Alternatives to ShareIt/MyCommerce/Digital River

[alexgn]

Somebody else said the same a few days ago - it will cost you a few dollars to 'Kontakt' them.

I am done with them. Don't need my control panel anymore. Also will not use their support anymore.
I only may send them more letters to Frankfurt for rejecting coming invoices.

Why is the ball in my court?
I cancelled my account in writing. Wrote off my losses already, but tried to refund as many orders as possible.

[sft234]

Fastspring. As a customer, I do not use vendors that use Fastspring. I am in Canada and on top of imposing tax they also add a heafty fee at my cost, over and above the exchange rate and usual bank premium. They also wont allow me to pay in USD so I can't use my Paypal balance unless I convert it and lose more money in the exchange. So, just letting you know as a point of consideration. I will seek out other distributors to see if the product is there but if not, I no longer by through Fastspring.

You can switch the country at the top right. This then also changes the currency accordingly.

But I agree that they should separate the currency choice from the country as most other MoRs are offering (even Digital River does).

If tax is included in the price or not decides the vendor.
Some include it, some add it. Makes a huge difference in countries like Germany (19%) or Sweden (25%)

[plexuss]

Fastspring. As a customer, I do not use vendors that use Fastspring. I am in Canada and on top of imposing tax they also add a heafty fee at my cost, over and above the exchange rate and usual bank premium. They also wont allow me to pay in USD so I can't use my Paypal balance unless I convert it and lose more money in the exchange. So, just letting you know as a point of consideration. I will seek out other distributors to see if the product is there but if not, I no longer by through Fastspring.

You can switch the country at the top right. This then also changes the currency accordingly.

But I agree that they should separate the currency choice from the country as most other MoRs are offering (even Digital River does).

If tax is included in the price or not decides the vendor.
Some include it, some add it. Makes a huge difference in countries like Germany (19%) or Sweden (25%)

Fastspring requires the postal code match the payment information. When you change the currency it changes the postal code field to be localized to the currency and the postal code entered has to match the payment info. It is not possible for example to switch it to Canada and pay in USD. This is one of the many issues with Fastspring that has resulted in me rejecting its use and discontinuing my patronage of shops that use it. It's very uncustomer-centric.

[sft234]

Fastspring. As a customer, I do not use vendors that use Fastspring. I am in Canada and on top of imposing tax they also add a heafty fee at my cost, over and above the exchange rate and usual bank premium. They also wont allow me to pay in USD so I can't use my Paypal balance unless I convert it and lose more money in the exchange. So, just letting you know as a point of consideration. I will seek out other distributors to see if the product is there but if not, I no longer by through Fastspring.

You can switch the country at the top right. This then also changes the currency accordingly.

But I agree that they should separate the currency choice from the country as most other MoRs are offering (even Digital River does).

If tax is included in the price or not decides the vendor.
Some include it, some add it. Makes a huge difference in countries like Germany (19%) or Sweden (25%)

Fastspring requires the postal code match the payment information. When you change the currency it changes the postal code field to be localized to the currency and the postal code entered has to match the payment info. It is not possible for example to switch it to Canada and pay in USD. This is one of the many issues with Fastspring that has resulted in me rejecting its use and discontinuing my patronage of shops that use it. It's very uncustomer-centric.

Hmm ok - didn't know. So in this case this is a clear shortcoming, yes.
Which other "many issues" do you have with FastSpring?

[plexuss]

Fastspring. As a customer, I do not use vendors that use Fastspring. I am in Canada and on top of imposing tax they also add a heafty fee at my cost, over and above the exchange rate and usual bank premium. They also wont allow me to pay in USD so I can't use my Paypal balance unless I convert it and lose more money in the exchange. So, just letting you know as a point of consideration. I will seek out other distributors to see if the product is there but if not, I no longer by through Fastspring.

You can switch the country at the top right. This then also changes the currency accordingly.

