We are a custom app planning to go public soon, Until now we were billing our clients ourselves.
In order to go live we need to implement a billing system.
We can go for a usage-based system, but we are choosing not to. Instead, we want to go for maybe just giving the user 0 dollar subscription, and then just custom invoicing them ourselves, continuing the old trend?
Is this viable? will we pass the review checks?
Pretty certain you have to use Shopify’s Billing API, no exceptions.
As @Luke says, you have to use the Shopify billing API. If you don’t, you’ll be in breach of the Partner agreement. Even if you somehow managed to pass the review (you likely wouldn’t), you risk your business being turned off at any time, which doesn’t feel like a good business decision!
Understood. Just to be clear, each and every one of our service has to be billed through the shopify billing API right?
I have another issue following this:
The way our app is, we need to ensure that we get payment first to operate. Much like a credit based system in any other app, where user is given 2-3 credits at the start then user has to buy more to operate.
Usage-based billing aligns with our goals; but we will require payment in the beginning from the merchant to operate, how do we achieve this through the billing api?
You can’t, payments will go through/be handled by Shopify, then you will have payouts.
You cannot change this behaviour at all.