Roman Shalabanov

Posted on Feb 27 • Edited on Mar 3

Building a Laravel SDK for Creem.io: multi-profile billing, webhook events, and an interactive demo

#laravel #php #opensource #webdev

I recently open-sourced a Laravel SDK for Creem.io and wanted to write up the story behind it, because the path to building it was a bit roundabout.

Backstory

My existing project uses Omnipay, the PHP League's payment abstraction library (not a payment provider itself), to handle checkout through multiple gateways via a single interface. I originally planned to stick with a provider that already had an Omnipay driver. But mid-integration I switched to Creem. Since the project was already wired through Omnipay, I wrote a driver for it: romansh/omnipay-creem.

Omnipay is a solid choice when you need to swap gateways with one line of code. The trade-off is that it's a lowest-common-denominator abstraction: you get purchase() and completePurchase(), and everything else (webhook routing, event dispatching, config management, retry logic) you have to build yourself.

At some point I discovered Creem had a developer bounty for an official Laravel SDK. Since I was already working with their API and had a feel for what was missing, I decided to build it properly: a Laravel-native package that handles all that boilerplate out of the box. If a package like this had existed when I started, I probably would have used it instead of writing the Omnipay driver.

Disclosure: this article is also part of that bounty. That said, the packages fill a real gap and I would have written this up regardless.

The problem with typical payment integrations

Most payment integrations are built around one API key per app. That works until you need:

Multi-tenancy: each tenant with their own billing account
Multiple storefronts: different products or brands on separate Creem accounts
Staging vs production: without touching .env per environment
Departmental billing: isolated billing within the same app

What I built

romansh/laravel-creem is a full-featured SDK with Laravel-native patterns.

What's inside:

Complete API coverage: Products, Checkouts, Customers, Subscriptions, Transactions, Licenses, Discount Codes
Multi-profile config: switch API keys per request with Creem::profile('store_b') or override inline with Creem::withConfig([...])
Webhooks done right: auto-registered routes, HMAC signature verification, typed Laravel events including GrantAccess / RevokeAccess
Artisan tooling: php artisan creem:test-webhook checkout.completed for local testing without hitting the real API
Laravel 10 / 11 / 12, PHP 8.1-8.4
Well tested: unit + feature tests, PSR-12, full PHPDoc

Create a checkout

use Romansh\LaravelCreem\Facades\Creem;

$checkout = Creem::checkouts()->create([
    'product_id' => 'prod_123',
    'success_url' => route('dashboard'),
    'customer' => ['email' => $user->email],
]);

return redirect($checkout['checkout_url']);

Multi-profile in action

// Use a different Creem account per product line
$txns = Creem::profile('product_a')->transactions()->list();

Webhook listener: grant access on payment

Event::listen(GrantAccess::class, function (GrantAccess $e) {
    $user = User::where('email', $e->customer['email'])->first();
    $user?->update(['plan' => 'pro', 'subscribed_at' => now()]);
});

Quick start

composer require romansh/laravel-creem
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=creem-config

Add CREEM_API_KEY and CREEM_WEBHOOK_SECRET to .env and you're good to go.

Interactive demo app

There's also romansh/laravel-creem-demo, a full working app (Laravel 12 + Livewire + Tailwind) built to explore every feature through a web UI: configure API keys in the browser, create products, trigger checkouts, manage subscriptions, and watch webhook events arrive in real time.

composer create-project romansh/laravel-creem-demo my-creem-app
cd my-creem-app && docker-compose up -d

Docker setup includes an optional Cloudflare Tunnel so webhooks work locally without any port forwarding.

Screenshots

API Setup: credentials, webhook URL, profile tabs

Webhooks and Access: live event log, GrantAccess/RevokeAccess in real time

Transactions: payment history with amounts and customer emails

Discounts: create percentage/fixed discount codes

Subscriptions: recurring plans with billing periods

One-Time Payments: product preview modal, checkout flow

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