If you're charging customers and aren't making enough in a few months to cover the minimum fee then your business is going to be in trouble in any case. Sure the percentage is going to be crappy, but if you're a SaaS business and your margins are so small that the percentage is worth stressing about in the early days then you're probably doing something wrong.
(I bootstrapped my last startup and 100 euros is roughly what I was paying SEOMoz, my accountant, etc. on a monthly basis)
It's way more important to just get something working and out-the-door and grow the number of customers then to spend a lot of time over what comes down to a relative small amount of money, you can always re-negotiate the fees when you grow and the absolute amount becomes meaningful.
If you're charging customers and aren't making enough in a few months to cover the minimum fee then your business is going to be in trouble in any case. Sure the percentage is going to be crappy, but if you're a SaaS business and your margins are so small that the percentage is worth stressing about in the early days then you're probably doing something wrong.
Right, so if you're in that position, why would you put up with the onerous application process for a service like Braintree if you have a simpler alternative like Stripe available and it provides the functionality you need? You want a payment service that takes as little time as possible to set up and then just works, because you have a million more important things to be doing. Any advantages Braintree might have had if their pricing did work out more favourable than Stripe's flat rates is instantly lost because they can't give straight answers to too many basic questions (like "What does it cost me to collect a payment?") and their API and documentation are significantly more complicated.
I've not implemented either Braintree or Stripe before, but I'd agree with the principle of just doing whatever gets you out the door the fastest (for a subscription business I might including the proviso of using a service that will give you card portability so you can transition off in the future).
(I bootstrapped my last startup and 100 euros is roughly what I was paying SEOMoz, my accountant, etc. on a monthly basis)
It's way more important to just get something working and out-the-door and grow the number of customers then to spend a lot of time over what comes down to a relative small amount of money, you can always re-negotiate the fees when you grow and the absolute amount becomes meaningful.