Payment providers compared

[David Healey]

@soundsync said in Payment providers compared:

How did you manage to get it?

I don't recall having to do anything special but it was several years ago so my memory is lacking

[tobbentm]

Appreciate you taking the time to share your calculations!
There's certainly a difference in price, but also a massive difference in features and mindset behind the platforms, so I hope you all also consider everything else you need when selecting each, vs what is included in these prices.

In case it's interesting, I just published our email campaigns pricing: https://moonbase.sh/pricing/
Again, fully usage-based, with the idea to be cheaper for the common case compared to competitors.
For a typical plugin dev with an audience of 10k newsletter subscribers, with 2-3 campaigns a month, we're coming in at 34-48$/per month compared to 29-39$ for Brevo, 89$ for Mailerlite, 110$ for Mailchimp, 150$ for Klaviyo.
And by charging per email, if you send less often, then it's way cheaper.

With automations coming next, I hope using our solution (if already using Moonbase) is a no-brainer.

[David Healey]

@tobbentm Yeah I just noticed it in my account :) I don't the pricing can compete with SES but it's nice to have it integrated, and a lot of people can't get on SES it seems. Would it be possible to use our own SES subscription with Moonbase's mailer?

@tobbentm said in Payment providers compared:

There's certainly a difference in price, but also a massive difference in features and mindset behind the platforms, so I hope you all also consider everything else you need when selecting each, vs what is included in these prices.

By switching to Moonbase I massively reduced my costs elsewhere.
I no longer pay for hosting/data transfer costs, this means I'm able to have a cheaper VPS for my website, this was about a £30/month saving.

I was also paying annual fees for several wordpress plugins:

• WooCommerce tax calculations
• Software licensing
• Amazon S3/Bunny
• A plugin that sends WooCommerce data to my accounting software
• Currency conversion plugin
• There's probably a few others I'm forgetting.

I also don't have the quarterly headache of dealing with VATMoss.

It looks like several of the other options would also offer some of these features too. I'm very happy with Moonbase though, it was easy to integrate. I've been able to add custom functionality with a few PHP/JS snippets. The support is very good and I actually get to talk to a real person! And new features are being added all the time.

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey said in Payment providers compared:

By switching to Moonbase I massively reduced my costs elsewhere.
I no longer pay for hosting/data transfer costs, this means I'm able to have a cheaper VPS for my website, this was about a £30/month saving.

I was also paying annual fees for several wordpress plugins:

WooCommerce tax calculations
Software licensing
Amazon S3/Bunny
A plugin that sends WooCommerce data to my accounting software
Currency conversion plugin
There's probably a few others I'm forgetting.
I also don't have the quarterly headache of dealing with VATMoss.

All of that is included in Gumroad's fee, and unlimited email marketing too (not a usage-based extra charge).

In fact, given that Moonbase's email marketing is extra, they might now be more expensive than Gumroad for me.

But I still think it's time for me to move on from the Gumroad storefront.

[David Healey]

@dannytaurus said in Payment providers compared:

All of that is included in Gumroad's fee, and unlimited email marketing too (not a usage-based extra charge).

Does gumroad give you a proper shopping cart that you can embed on your website? Last time I used it it was just buy now buttons.

Another thing I like about Moonbase is the cart offers feature. I can set it up so if the customer adds £x to their cart they will get a %n discount and this is displayed in the cart like a progress bar which encourages customers to spend a little more to get to the next goal.

Does Gumroad have an affiliate system? That's another thing I'm no longer paying separately for with Moonbase.

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey said in Payment providers compared:

Does gumroad give you a proper shopping cart that you can embed on your website? Last time I used it it was just buy now buttons.

It's just Buy Now buttons, which I don't use. I have the product pages on my own site link to the product page on Gumroad, where they do the actual cart and checkout. This is the main reason I want to move.

Another thing I like about Moonbase is the cart offers feature.

Gumroad doesn't have that exact 'process bar' feature (which sounds cool), but it does have per-product upsells and 'Customers who bought this item also bought', both of which bring in decent extra revenue for me.

Does Gumroad have an affiliate system?

