Stripe

answerLoops uses Stripe Checkout for hosted-plan trials and subscriptions. Stripe handles payment details, trial timing, invoices, and the customer portal; the application stores the subscription state needed to grant access.

Customer lifecycle

Signing in with Google creates an answerLoops user and workspace, but it does not create a Stripe Customer. Opening or abandoning Checkout also does not count as becoming a customer. A Stripe Customer is attached to the workspace when Stripe sends the successful checkout.session.completed webhook, at the same time the subscription and welcome email are processed.

When an existing subscriber changes plans, answerLoops reuses that workspace's Stripe Customer so the billing history stays together.

Webhook setup

For a cloud deployment, configure Stripe to send these events to /api/billing/webhook:

• checkout.session.completed
• customer.subscription.updated
• customer.subscription.deleted
• invoice.payment_failed

Set STRIPE_SECRET_KEY and STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET in the deployment environment. The webhook is the source of truth for the local subscription record, so access can take a short moment to appear after Checkout redirects back to answerLoops.