I use Cloudflare + Fastmail. It's $5/mo for unlimited emails and domains I think. I've been using this setup for years and it's perfect.
Cloudflare provides you with MX records for your domain names. This means all incoming emails will first arrive at Cloudflare, which you can configure to then forward these emails to your one Fastmail account. This is free I believe.
Fastmail is a $5/mo email account. Incoming emails are already being forwarded via Cloudflare to your Fastmail inbox. You can then also configure Fastmail to send emails from these domain names. These are known as aliases. You can have as many as you want.
It might be possible to have Fastmail also handle incoming emails so you can skip the Cloudflare step. I'm not sure, but it's something you could look into if you're not already using Cloudflare for DNS.
Thanks Marc! This looks like a solid setup. I'll look into this.
Singapore. Typically you want to incorporate where you do (most) of your work.
This is probably the right answer, confirmed by some online searches and opinions from other communities. The downside is (at least here in Spain) it is really bureaucratic and painful to be a small business.
The one issue I ran into this, is that whenever someone would ask for a proper invoice, I'd need to generate it with the above calculation. I think Quaderno did this for me.
But then if the customer was a business in say Germany (where I'd take the same approach, but 19%), they might then later provide their VAT ID and ask for their paid VAT back. As technically they don't need to pay it.
I'd need to tell them that if they provided their VAT ID, the base price would be $100 again (and so they didn't gain anything). Bit hard to explain to people 😅
I don't use Stripe Tax, but when I was incorporated in the Netherlands I would just charge everyone the same amount (e.g. $100), and then retroactively decide what percentage was VAT.
So if the customer was in the Netherlands (e.g. based on their credit card country + IP address), I would do $100 / 1.21 = $82.64 as base price, and the remainder as VAT.
The one issue I ran into this, is that whenever someone would ask for a proper invoice, I'd need to generate it with the above calculation. I think Quaderno did this for me.
But then if the customer was a business in say Germany (where I'd take the same approach, but 19%), they might then later provide their VAT ID and ask for their paid VAT back. As technically they don't need to pay it.
I'd need to tell them that if they provided their VAT ID, the base price would be $100 again (and so they didn't gain anything). Bit hard to explain to people 😅
Where are you incorporated now? I'm having to think about this as I will have to start charing users for jobsinenglish.dk soon.
Judging by my invoice for WIP.co membership, it's incorporated in Singapore.
Singapore. Typically you want to incorporate where you do (most) of your work.
This is probably the right answer, confirmed by some online searches and opinions from other communities. The downside is (at least here in Spain) it is really bureaucratic and painful to be a small business.
I'm using Stripe Tax and Stripe Checkout, which calculates the tax and generates the invoices + receipts. It works nicely. Need to do a followup call with my accountant to discuss it further.
What's the reason he wants you to charge tax where Stripe Tax dictates zero?
I’m not sure we need to look into it together more, they have experience with other PSP but not Stripe yet
@levelsio had an internet issue. Not sure about my double comments 😅
Your logo/branding isn't going to make or break your startup. I'd just pick something simple and move on.
For handle.horse I just use the 🐴 emoji. For WIP, I used 🚧 for a long time. In your case you could do something like this: 🚂🛍️
If you prefer not to use an emoji, you can just use a nice typeface with maybe a basic shape and color. That's what I did for Room AI: roomai.com
If you really want a logo, I'd just find a suitable icon on one of the many free icons site and add your name next to it. For example this one: thenounproject.com/icon/rails…
Make sure to check the license before using such an icon.
Yeah, definitely logos won't make or break anything (at this point, anyway).
I interpreted as understanding the core audience, positioning, and messaging, which absolutely would make or break a startup.
I've seen a LOT of people use emojis as logos lately, mostly in the indie hacker community. I love to see it!
Yeah, this is what I did initially with the current version. Definitely not a must have, so maybe this is more just procrastination? Probably better to just focus on monetization and other improvements first. The design overall was bugging me (just felt so cheap/clunky) and if I was going to redo the overall site design anyways, figured I'd start with doing proper branding.