Yes, and it's a good implementation. You can set per-affiliate and per-product rates, you get an affiliate dashboard to see who's earning what. Again, it's all included in the fee. No nickel-and-diming there. Also, most importantly, Gumroad pays out to affiliates directly, so there's never a trust issue or payment complications.

Gumroad also has a Collaborator feature, which allows you to set up a collab with someone, set a percentage split, and they get paid directly too (after fees, which is fair). I've got a couple of good collabs lined up, so I'll be needing a feature like that, wherever I move.

On Moonbase you can set up collaborators using the affiliate feature, with "all sales of a specific product" - which I read as "no referral link or ID required". But remember, the affiliate system, including collaborators, incurs an extra 3% fee. At least the collaborator doesn't have to pay the €5 per-payout fee - that's included in the 3%. Not sure if the 3% affiliate/collaborator fee is included in the 'after fees' - if it is, you both share the 3% fee, if not, you eat the whole 3%.

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey

Would it be possible to use our own SES subscription with Moonbase's mailer?

That would be very cool, and reduce the cost considerably.

[iamlamprey]

Just throwing my 2c in - I've just moved from Payhip to a more dedicated stack (Github Pages + Cloudflare for frontend, Polar as MoR / processor).

I've had a positive experience so far, very easy to setup and the API lets me run sales by just pushing an update to a config.json file - the Github actions & Cloudflare workers take it from there. They use Stripe for payment processing so it's pretty straightforward.

Payhip was a great alternative to Gumroad, but over time I found their load speeds were getting slower and slower. I'm not sure what the reason is, but I had page loads of up to 20 seconds (simple home pages, it wasn't a content issue). This included checkout and was likely inflating bounce rates like crazy. They also have limited metrics / analytics, and my entire site was basically HTML injected so I didn't need the page editor / designer tools.

Now everything is hosted on Cloudflare and I get sub 1s page loads, the Polar checkout is just an iframe.

When it comes to Trustpilot reviews - be aware that a lot of people try and use Polar, Payhip etc to sell lazy, low-effort products like e-books, .pdfs etc. They then promptly get banned from the platforms and then leavy a crybaby negative review saying they got scammed.

This was a very recent move, so I haven't completed a payout yet through Polar, but I've been in contact with their support (had to verify my ID and the Stripe ID checker wasn't working on my old ass Australian ID card) - they replied within 48 hours both times and the communication was crystal clear.

@dannytaurus said in Payment providers compared:

• Whether Polar charge their 50¢ on a free ($0) download. None of them says. If you give away a lot of free products, ask first.

I've had a few hundred free product downloads over the last week or so - no fees from what I can tell. There's not even a payment form for free products or 100% discount codes: free is free.

The one sort of "downside" I guess is there's only checkout embeds, no cart / add-to-cart (you'd have to roll your own). And no Paypal from what I can tell, I'm not sure how big of a deal that is - Amazon doesn't use Paypal.

If I do come across any negative experience I'll update this post, but so far Polar has been great all around. I've just requested my first payout (only $50) and their docs say they can take up to 2 weeks which isn't a big deal really. Larger payouts might take longer.

[dannytaurus]

@iamlamprey Excellent info - thanks for chiming in!

I'll update the comparison with the facts you mentioned.

I'm turning the whole thing into a webpage, which is easier to view and update than this forum post.

[AlienXY]

Thanks for putting this together, it's the most useful comparison I've seen.

Full disclosure first: I make one of the options in the category you left out, self-hosted stores. It's called Alien XY (alienxy.com). So treat this as one view, not a neutral one.

To your "web app or plugins?" question, there's a middle path: run a ready-made store on your own server with your own Stripe account. Then the only fees are Stripe's, so close to your "Stripe on its own" row (about 4.3% on your mixed basket), with no revenue share on top. Alien XY costs $199 or $499 one-time, or $39/month if you want it hosted for you. It comes with licence keys and activation, file delivery, coupons and affiliates already built.

The catch, and it's a big one for you: it isn't a merchant of record. You'd be the seller, so VAT and sales tax stay your job, same as plain Stripe. Since you've said MoR is a must, it probably doesn't fit your case. I'm mentioning it for people who are already registered for VAT, or who sell mostly in places where that's manageable, and would rather not hand over 7 to 15% for good.

Happy to answer questions here.