Ask IH: Horrible experience with 2checkout. Suggestions for better alternatives?
We would love to go with stripe but unfortunately, it is unavailable in our country.
We would love to go with stripe but unfortunately, it is unavailable in our country.
You can look into paddle.com
We're strongly leaning towards paddle right now. Still evaluating if there are better alternatives.
I've looked into Paddle quite a lot if you've got any questions.
Guys. My understanding, after speaking to their team has been they do not accept "service businesses". It's categorised as "HUMAN SERVICE" and they stay away from it.
We ran into a similar problem trying to signup with Paddle for Springzo, our productized content service.
I shall give this a try and share my experience about how it goes.
Do you mean you can't use it for a Saas? Looks very promising. Thanks for your other replies. We should really put up a guide for Indian Indie Hackers on the available options. As a solo man, not even sure whether the thing will work out, I find the current scenario in India very frustrating. Would love to know more about your experience, maybe in a separate post. I'm sure many Indians here will appreciate it. Thanks.
SaaS = Software: Yes.
Services: No
A screengrab of the conversation I had with them:
https://zo.springzo.com/2LVkH0c
Thanks for the clarification. Really appreciate it. I also pinged Paddle asking them what the catch is? How are they able to provide gateway service in India, when most other bigger gateways can't. Do you happen to know? Thanks again.
Not sure about it.
Do let us know when you hear back from Paddle on this.
Paddle. Don't look any further.
Edit: mollie.com seems like a cheaper alternative
I've been using Fastspring for years. I highly recommend it.
I've been connected with fastspring for quite sometime. But their charges are higher on every front.
Well it depends on your needs. FastSpring is definitely the more advanced solution, highly customizable, and they can be compared to similar services that act as resellers, not just process transactions.
Like Paddle and Gumroad, they handle VAT for you, they invoice the clients, and you invoice them, not the clients.
Curious. How much do they charge as fees? I have heard their fees are on the higher side.
If I remember correctly, 5.9% per transaction and 0.95c each transfer for starters. Lesser for high volumes above $50,000 MRR.
Almost 2x of PayPal.
indeed FastSpring / Paddle costs more than Paypal but they are storefronts, not just a merchant account. They are not comparable. It's like comparing rental cars with Ubers.
Junaid, was surprised to see this thread. A couple of days back, I visited Draftss, noticed you guys use 2checkout. I thought I will reach out to you someday and see if you're happy with 2checkout. And now, I see this thread.
Some time back, we were in the same boat - trying to integrate a payment gateway with Springzo. We must have looked at dozens of options.
Paddle: They do not accept "service businesses". That's a straight NO for them owing to something they call as "HUMAN SERVICE".
Paypal: We're using it. And happy with it. Caveats: I' presuming your company is registered in India. One, you cannot accept recurring payments from Paypal India users. Second, people will be required to have a Paypal account to buy the subscription (or create one).
Razorpay: Sign up with them. Submit an application to activate "Subscriptions". Caveat: The buyer will be charged in INR. Think of it as an alternative to Stripe with the amount being charged in INR
We currently use Paypal for the majority of our subscribers and Razorpay for Indian entities.
We had a really good experience for quite sometime. Had bits of downs time to time but nothing so significant as much as the last issue.
I can imagine. We too were apprehensive of 2checkout. They have a plethora of negative reviews across the internet. Two common issue threads:
account abruptly closed and funds stuck with them.
lackadaisical customer support.
I use https://ravepay.co
Seems to be catering primarily to African countries.
@Junaid What happened?
what problem did you face with 2checkout.com payment gateway?
We've been using 2checkout.com for about 3-4 months now. The problems started when they made some alterations in their dashboard about 15-20 days ago. This affected a significant proportion of our paying customers where they were not billed for the recurring subscription. Customer support is not responsive at all. It took 3 days to get the first response from them. It's the third week ongoing and till date, the problem is not resolved.
Did U send them the w-8 form filled? to avail taxes?
I'm not sure if it's available in your country, but maybe mollie.com is able to suite your needs?
First time coming across mollie. They seem to support all countries. Seems promising.
I had a look at Mollie for Springzo (www.springzo.com). Two things deterred me from signing up with them:
Sorry to hear about your bad experience with 2checkout, Checkout paywhirl
Never used them but you could have a look at https://www.payoneer.com to see if it suits.
They don't provide payment gateway or any apis afaik. They only let you accept payments directly from the client.
Oh. I was going to look more closely at them but I shan't bother now.
Paddle, Stripe.
In this order.
Mollie.com looks promising. Look at @shalintj's comments on the downsides, though.
Paddle.com might also work, but it is a bit more expensive.
Are you looking for a payment processor, billing system, or both?
Wes, you asked so valid a question. Thanks. When I was looking at payment processor options a couple of months back, I didn't realise this - there are payment processors and there are billing systems. And they are not the same. I didn't know this at that time.
I hope this of help for everyone else too. Simply put,
Payment processor: PayPal, Stripe, etc.
Billing softwares / systems: Chargebee, Recurly, Memberful, Moonclerk, etc. They sit on top of processors with their value-added feature sets.
Junaid's question is more specific to payment processors.
You're welcome. It's definitely a gap of knowledge in the market.
Too often, people think billing and payment processing is the same. The biggest consequence is that people end up paying a percentage of their revenue (payment processor pricing model) for billing software (which should be transactional).
PS - You forgot Cheddar as a billing software/system/API :)