what's a good general purpose billing / recurring membership system?

Question

something open source, or inexpensive... preferably in php, other languages will be considered. I'm looking mostly for clean code, a nice place to build out from... I don't need any CMS features.

Thanks,

-Eric

Answer 1

Check out spreedly.com. Super simple with a great API.

Answer 2

Unless you have the resources to be certified PCI compliant, I don't recommend hosting your own billing system, if it requires charging credit cards. You can find yourself liable for very large fees if any mischief takes place.

Instead, it is best to use a hosted solution. We recently had great success using Chargify for recurring billing for a subscription service.