, ⁓ you know, it was like year three and a half or something and we still weren’t getting anywhere. And I kept telling her, it’s right around the corner.

David Nachman (21:15)

it.

Dan Engel (21:22)

Finally, things picked up. They picked up because we became popular in the Mac software community. We found a niche, right? ⁓ I don’t know what would have happened to FastSpring if we hadn’t found that niche. ⁓ But eventually we took over for Digital River and others as kind of the leading provider for Mac developers. But until then, it was a very slow moving train and we didn’t know what was around the corner.

David Vogelpohl (21:44)

think that’s a bold lesson for people watching and listening who are just starting out and thinking about how to get traction about how you were able to kind of niche down in your core ICP and find that, you know, kind of handhold foothold to start moving further up the mountain. I also thought you had tension in some of the mistakes where you talked about the desire to go faster and invest more, but then you talked about growing pains around things like dealing with hackers and

maybe processing transactions you shouldn’t have and how that affected and put risk into your business. And so like with FastSpring, you know, we’re offering payments and subscriptions and tax compliance and a lot of startups are like compliance. What are you talking about? I’m blowing and growing. I’m, ready to go. Do you think that like maybe moving slow and being more purposeful did have value other than just being, you know, “SlowSpring” and making you a little frustrated with the growth?

Dan Engel (22:41)

Probably. Two of my partners would say definitely yes. They would be, yes, they are more patient people than I am.

David Vogelpohl (22:44)

Would those be Ken and Ryan?

Nice. I like that. ⁓ But yeah, I think about that a lot, you know, in this day, I don’t know how much you’ve kept up with the merchant of record space, but there’s a decent number of startups getting into it. And so I just imagine what it must be like to start from near zero and develop these rules, and this experience, and this understanding, and a platform that reacts to it all. ⁓ Certainly a grand adventure, but definitely no easy task.

Dan Engel (23:15)

Yeah.

It

was, and I think one error was that we didn’t really have expertise in the whole merchant account payment processing business. I mean, yes, software and what used to be called shareware, and the Digital River side of things. But the actual — like all the intricacies of working with like, Visa, Mastercard, Discover, AmEx, PayPal, and doing global payments and different currencies and different really didn’t know that stuff.

And so sometimes we learned some hard lessons because of our ignorance. ⁓ It would have, if I were to do it again, I would bring someone involved in the early days who really had spent, I don’t know, 20 years in that payment we didn’t have to figure out what we didn’t know. I think that was costly to us. And I think that was something missing, a missing ingredient that fortunately, we were successful despite it.

David Vogelpohl (24:07)

Did you underestimate the complexity of payments?

Dan Engel (24:10)

I think so. Yeah, I think so. ⁓ And the deep understanding that was needed to really know what we were working with and what we were doing and how it was viewed by others playing all different roles in the industry, the ISOs, IPSPs, the Visas and Mastercards, the acquiring banks, the gateways, we just didn’t really have a great understanding of how all of those different parties were seeing us in their world.

And so we didn’t necessarily navigate it the best way that we could have if we had known more.

David Vogelpohl (24:45)

Sage advice. ⁓ As you look back at your time with FastSpring, founding it, bringing it up, eventually selling it, and the roles and companies you’ve led since then, what lessons did you learn in your FastSpring days that you took forward into your future adventures?

Dan Engel (25:03)

Well, you know, we built FastSpring to not be able to fail because we had all been serial entrepreneurs and had built businesses. Some worked, some didn’t. And one thing that I figured out is if you don’t have a clock tied to money and burn, it’s really hard to go out of business. so…

We built the business from scratch with almost no money. Like I said, I put in 10 grand and the co-founders contributed their time for no cash, just for equity, right? Significant equity, founders equity. ⁓ And so the only way the business could fail is if we lost interest. Nothing external could really make us fail. It really was in our control. So it’s a question of, we lose interest before we get enough customers that this business is big enough that we care about it? And it’s making a difference for us. So with that,

⁓ It gave us quite a runway to be able to figure things out, which took really four years to really start taking off. And believe me, the first three years wasn’t just fun. And of course, while you’re building it, you don’t know if you’re ever going to make it, so you might be wasting your time. So it’s not always the most motivating every day. But I’ve built every business since like that, ⁓ where it’s either profitable for day one or it just doesn’t have that burn and that pressure.

