I have always been using PayPal as my payment solution which charges an arm and a leg for a $1 / month subscription, nearly a half, $0.44 will be counted as the fee for each payment (I'm not a US merchant). I guess the only option left for me is my own credit card payment gateway? But I've never used one before so I'm not sure of the fees. Can anyone share some experience on this? Would it be advisable to charge my customers a $1 / month subscription via credit card? What's fee per payment? Or is it more advisable to charge $12 / year?
You need something to take micropayments if you want to do it that way. What I have seen in the past some merchants doing is to sell creditd / units of 10. Means even if 1 product / service costs only $1 then you have to buy 10 credits = $10 - you are getting difficult yo find any solution that will pay for $1 transactions.
You can give a choice to your customers: either $3 every 3 months or $6 every 6 months or a single payment of $12. $1 payments are not a good idea, regardless of the payment processor.
Your own CC gateway will produce even higher costs. Depending on what business/area you're in they will charge upwards of 10% on each processing + when it goes through. Paypal would be the easiest and quickest option. However, 1 dollar a month sub sounds bizarre.