But I agree that they should separate the currency choice from the country as most other MoRs are offering (even Digital River does).

If tax is included in the price or not decides the vendor.
Some include it, some add it. Makes a huge difference in countries like Germany (19%) or Sweden (25%)

Fastspring requires the postal code match the payment information. When you change the currency it changes the postal code field to be localized to the currency and the postal code entered has to match the payment info. It is not possible for example to switch it to Canada and pay in USD. This is one of the many issues with Fastspring that has resulted in me rejecting its use and discontinuing my patronage of shops that use it. It's very uncustomer-centric.

Hmm ok - didn't know. So in this case this is a clear shortcoming, yes.
Which other "many issues" do you have with FastSpring?

Cost. With Fastspring there is the cost of the product + localized tax + arbitrage premium (~3-5%) + an arbitrary fee (~6%). As a customer, I have to then guage the total cost of the product vs competitors that do not use Fastspring. Typically, the alternative always wins. Why should I pay an extra 10-15% just to use Fastspring. I think its a bad choice for ecomm shops especially in a competitive market. YMMV

The other issue is the clunky product management system. From a customer perspective the best case is for the vendor to have their own on-site account and purchase management integrated in the vendor site. I get the attraction with Fastspring having their own product management but its at a cost for the customer, as I mentioned. And then the clunky experience: enter email address, wait for email, click email link, get a pootly laid out page of purchases etc.

Over-all its a poor solution for customers. It drives me to other vendors. I typically dont bother once I see Fastspring is involved unless there are other STRONG compelling reasons. In the competitive market of audio software its easier to just find a competitor that does use Fastspring.

[Christian67587]

Fastspring requires the postal code match the payment information. ... to switch it to Canada and pay in USD.

I don't think that is correct. We provide links to our clients to order products and we include USD as currency in the order. So payment is made in USD with Canadian credit card.

But I think the zip code in invoice may need to match the one linked to the credit card.

[plexuss]

Fastspring requires the postal code match the payment information. ... to switch it to Canada and pay in USD.

I don't think that is correct. We provide links to our clients to order products and we include USD as currency in the order. So payment is made in USD with Canadian credit card.

But I think the zip code in invoice may need to match the one linked to the credit card.

Well, that never works for me. When I select USD, if I do not enter a USD address, my payment is rejected. If I enter a fake USD address, it's also rejected because it appears to be checked against the payment-type info. Maybe its a configuration issue.

[IaES]

With Fastspring there is the cost of the product + localized tax + arbitrage premium (~3-5%) + an arbitrary fee (~6%). As a customer, I have to then guage the total cost of the product vs competitors that do not use Fastspring. Typically, the alternative always wins. Why should I pay an extra 10-15% just to use Fastspring. I think its a bad choice for ecomm shops especially in a competitive market. YMMV

I have a 2checkout account and a Fastspring account.

Total in the basket $249.00 USD

Prices in CAD excluding tax.

Fastspring 369.71 CAD
2Checkout 356.37 CAD

But looking at a buyer's receipt/invoice I don't see any special fees listed. Just the price + tax. Not much I, as the seller, can do about the tax. So where do you see these extra 'arbitrary' fees that you mention?

It does look more expensive via Fastspring but not the 10 - 15% that you mention.

I will confess though that I never noticed before that Fastspring currency is tied to the buyer's locale. With 2Checkout buyer can set language and currency however they want.

One thing I will say about MyCommerce is that if my product price is 100USD then I always got 100USD no matter what currency the buyer pays in. But with all other MoR service providers they convert from my USD price to the buyer's currency - then convert back to USD for my account which usually comes out less (occasionally slightly higher) than my original USD price. With Fastspring I tend to get closer to my original USD price.

