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Need advice! Patreon vs Ko-Fi vs BuyMeACoffee. I created a monthly supporter program back before any of these existed, so it uses these outdated Paypal subscription buttons. User unfriendly, confusing to cancel, and there's no easy way to communicate with supporters. I'm nervous because I know I'll lose a bunch of people in the transition, but I also would like to make the supporter program more fun. Not planning on paywalling core content, but it would be nice to send folks messages, etc. Thx!
My research so far suggests: Patreon takes the biggest cut but has the most features, though I won't use most of them. Ko-Fi and BuyMeACoffee seem very similar to each other and give a better cut, but I don't know much about the folks behind them. I mostly want something I can reasonably trust to stick around for the longterm without enshittifying.
A fourth option would be to try to build something myself. I looked into whether my #WooCommerce store could sell Pateron-like monthly supporter subscriptions processed through Stripe like the rest of the store, but it seemed like it would be pretty tough to do. If anyone out there knows a good solutions here, let me know.
@seabikeblog as a current subscriber via PayPal I agree that it's just not setup well and you're probably missing out on potential subscribers. I subscribe to a number of patreons and it has the most name recognition. The percent cut sucks and they make a lot of questionable choices, but it definitely gets toy the most eyeballs, is simplest for subscribers, and has the highest likelihood of getting people onboard. I've only ever done one time donations via Kofi, which is the original intent.
@someguyjg @seabikeblog I admit, I didn't even know the PayPal-based support system existed for Seattle Bike Blog. I'm most familiar with Patreon out of the three. I'd be happy to support you through it.
@someguyjg Thanks. Yeah, I definitely would have used a service if one had existed. I started my program in 2013, the same year Patreon was founded. By the time I heard about Pateron, I already had over 100 supporters and so it didn't make sense to make them all switch. But back then, Paypal had better support for its buttons. Now they are a legacy feature that keep losing support as time goes on.