What is it:

In the Knowledge - weekly product and tech recommendations to your inbox

What did I learn:

**1. Product Comparison: When should you use Stripe vs Gumroad? **In this product the Maker uses Stripe. Stripe is more popular and well known because it is an online payment solution for businesses big and small. Gumroad focuses on helping independent creators monetize their products.

Both can do single or recurring payments. The way that Robert has this set up is through a monthly membership charge of $5.

Depending on your familiarity of using the tools, I would recommend Gumroad in this situation because it is easier to link to within your website. If you are less technical and new, Gumroad is easier to implement than Stripe. Stripe can feel overwhelming because its a massive tool for big businesses.

Also Gumroad's product roadmap tailors to individual creators so the future features and functionality will be more aligned if you are starting a side project.

This may not mean much, but switching tools can be a pain. Often better to start with one that i simpler to implement and maintain in the long term.

I'd recommend Stripe for other larger builds or if you are using Typeform and say you want to ask a few questions in a form and then have a payment ability within it, Typeform natively integrates with Stripe checkout. So it is a cleaner experience.

2. Product comparison: Substack vs Revue
Revue is a tool used for email automation and managing a newsletter. Substack also does this but whats different is that it shares your content within its network to help with distribution. Substack also manages your subscription to the newsletter for you. So that if someone drops off they automatically fall off the list to receive the newsletters helping you manage your business.

Substack does take a percentage of your revenue as it performs this service for you. Which I believe is 10%.

As far as I know, I don't believe Revue has the capability to add and take off subscribers to your list depending on their subscription level is active.

So that means, one thing Robert has to do with this no-code tech stack setup is manually manage paying customers for each months subscription. Meaning, Once a user stops paying the monthly payment you will need to take them off of the Revue mailing list.

3. Product feature: Amplitude is product analytics for your project. Metrics is important and it helps you understand what your users are actually doing. Once you can see how they are using your product you can improve product experiences and thus increase the lifetime value of that customer.

Metrics is important. However, in the beginning I wouldn't recommend this as the first thing you add to your stack. Because in the beginning your product is not yet mature its better to talk to users to get more context behind the actions they take. I am not saying delay setting up metrics into your product.

Depending on the maturity level of your product, you'll want to set up a basic page analytics to see page views/visitors using a tool like Simple Analytics. Then once your product matures and your product type demands it, investing your time and money into a tool like Amplitude will help you drive what your product does.