[grujicd]

It's not only that I want user to have the option to pay in USD, I want that to be the default selection. Before I switched to "USD as default" I received complaints about local price from time to time, as MyCommerce often had bad exchange rate. After the switch there are no more complaints, and user could always manually change currency. That's also the option with 2checkout (just add CURRENCY=USD&DCURRENCY=USD). I also noticed that Fastpring doesn't allow user to change currency, so I have second thoughts of using them as the secondary MoR. However if I limit them to handle only USA orders then there will be no problems of this sort? And I'll still have two payment processors as a safety measure. I'm not sure it's worth it...

[sft234]

So you think 2checkout is generally better than FastSpring?

[grujicd]

There are several things that bother me with FastSpring which might not bother you:

- there are no options you can pass to checkout via URL - quantity, coupon, etc. At least I couldn't find it. That means I can't send customer full link with correctly configured purchase - sometimes I do that to avoid mistakes by purchasing person.

- they have two different stores (older classic and new contextual). Contextual store has several "storefronts" - web, popup, embedded. Not only it's more complex, there are strange limitations. For instance web storefront, the one similar to MyCommerce/2checkout, doesn't keep selected product if customer goes back to our site, so they can't add multiple products. It's possible there are ways around it with some JS, but it doesn't work out of the box.

- customer can't choose currency

- webhooks have limited data, for instance order webhook doesn't send their margin, so we can't store in our db the exact amount we expect to be paid.

- you can't see failed purchases, you have to use webhook to save these failures somewhere

- They're using 3rd party for KYC - and I managed to fail that process when I uploaded company bank statement while they expected personal one. We were approved later nevertheless.

- I had a classic store from before, and wanted to move to newer "contextual" one. That's something you have to ask support to do it and wait several days. It seems there are more of these "contact support for this to be turned on".

- Now that I have Contextual store, it also has to be activated by support once I'm done testing.

- I don't like their web checkout, I don't see a way for user to enter separate billing and delivery addresses, which is needed when resellers are buying.

All in all it seems less polished than 2checkout (or even MyCommerce!), with fewer options, and with more need for manual interventions from support. I exchanged dozens of emails with them in the course of a month, and still don't have operational online checkouts.

Their main appeal of FastSpring is that they send payouts twice a month, so if anything happens, there will be less damage. Also, they claim popup checkouts convert better, but for some reason I don't like it.

[Christian67587]

For FastSpring in the classic store, you can build an URL to point to a php script on your website, which then makes a POST to FastSpring and pass products with quantities and the currency. We do that to provide clients with links in Euro or USD.

Also for MyCommerce, we got a few customers looking for their invoices as they prepare their tax stuff for this year.
And they are pissed that I can't go to the control panel anymore and resend an invoice.

[sft234]

That's one of the reasons we didn't terminate the DR account so far. Plus many years of customer data stored in here ready to search through in case of loss and may not stored our-side for some reason.

And we can't know yet what will happen with DR within the next months and also how the new MoR will prove itself during the years. For DR there's long-years empirical experience for this (it worked flawlessly for years until last july) which can't be known yet for the new one.

Maybe DR will change owner again and things may improve then or change completely.
But maybe they also go bankrupt.

Yes, keeping the DR account costs $100 a month - but taking in account the hundreds of dollars of "support" fees spent so far already this doesn't matter much anymore.

[IaES]

I just went through MyCommerce and created a new vendor account. It's obviously in Test mode and I haven't given them any company details yet. I just wanted to see if accounts can still be created. While going through the control panel in this new account (the same as we've had for years in old account) but I can't see anything like the same contract and I don't see any mention of $100 platform fee or any support fee. Maybe they'd spring that on a new account holder when they want to go live.

[HBaergroy]

There are several things that bother me with FastSpring which might not bother you:
...
For instance web storefront, the one similar to MyCommerce/2checkout, doesn't keep selected product if customer goes back to our site, so they can't add multiple products. It's possible there are ways around it with some JS, but it doesn't work out of the box.

Incorrect. Add the "data-continuous" flag.

Out of the box. See https://fastspringexamples.com/store-bu ... -overview/