Stripe CRM: what to use to follow up with Stripe customers

The short answer

Stripe keeps your customers, subscriptions, invoices and payments. It is not a CRM, because it only knows about money: it does not know whether somebody used your product, stalled after signing up or wrote to you. A search for a Stripe CRM can mean one of three things: Stripe's data inside a CRM, a tool you build on Stripe's API, or emails that go out because of what Stripe says happened.

If you run a SaaS and have never set up a CRM, the third is often what you were after. That is what Kicklace does. It is not a CRM: it does the follow-up a CRM is bought for, without the CRM, and connecting Stripe takes no code.

Put Stripe in a CRM

Many CRMs can take Stripe's customers in, through an integration of their own or through Zapier or Make. If your business is a sales team working a deal pipeline, that is the right route, and Kicklace is not made for it.

Build on Stripe's API

Stripe tells your server when a customer is created, a subscription changes, an invoice is paid or a payment fails, in webhook events you keep in a table of your own. Each handler has to check Stripe's signature and survive the same event arriving twice. The event pages already cover that, so this one does not repeat them:

• invoice.payment_failed, for a card that fails.
• customer.subscription.trial_will_end, before a trial ends.
• customer.subscription.deleted, when a subscription ends.
• checkout.session.expired, for a checkout somebody left.

Every event Kicklace reads has its own page in the Stripe events library: what it means, when Stripe sends it and the email worth sending.

Or connect Stripe to Kicklace

1. In Stripe, create a restricted key with Write on Webhook Endpoints and Read on Customers, Subscriptions, Invoices, PaymentIntents, Products and Prices.
2. In Kicklace, open Connections → Stripe, paste the key and press Connect. Kicklace adds its own webhook, called Kicklace, to your Stripe account and keeps the secret Stripe hands back, so you never copy one.
3. Kicklace reads your history at once: every customer, subscription and payment, each dated the day the money moved. Reading it sends nothing and puts nobody on a list.

What you get is one person for each customer. Kicklace finds them by the email Stripe holds, so a payment lands on the person who signed up. Each customer reads as Paying, Trial, Churned (paid once, not now) or Free (never paid), worked out from their subscriptions and payments and never set by hand. A payment moves them to Paying on your Lifecycle map. A failed payment, a trial ending, a refund and a cancellation land on their record, and a side road on the map can start from any of them.

The emails come next. Kicklace writes them in your voice from what it read on your site, the thank-you and the note for a failed card among them. You read each one, change what you like and switch it on, and before you do, it shows who would have got it over the last 30 days. Payments from Stripe lists every event it hears.

Kicklace only reads Stripe, apart from adding its own webhook. It never charges anybody and never changes a customer, a price or a payment. You can see it on a sample business in the demo, with no sign-up.

What Kicklace leaves to a real CRM

Kicklace has no deals and no pipeline, and it is not for a sales team that works from one, or for a marketer who wants a drag-and-drop newsletter builder. Your Stripe dashboard stays where you manage payments, refunds and invoices.

FAQ

Does Stripe have a CRM?

No, Stripe's dashboard has a Customers page and its billing settings can email customers about failed payments, but it is not a CRM.

Can Kicklace change anything in my Stripe account?

No, the one thing it adds is its own webhook. It never charges anybody and never changes a customer, a price or a payment.

What about people who sign up and never pay?

They are on the map too. A Stripe customer who never paid reads as Free, and people who only signed up arrive from your sign-up, through Clerk, Kinde or one line from your own server with the kicklace package.

What does it cost?

Kicklace is free up to 1,000 contacts, sending from its own address with your name on it and a small “Sent with Kicklace” line under each email. Your own domain is part of Starter, $25 a month. The details are on pricing.