Also, what is up with all of that downtime? I think I'd expect my payment provider to have better uptime. Makes me wonder how quality the backend really is.
If I was using stripe and my site couldn't accept payments for X minutes during a really important time (which seems to have happened 5 times in the last couple months), I'd be really pissed.
Also, from a UX experience, getting my mouse pointer to line up over a 4 pixel wide line is a pain in the ass. It looks pretty, but isn't really usable.
Update: Why the downvote? At least respond to me.
Also, what is up with all of that downtime? I think I'd expect my payment provider to have better uptime. Makes me wonder how quality the backend really is.
While all downtime is bad, we think 99.99% is decent.
The best service providers -- including the services that might power your site -- tend to have guarantees in this range. Amazon EC2 and Google App Engine both have SLAs for 99.95% uptime.
More generally, this is part of the point: other payments companies don't tend to talk about their availability at all. We think that this is harmful. What should count as acceptable uptime performance is a fair question. As a first step, we think we should all make our uptime public.
Is it just me, or is this really confusing? Which services are responsible for taking payments? If the website goes down, does that affect taking payments? Isn't stripe.js part of the API? If the API goes down, doesn't that affect stripe.js?
No, the Stripe site going down won't impact your ability to accept payments at all. stripe.js is optional, and so we've exposed its uptime separately too. Again, other services like Amazon and Google break out their availability on a per-service basis, and I think this makes a lot of sense.
2. (On the site) please explain what each status is and how they relate (or link to rel docs). I understand the website uses the API; yet sometimes the API is down but not the website...
BTW: I humoured some severe criticism of my business once; it was only years later that I realized how accurate, helpful and crucial it was.
GAE has actually had 100% uptime for the last year. http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/01/happy-birthday-h...
Also, your worries are rightful but pointless. The API provided 4 nines and stripe.js is close to 5 nines in the last three months. There were no 10+ minutes downtimes in either (still not counting the website.) I think that is impressive uptime.
It should also be selling the simplicity, transparent communication and ease-of-use of stripe.
The way that my business works is that we take a large number of orders in a short amount of time and then it tapers off. If my site was down because their api is down for 4 minutes (and I don't know when it is going to come back up), that would really affect my sales.
If you are at a cash register and pull out your credit card and the swiper doesn't work, chances are you can just hand the person cash. The internet doesn't work that way. 4 9's for a payment processor really isn't good enough. Also, that stat is just across 90 days, not 365.
I really like Stripe and what they are trying to do. Now that I can visually see it, I just worry about their uptime performance.
Update: Some one just sent me email calling me an asshole, which seems rather undeserving. This is their ip address pool-173-49-2-60.phlapa.fios.verizon.net.
I might not get it, but IMHO if its not something of general interest, it shouldn't be on HN (even though the company might be PG's portfolio).
