You have three real options for "sign in with one tap." Here is the honest ranking and my pick.
| Option | Reach | Cost / friction | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nearly everyone has a Google account | Free. ~15 min of setup you do once. | START HERE | |
| Apple | Every iPhone owner, expected on iOS | Needs the $99/yr Apple Developer account. Apple requires it if you offer any other social login inside an iOS app. | ADD WITH THE iOS APP |
| Declining, younger folks have left | Developer-hostile review, privacy baggage, worst long-term bet | SKIP |
Google is free, universal, and unblocks everything today. Apple rides in for free on the $99 developer account you already need for the App Store, so it is a "same day as the iPhone app" add, not a separate project. Facebook login is a dead end. To wire Google I need one thing from you: an OAuth Client ID you create in about 15 minutes (steps in the action block at the bottom).
Small but important reframe: Apple Pay and Google Pay are not separate payment companies you sign up with, they are buttons that ride on top of a processor. The processor is the real choice, and for a website that needs donations now and subscriptions later, that is Stripe.
| Path | Donations | Subscriptions / beta discount | Setup |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Yes | Yes (this is what the beta model needs) | Account + I wire it |
| Apple Pay / Google Pay | Yes, through Stripe | Through Stripe | One-tap buttons, free with Stripe |
| Venmo link | Yes, instantly | No. Cannot do subscriptions or unlocks. | 2 minutes, zero code |
Stripe gives you cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and the recurring-billing engine the "50% off for 6 months" logic runs on, all in one account, ~3% per charge. To take a donation this very week while Stripe's business verification finishes, drop a Venmo (or Ko-fi) button on the site: real money in minutes, no code. Then Stripe becomes the real product payment once it is live.
Note: activating Stripe fully (bank, tax, business entity) is your legal/operational lane, which you said you are handling. I only need the account to exist plus its keys to wire the code.
The shift is real: the Wilcoxson site stops being "one private site" and becomes "a template other friend groups can each get their own copy of." Here is the shape I would lock.
The beta discount ("50% off for 6 months") needs a real number to be half of. It does not have to be final, just a placeholder to build the math around. Common shapes for a small group product: a per-House monthly (say $8-15/mo for the whole group) or a per-person annual. You can also say "decide later, just capture beta testers for now" and I build the capture without a price.
say: "D1 $12 a month per house" (or any number), or "D1 decide later"Two flavors. Invite-only: a group only gets in if you hand them a code (keeps it curated, feels exclusive, protects the beta). Open signup: anyone can create a House (more reach, less control, more scrubbing/moderation to think about). For a beta among friends-of-friends I lean invite-only.
say: "D2 invite only" (recommended), or "D2 open signup"This is the piece I can build first, because it needs no accounts and no payments. Here is exactly how it works and what the scrub does.
| Field | What happens |
|---|---|
| Your name (Colton) | Kept real. You said use your name, so the sample has a real anchor. |
| Everyone else's name + callsign | Swapped for a comically fake alias (fixed map, see below) |
| Photos / portraits | Replaced with placeholder silhouettes |
| Kids / family | Random-but-stable count and details, not the real ones |
| Schools, jobs, hometown, facts | Switched around (real-looking, wrong) |
| Movie lists, favorite quotes, game stats, arcade scores | Kept as-is (you said these are fine, and they carry the vibe without outing anyone) |
| Business ideas | Scrubbed of any identifying specifics, kept in spirit |
The device I would lock: everyone but you becomes a deadpan witness-protection action hero. Stable (not re-randomized each push), so the demo is believable. Proposed map (veto any and I will swap it):
| Real (first name only) | Sample alias |
|---|---|
| Colton | Colton (unchanged) |
| Preston | Blaze Hardwick |
| Dave | Chad Bonanza |
| Dan | Rip Vanderveld |
| David G. (Deeg) | Buck Rockhold |
| Robby (Kiester) | Lance Boyle |
| Ethan | Dirk Mangrove |
| Josh | Chaz Ferrari |
| Jon (Burgess) | Duke Sterling |
| Jeremy (Gargis) | Rex Danger |
Two clean options. A path on the real site (wilcoxsonhouse.com/sample): simplest, but it is publicly reachable, so the scrub has to be airtight. Its own throwaway domain (the calvinbox.com anonymized-sandbox bucket you already own): zero connection to your name, the safest home for a public demo. I lean calvinbox for a truly public "here is what it looks like" link.
say: "D4 calvinbox" (recommended), or "D4 on the real site"Everything here runs on Calvin and deploys to Cloudflare, the same path this page took. The two things gating me are the two accounts only you can create (below). The Sample Group is not gated, so say the word on D3/D4 and it becomes the next thing live.
These two are genuinely yours (I cannot create accounts as you). Everything else I build. Fifteen minutes each.
Not an action, a decision: whether to spend the $99/yr Apple Developer fee is deferred until the iPhone app phase (it buys both Apple sign-in and App Store access at once). Nothing to do now.
v1.0.0, 2026-08-02, First build. Auth recommendation (Google then Apple, skip Facebook), payment recommendation (Stripe spine + Venmo stopgap), the House + Founding Crew beta model, the Sample Group scrub spec with a proposed alias map, build order, and the two account actions.