Because what’s the number one reason businesses go out of business? They run out of cash. So if you can get rid of that risk, you’ve got a really good chance of making it. So I’ve had a lot of successes in my career. FastSpring is one of them. There’s a whole bunch of other things I’ve done and all that. And the thing that they all have in common is they all failed before they succeeded. I mean, people don’t see that. They just see the news headlines and great exit for FastSpring, or Picasa, or what I did at Google, or

GoTo Meeting in Santa Barbara. But all those things failed first. So the only reason I’ve been able to figure out how to build these businesses successfully now, including my venture capital firm, is because of all the things I did that failed in the past. And so I think that’s the biggest lesson that I bring forward to every business I do and hope to pass on to other entrepreneurs and to my children and whatnot, that it’s really the failures where you learn how to succeed.

David Vogelpohl (27:12)

I imagine what that must be like. So these are the years and the number of employees from back in those days. And you were saying like, it really took you better part of this time period to get it ramped up. And then you can start to see the business grow over time. It’s very efficient business still during that time.

Dan Engel (27:29)

Well, keep in mind, so in 2013, that was 23. They weren’t really employees, 12 full-time. The rest were part-time contractors. We made them employees later after we sold the business. But that was at a time we were doing over $100 million in revenue. We had 12 full-timers. So it was very efficient and we did not in any way measure ourselves by number of people. It was by revenue and profit.

David Vogelpohl (27:51)

That’s great to hear. ⁓ so Dan has founded the business with his co-founders and they’ve gone on this grand adventure, eventually selling the business. ⁓ Nachman, tell me the backstory between about when you joined the business and what you were kind of doing right before that.

David Nachman (28:11)

Yeah,

I’ve been in B2B tech just about my whole career. Immediately before joining FastSpring, I was running a business that had a very highly tailored content management platform for local government.

So it was cities and counties, they would host a website on it, but also we would power a lot of the constituent facing functionality. you we sort of powered the digital city hall strategy that, you know, a lot of local governments are moving towards. We had sold that business to someone who was really consolidating all of the gov tech industry.

Dan Engel (28:32)

.

David Nachman (28:53)

And I found my way indirectly to FastSpring, was drawn to it for a whole host of reasons. But that’s ultimately, you know, what brought me here or the backstory in terms of what I was doing before I got here.

David Vogelpohl (29:08)

And then as you entered the business, what were your perceptions at that time? ⁓ How did you think about FastSpring’s mission then versus now? ⁓ We had this great meeting the other day where we were like, where did you get wrong about FastSpring when you first joined the company? What about for you, David? What did you get wrong about FastSpring when you first joined?

Dan Engel (29:24)

Okay.

David Nachman (29:29)

Yes, I think some of

the same things that Dan mentioned. I’m not sure that I necessarily underestimated the complexity of payments, but I’m not a payments guy by trade and experience. We had a lot of generalists even at that point in the company. We had a lot of really passionate, a lot of really talented people. And I’ve kind of always been one of those people who believes, OK, if you get the

know, get smart people that are driven, they’re going to figure out problems. And yes, but they’re not going to figure them out as quickly. In many cases, it’s someone who’s got the pattern recognition of having seen that same problem 15 times before. ⁓ And I think I waited a little too long ⁓ to really bolster a lot of our domain expertise in the business. And as I started to do that, ⁓ just

Dan Engel (30:05)

you ⁓

David Nachman (30:23)

What it did in terms of accelerating the business was pretty profound. And it was one of those where I sort of stepped back and said, wow, I should have done that a long time ago. I’d say the other thing is when I came into the business, my perceptions were very positive of the business. Great solution, great customers, business growing at a very healthy clip. So it was a very healthy business. wasn’t a turnaround of any sort. It was how do we take it to the next level?

Dan Engel (30:30)

Okay.

David Nachman (30:52)

So what was missing in my mind was that it really wasn’t built to scale

to anywhere, you the size we are today or, where we think we’ll be over the coming few years. And like a lot of small businesses, a lot of single points of failure, you know, some of that was people, some of that was vendors, some of that was technology. The business sort of survived and thrived on individual heroics. So, you know.

not a lot of ⁓ systems in place, processes, et cetera. And we didn’t really have a leadership team that had scaled to where we wanted to go. So I felt like we did need to bring in people that were more experienced and kind of knew the journey that we were embarking on. And I think a little bit of what I got wrong there.

