Getting started with Chargebee
Initial setup means building your Product Catalog (Items, Item Prices, and Item Families in Chargebee's current Product Catalog 2.0 model, which replaced the older Plans/Addons/Charges structure), connecting a payment gateway (Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, or others -- Chargebee itself doesn't process payments directly in most integrations, it delegates to the connected gateway), and configuring invoicing and dunning rules.
Implementation overview
Product Catalog 2.0's Item/Item Price model is more flexible for complex pricing (multiple price points per item, usage-based components) than the legacy Plans/Addons structure, so new implementations should default to it rather than the older model. Testing end-to-end billing scenarios (a trial converting to paid, a failed payment retry, a plan upgrade with proration) in Chargebee's test/sandbox mode before going live catches configuration mistakes that are expensive to fix after real customers are billed.
Key considerations
- Use Product Catalog 2.0 (Items/Item Prices) for new implementations rather than the legacy Plans/Addons model, given its flexibility for complex pricing.
- Connect and thoroughly test your payment gateway integration before going live, since Chargebee delegates actual payment processing to it.
- Test full billing scenarios (trial conversion, failed payment retry, proration) in sandbox mode before processing real customer billing.