Avangate

Avangate is a payment merchant software as a service which allows you to sell products or services securely from your website or ecommerce store online. We are currently doing research into the best long term payment merchant for our start up. There is an API available to use with Avangate so you have the option to integrate your own software or third party software directly which is cool. You also have solid performance reporting and a good amount of flexibility with your account including a robust test environment which is always a key feature in my opinion. It's most assuring to have products thoroughly tested prior to launch I know of which I speak though not of my own accord but through clients who preferred the do it yourself approach without much training. Which is fine but there wasn't a sandbox option for this person or I would have suggested this certainly. There are three plans available. The first is 3.99% of each transaction plus $0.99 as well. This covers all your payment processing and merchant account fees. It enables you to get to market quite quickly and sell via Visa, Mastercard and Paypal globally which is good. It includes recurring subscription pricing should you need it. Fraud and risk management and email or live chat support is included. And you can sell in USD or EUR so there's a couple of choices of currency to start. The next plan seems like the best value. For an addition 1% for a total of 4.99% per transaction including payment processing and merchant account fees plus two dollars and fifty cents. Or 8% plus two and a half bucks per transaction. The difference being per transaction or fixed price commission for Avangate. There is a calculator available to help you make the best choice and earn the most revenue so that helps. Though you get access to an affiliate management program software out of the box I believe with this level as well. So that would be the main reason for the higher percentage commission given in order to cover this cost. Though they also have a pool of over fifty thousand affiliates which can potentially help you earn affiliate income from your product launch. The next plan up is there premium plan and requires a call to discuss custom requirements though there is multi-channel ecommerce selling available from their enterprise level platform meaning best suited to larger companies with multiple locations within a single ecommerce instance. I have read support is both great and poor in the sense they had a serious API issue and which went on for four weeks longer than stated and then the company didn't issue an apology, though this was the large minority of reviews in my research. I was pleasantly surprised to find the overwhelmingly large percentage of Avangate users are very happy. And that in itself is quite rare among payment merchants generally speaking.

The fees are a bit higher than most other payment merchants according to my research but they seem to have really happy customers as well as a reliable, flexible platform. While the affiliate management software and pool of potential affiliates are appealing options as well as the robust testing environment so these items could certainly justify the cost.

Avangate is nice option to consider for our start up. We are still surveying the entire market to learn the best for our particular needs long term including future expansion into the United States from Canada. And Avangate has all of this covered. The platform has a lot of flexibility. The features and functionality are well refined and easy enough for someone relatively savvy to use even if you are not a programmer. The lowest of their plan would require a developer if you wanted some of the features in the upgraded plans but didn't want to make the switch officially so there's another potential cost to consider. But all in all I definitely recommend learning whether this system is for you with a closer look.