⁓ in some of these initial hires was I was very focused on getting people that, you know, kind of knew how to operate at scale. And culturally I missed on some of them in terms of abandoning a lot of what’s made the company so special and so effective, which is kind of the entrepreneurial scrappiness. And it’s a, you know, it’s a rare breed of person that has that hands on entrepreneurial scrappiness and can also scale. ⁓ you know,

Dan Engel (32:08)

you

David Nachman (32:14)

Often those are great founder type people that could do magic that a lot of more experienced company people can’t do, but they don’t scale as well. ⁓ So initially I did bring some of those people in and it just, they weren’t the right fit. ⁓ And over my first few years here, I started to really realize what’s the culture that really correlates with

success in our particular business. And part of it is this is the most dynamic, most complex business I’ve ever been at for its scale. I mean, we’ve got a very global footprint. We’re operating in highly regulated industries. We’re dealing with payments. We’re dealing with software. We’re dealing with complexity around tax. We’re dealing with a lot of regulation around data. It’s kind of infinitely complex. And this goes back to this notion of adaptability. ⁓

Dan Engel (32:47)

Okay.

David Nachman (33:11)

You have to have some level of scrappy entrepreneurialism to thrive in this business. But it also has to be paired with, you know how to scale a business and it’s not all about, hey, I’m just going to do the heroics to get us to the next challenge. It’s no, I’m going to build a foundation where if I’m not here, this business will still run quite well. So.

Dan Engel (33:25)

you

David Nachman (33:37)

So I think, you know, there are definitely things I got right, but there were some things I got wrong in trying to make that transition from more of a startup company to a really scalable company.

David Vogelpohl (33:48)

Yeah, that’s kind of like an awkward teenager-y zone a little bit. that’s a whole, sorry, go ahead.

Dan Engel (33:48)

Hm.

David Nachman (33:51)

That’s right. ⁓

We definitely went through our awkward teenage phase. I hope we’re out of that now.

David Vogelpohl (33:57)

Yeah.

Knock on wood on that one for sure. I still got to build the enduring business of the future, right? ⁓ We’re kind of getting towards the end here, so I want to make sure to hit on a couple of things here in the last little bit. Nachman, since I’m on you, I’ll stick with you for this one. But if somebody’s out there and they have a startup and they’re listening to all these points of view,

David Nachman (34:03)

That’s right.

David Vogelpohl (34:22)

maybe taking some notes along the way, but what’s the one thing that that person should ⁓ get from listening to you about building an enduring business? What’s your number one piece of advice?

David Nachman (34:33)

It’s embrace change and change before you have to. ⁓ You can’t build an enduring business doing the same thing for any period of time. period of time is shrinking with every given year. mean, given what’s going on with AI right now, ⁓ know, the timeframes over which things evolve is just collapsing. it’s, you know, constantly think about how your business is going to be.

reimagined and go do that. ⁓ Don’t let somebody else do that to you. You’ve got to get out in front of it.

David Vogelpohl (35:08)

Great one, embrace change and change before you have to. ⁓ Dan, what about you?

Dan Engel (35:14)

⁓ I would say treating your own people extremely well and having that then trickle down to how they treat your customers and the concept of treating your customers like gold and bending over backwards to ensure that they are just wowed by the experience of working with you compared to what they’re used to from alternatives. And then I think in terms of building a business, removing the obstacles as much as possible that

lead companies to fail, including dealing with things like burn upfront.

David Vogelpohl (35:46)

I it. I love the people first thing. I think this is like the Dan Golden Rule. Treat others as you want them to treat your customers. I love it. ⁓ All right. ⁓ Last question. Sorry about that little mic pop there. Dan, um we’re going to show this recording to the FastSpring team and they’re pretty much all going to listen to it and watch it. Do you have a special message for them to celebrate the 20 year FastSpring anniversary?

