Half a year with FastSpring payment processor | Hacker News Reader

Half a year with FastSpring payment processor

blog.apparentsoft.com

17 pointsgrayprog12 comments

We've been using FastSpring for ThinkCode.TV since day one. They are a very good choice.

In my opinion, their main weaknesses are:

* Relatively expensive if you sell low priced items like we do (there is a $0.75 transaction minimum).

* Their anti-fraud algorithm requires customers to complete a huge form before allowing a purchase. This has been, in my experience, a major turn-off for customers.

* No support for recurring billing.

* Their upload applet is a nightmare if you are uploading large files like we do (e.g., 150+ Mb files). Transactions fail all the time.

Other than that, they are a good choice.

Hope you won't mind the comments here:

Regarding the huge form, while I know you'd like smaller, I would like to say it is pretty standard for online purchases. Name, Address info, phone in some cases, and email address.

Recurring billing is coming.

The upload applet works great for most, but I agree some have problems with it. The real reason things have moved beyond just simple FTP is that files aren't hosted on simple servers any longer. When things move to cloud computing, adding a file to the cloud is much more complex than the old days of just FTP'ing it into a directory. While we are continuing to work to make it better, anytime a client does have problems, we are quick with some other options, including we can pull the files down and load them for you.

Ken White, Chief Customer Service Officer FastSpring E-Commerce

> Hope you won't mind the comments here:

I appreciate them. :)

> Regarding the huge form, while I know you'd like smaller, I would like to say it is pretty standard for online purchases. Name, Address info, phone in some cases, and email address.

I agree for CC processing. However, for PayPal orders, people expect a quick payment. AFAIK our PayPal customers still need to fill in all the info.

> Recurring billing is coming.

Awesome. This will allow us to implement a better business model.

> anytime a client does have problems, we are quick with some other options, including we can pull the files down and load them for you.

I can attest that you've usually been helpful when it came to performing operations on S3 for us. Direct access to S3 (for technical users like us) would really be beneficial though.

I'll say one thing about FastSpring - you can use them like a highly intelligent robot. Instead of going to their panel, I'd send emails like:

"I'd like a source code option on product x, and it should be for free with variation y, and should look like x"

In 15 mins you get a cheerful "No Problem", and 30 minutes later: "All Done."

I used to feel guilty asking them to do this for me instead of doing it myself, but then I realised that that's why I was sticking with them.

Their prices are not high compared to the competition, and the handle all the stuff you should do (like VAT).

| 5.9% plus $.95 per transaction or a flat rate of 8.9%

Wow, that's very expensive. I'd prefer PayPal or Google Checkout.

Once again, you get a lot of services for the price. If you only need to accept paymemts and you handle all the rest yourself, plus you don't need a good, personal customer service (PayPal and Google's service are not good at all), then PP or GC are a better choice for you.

Plus GC only works in the US. Maybe UK. There's rest of the world as well.

Your profit margins must be insane if you can afford to give 6% of your earnings away for some glorified credit card processing.

I'm all for great customer service, but 6-9% discount rates are frightening. It's not that hard to do direct paypal/credit card processing for something in the 2.5-4% range. That's a big chunk of a company's revenue, not to be given up lightly.

That's hard or simply impossible if you're not in US/UK.

Also, even in the US, you'll need to build a lot of code on your site to support all the options that FastSpring and other similar services provide, such as all the offers, discounts, cross-sales etc. It's possible to do and maybe even more integrated, but still it's additional work that needs to be done and maintained.

On the other hand, it's a significantly lower percentage than, say, The App Store, or Android Market.

I've been using FastSpring on my site for about 4 months. Customer support is indeed great. I sell software and I like that they have file fulfillment services. After a certain number of downloads/days the link stops working cutting back on piracy. I could code this all myself, but it would take time and it would be a headache to deal with email. Also, I really like how there is no monthly fee. This makes FastSpring ideal for testing new products albeit a little more expensive than alternatives in the long run.

I'll also highly recommend FastSpring, their customer service has been phenomenal and the store features have saved me loads of time.

You'd be crazy to try and build a store like it yourself. Instead, go with FastSpring and spend the time you've saved on your product.

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