Stripe

Subscription and metered per-device billing through Stripe.

Category	Billing
Authentication	Secret key
Reaches	api.stripe.com
Needs an agent	No
Demo mode	Yes

Note

Most schools never touch this. Managed hosting is invoiced annually against a purchase order through the vendor’s own billing, described in licence and plan. This connector exists for deployments that take payment through Stripe directly.

Capabilities

billing.createCheckout, billing.getSubscription, billing.portal

Getting the credentials

1. In the Stripe dashboard, go to Developers, API keys.
2. Copy the secret key. It starts sk_live_ in production and sk_test_ in test mode.
3. Create the Price for your per-device plan under Products, and copy its price id, which starts price_.

Use a restricted key rather than the full secret key if you can. The permissions this connector needs are read and write on Checkout Sessions, Subscriptions and Billing Portal Sessions. A full secret key can do considerably more.

Configuring it in Plugboard

Admin, Connectors, Stripe, Configure.

Settings

Field	Default	Value
priceId	empty	The Stripe Price id for the per-device plan
demoMode	false	Return fixture data

Credentials

Field	Value
secretKey	The Stripe secret or restricted key

Save and test.

Test mode first

Stripe’s test mode is a complete parallel environment with its own keys, prices and dashboard. Configure with sk_test_ and a test price first, run a checkout end to end, and only then switch to live keys.

The most common mistake is a live key with a test price id, or the reverse. Stripe’s error for that is clear once you know to look for it.

What it does

Operation	Use
Create checkout	Start a hosted payment flow
Get subscription	Read the current subscription state
Portal	Open Stripe’s own billing portal so a customer manages their own payment method and invoices

The portal is worth using rather than building anything. Stripe’s billing portal handles card updates, invoice history and cancellation, and keeping that out of your own product is less code and less liability.

Entitlement does not come from here

Worth being explicit, because it is the same principle that governs the vendor’s own billing.

Entitlement lives in the signed licence, not in the billing system. A payment failure does not disable a service desk. Nothing in the billing path revokes anything.

A Stripe outage, an expired card or a failed webhook is a conversation, not an outage.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause
401 on test	Wrong key, or a restricted key without the needed permissions
“No such price”	A test price id with a live key, or the reverse
Checkout opens but fails	The price is not active, or its currency does not match the account
Fixture data appears	demoMode is still on