David Nachman (35:53)

Thank

Dan Engel (36:16)

A special message. Well, you know, I guess, you know, it’s I’m glad that everybody’s part of something with the humble roots and mission that we originally started on to try to offer a better alternative in an industry that was plagued with some negativity. But I think, ⁓ you know, I challenge everybody to really think about how to make the next 20 years of FastSpring successful, dealing with all the change. Change has been a big ⁓

theme here in our conversation. So we have all the different things happening around, say, AI, or how people purchase software, or what Apple’s Store looks like, and what they can and can’t do. All different facets are going to continuously change. And so I hope folks are thinking about how they can continuously adapt to ensure that FastSpring survives and thrives through all the shifts ahead. Some will be good and some will be bad for the company so that we can have this kind of a conversation again after another 20 years.

David Vogelpohl (37:12)

Nice, I like it. Dan, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation. It was super interesting to hear about your backstory and some of the things that went into building such an enduring business. But thank you so much for joining us today.

Dan Engel (37:27)

You betcha. Thanks for having me and congratulations on the 20 years and thanks everyone for doing such a great job at the business.

David Vogelpohl (37:33)

Thank you, of course. then David, thank you for joining and picking up the torch and then sharing your backstory here at the helm.

David Nachman (37:41)

Well, thank you for having me. I’ve enjoyed the discussion. I’ve learned some things about the business. I don’t think I knew Dan, so it’s fantastic to get the time to interact and learn a little bit about our roots and history.

Dan Engel (37:50)

Okay.

David Vogelpohl (37:52)

Excellent. And for those watching and listening, if you’d like to learn more about FastSpring, you can visit FastSpring.com. Thanks for joining us for the Growth Stage podcast. I’ve been your host, David Vogelpohl. I support the digital product community as part of my role here at FastSpring. And I love to bring the best of the community to you here on Growth Stage. Thanks everybody.

The post What It Takes to Build an Enduring Business: Celebrating 20 Years of FastSpring appeared first on FastSpring.

Or, you can simplify the system with one global merchant of record. 

When Excire became a popular enough product line that it was being sold in both Europe and the U.S., Managing Director Mathias Martinetz and CTO Thomas Käster knew their current online checkout setup — having one solution for Europe and one for the U.S. — was not efficient. 

“And we had a lot of manual work,” Mathias says. “Basically, each and every sale had to be manually organized and given to our tax advisor.”

And if they wanted to continue scaling their business and expanding into more countries, they needed a better system. 

That’s when they discovered the merchant of record model and, subsequently, FastSpring.

Completely switching online commerce systems can be daunting, especially when switching from one type (such as a very basic online checkout or web shop system) to another (such as a comprehensive merchant of record). But Mathias and Thomas did their due diligence, and they’re glad they found FastSpring.

Here’s what they did to ensure they’d find the right merchant of record (MoR) and have a successful transition.

Are you looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your business internationally? FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital goods businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Excire Needed a Simpler Payments and Taxes System

Excire is an award-winning line of photo and video management software products that help photographers organize, find, and cull their photos at lightning speed. With Excire Foto as a standalone product or with Excire Search as an Adobe Lightroom plugin, photographers can leverage meta data and AI for keyword search, facial recognition, grouping shots, image analysis, and more.

As the product line grew in popularity and the team was able to move from only selling Excire in Europe to selling it in the U.S., they found themselves with two separate shop systems. 

“As we were growing and wanted to grow more, we were looking for a solution that would allow us to have only one shop, but that could also be used around the world,” Mathias recalls. 

Thomas adds, “We encountered some technical challenges, which is to be expected when managing an ecommerce system independently. Additionally, we faced issues with our tax workflows, which were no longer sufficient to support the level of growth and scaling we had already achieved.”

They appreciated the value of offering localized currencies and payments to buyers, but as it was already unwieldy to have two online shops for two regions, they didn’t want to add more shops as they moved into new regions. They also knew they didn’t like managing all the sales taxes the way they had been, and that more growth would only make that even more difficult.

There had to be a better way, so they started looking around to see what other companies were using. 

Similar Software Companies Recommended FastSpring

Mathias and Thomas reached out to some contacts of theirs at another software company, and that company referred them to FastSpring. 

“The interesting thing for us is,” Thomas says, “if I see similar companies using FastSpring in the same way as we’d like to use it, that’s a good sign that FastSpring was the right decision for us.”

Without having to think for very long about it, they can easily list a handful of software companies in their industry who also use FastSpring, which makes them even more confident about their decision. 

Talk to Similar Businesses About THEIR Experiences

Besides just noting that many businesses like theirs were already using FastSpring, Mathias and Thomas recommend asking them for more information about what it’s actually like to use a particular payments platform or merchant of record. “Get their experience,” Mathias advises. 

Thomas adds, “In the end, you never know, right? When you decide to switch off an existing technical system completely and onto a completely new system, you never know if it will be the right decision.” So besides just observing what your own competitors are using, reach out to businesses you’re friendly with and “Talk a lot to the people.”

Pay Attention to the Responsiveness of Each MoR’s Team as You Begin Reaching Out

Excire was fortunate to have a very short list of possible ecommerce solutions, as FastSpring seemed like the clear winner just based on how many other companies were already using it. 

But if you have a few options on your list — or if you want to validate that the one you’re leaning toward is eager to meet your needs – you can learn a lot from how a possible vendor’s team responds to your initial inquiry. 

This may seem counterintuitive, as most people and organizations will be eager to ensure the first experience you have with them is excellent. And Thomas says that it’s not always easy to make a decision based on those first impressions. 

But he clarifies, “Even from a first impression, the FastSpring team does a better job than the competitors.” The Excire team had also approached an MoR company that had a team based in Germany, so Thomas and Mathias could speak with that team in their native language. 

“But the first contact with them was not as good as the first contact with FastSpring,” he continues. Besides the technical requirements he wanted to ensure were met, “The way the team took care was very important for the final decision to go with FastSpring.”

Define Your Needs Clearly and Communicate Them to Potential Vendors

Observing competitors, talking to similar businesses, and initiating contact with various vendors are all important parts of the external planning phase when evaluating a new ecommerce system, but there’s an important internal planning phase too. 

As Chief Technical Officer, Thomas is very hands on with the technical aspects of their various systems, so he knows how important it is to know what you need and communicate that to potential payments platforms. 

He explains it this way: “Summarize and describe your own necessities, or the aspects that are most important to you. Especially, what are the requirements of such an ecommerce system? When you explain it in the best way you can, then you’ll get the best, most concrete answer from the FastSpring team.”

There were several sessions back and forth between the Excire team and FastSpring as they worked through the technical details of what their team needed and how FastSpring could meet those needs. Thomas said those sessions helped them “come to the point where we were really sure about our decision to go with FastSpring.”

He continues, “I guess this is something every company needs to do on its own first: to check all the aspects that are important to them, and to communicate those aspects in a clear manner.” 

Besides wanting to combine their international payment systems into one simpler system that could continue expanding their global sales, Thomas and Mathias were also looking closely at competitive pricing, payment failure systems, ease of international pricing management, newsletter systems, subscription capabilities, and integrations. 

The Excire team also found FastSpring’s pricing better than the other merchants of record they evaluated.

Upgrade to a Merchant of Record Like FastSpring

It was looking at and talking to companies similar to Excire that tipped off Mathias and Thomas to the merchant of record model as the answer to their global payments and taxes question.

“That’s how we found out that the solution could be a merchant of record,” Mathias says. “So that’s how we got more into it and found out that there is an advantage: that all tax and currency related activities can be handled much, much easier than if we would do it on our own.”

Switching from separate systems for different regions to one global solution would be an upgrade, but finding an ecommerce model that also managed sales taxes and VAT for Excire sales would provide an even greater improvement to their operations.

FastSpring has also made many of the smaller, day-to-day management tasks easier. For example, Mathias says that “We can easily define prices worldwide; that’s quite smooth. And it was helpful to implement a subscription model, right, Thomas?” 

“Yeah, that’s for sure,” Thomas adds.

When Excire initially launched on FastSpring in 2023, they ran into some challenges with email and analytics integrations. The FastSpring team worked hard to meet Mathias’ and Thomas’ needs, prioritizing additional help for the Excire store integrations and finding ways to meet their needs.

Thomas says of their more recent subscription launch, “This kind of integration was very easy.” He says that their integration requirements may be more complicated to fulfill than some companies’, but that the communication between FastSpring and their licensing vendor has been “really easy and robust.”

Partner With FastSpring to Simplify Your International Software Sales

Are you looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your business internationally? 

FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, gaming, and other digital goods businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. 

Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post How Excire Simplified Their International Software Sales (and Taxes) With FastSpring appeared first on FastSpring.