I'm CEO of Shopify. What's wrong with our USPS Calculator?

Many many many things, least of which is that it's not programmable. We can't set items that can go in flat rate boxes. We can't have "Free Shipping*" shipping, which is free shipping in the US and the equivalent discount in other countries, and other programmable shipping rates.

For that you don't even need their rate APIs. All your rates are flatrates which you can simply set?

APIs for building your own shipping system are actually coming some time next year but as you said, it's all about free shipping.

You're right in that I don't need a rate API, but Shopify needs a shipping API. Something where I can say "6 shirt or 4 shirts and a jacket is flat rate, but 2 shirts and a poster is not because of the tube"

Why does Shopify charge a % off each transaction... when they are not the payment proccessor or gateway or issuing bank or aggregator??

we don't. It's capped at $169 a month which is nothing given what Shopify does. There is a transaction charge on the lower plans but this may change.

Hi Xal, I'm on your site right now and it says you charge a transaction fee. http://imgur.com/eXbZp - So essentially I'm getting dinged ~2.9% from Stripe and another 2% + software fees from Shopify... effective transaction fee ~5%.

Cant wait till internet tax + state tax takes effect. :)

His point is that you make it seem like there is no choice but to pay a fee. As your own screenshot shows, this is not the case, the premium plan offered for $179/mo charges no transaction fee. The cheaper ones do because, duh, they have to pay their bills one way or the other. The exercise is left to the reader as to which plan makes the most sense economically for your company based on the amount of business you're doing. But you're guaranteed to never be paying more than $179/mo in transaction fees unless you suck at picking the right plan (and I assume they're easy to switch between).

That's what he said - there is a transaction fee on the lower plans, but when you reach $179 it'd be cheaper to upgrade to the unlimited plan which has no transaction fee.

I love it when a CEO participates in online discussions as it is the sign a company that cares. Just one thing about your post... It sounds really defensive. Maybe just me, but all the good will of participating in the conversation was lost. Maybe a "Hi, I'm CEO and love getting feedback. What's wrong with our USPS Calculator?". :)

FWIW, I didn't get any sense of defensiveness from the question - just a direct, succinct, and honest question.

Yes, I acknowledge it could be a cultural thing or just me that saw it that way.

Hehe, well I'm German. Terseness is somehow build in my firmware. Fair feedback though. Thank you!

Ha, I feel like I'm in a Reddit thread. Ask the man anything!

I'm a happy customer, a shopify partner, and a developer on your platform. Thank you for an excellent experience in every possible way.

I'm actually very lost regarding your reasons for preferring PayPal to Stripe (Except USPS integration, which is clear and I know nothing about).

"I'm going with Paypal just because it's so much easier and cheaper."

Really?

For me, integration w/ PayPal's IPN's took DAYS and still wasn't sturdy. Stripe? 3 hours the first time, 30 minutes the second.

Admittedly, PayPal is marginally cheaper with heavy volume. I'm not at that point and, quite frankly, it would probably never be worthwhile for me to switch due to cost of said dev time.

But this $27 module? I don't know what requires that but I've never needed it.

I tried PayPal on one project and switched that site to Stripe within a week of them launching in Canada. Zero regrets.

How does an IPN integration take days? It's just a webhook, which most every 3rd party processor has copied. You take a POST and send it back to validate it. It can't be more than a few dozen lines of code at most, and there is a decade of libraries available for every possible language, framework and cart that turn it into a single function call.

I've never found anything easier to integrate, and I've done PP Pro, Authnet SIM, Authnet AIM, Authnet CIM, Quantum Gateway, Google, Amazon, Recurly, Spreedly, Spreedly Core...

I'm not the OP, but PayPal is not only cheaper (that .7% adds up fast), but without it I'd lose more than 10% of my customer base, and that's very significant money. Credit cards with AVS are just not readily available, or socially common, everywhere in the world. Stripe is a way to accept credit cards. PayPal is a way to accept payments from 190 countries. That's not the same thing.

PayPal's "sandbox" environment is uniquely torturous to work with. It didn't take us days, but it did seem like someone had gone out of the way to make it annoying.

This is what I like least about PayPal. Coinbase, for example, makes it dead-simple to test their IPN-like callback. All you do is paste the URL into a text box and send away. If PayPal had that it would have made the integration much easier to accomplish.

This sandbox was definitely the pain point. There was no ability to test properly so it was effectively launch and then test live like mad. Just a mess really. A lot of documentation fell short as well.

I got the impression the OP isn't writing their own integration, but bolting together pieces.

There are many more products (CMSs etc.) out there which include PayPal integration (or have it readily available with free plugins) than those including Stripe -- for now, anyway.

Stripe has something similar to IPN? Many users have been asking us to build integration with Stripe so they can use have better fraud prevention but I didn't see an easy way to do this. If they have something like IPN, it might work.

I think you'll be pleased with PayPal. Their APIs and IPN aren't a pleasure to work with but I've got nothing but good stories about working with PayPal's customer support.

Something to keep in mind: If you suddenly start doing volume through PayPal they will flag your account for closer inspection and that may involve them freezing your ability to do anything with existing and incoming funds. It'll likely last a few weeks and then it's over. (Though since it doesn't sound like you're selling digital goods this may be a problem for you.)

Other than having to deal with that issue -- which is usually the horror story that people love to tell or reference -- I've been perfectly happy with them. They're Johnny on the spot and I can call them any time to speak to someone. Because they keep such a close eye on things, I've come to expect their calls whenever anything out of the norm occurs. It's great.

I love PayPal.

By the way, have you tried Yahoo Merchant Solutions (formerly Yahoo Store)?

I sense sarcasm

I wasn't being sarcastic at all.

How is paypal easier than Stripe? I just signed up for Stripe and was shocked at how easy it was. I thought surely there had to be more steps, more ID verification, etc. I've only done 3 transactions but it was very smooth. I will never go back to paypal for anything other than peer to peer transfers.

Try http://postmaster.io. Its like Stripe for postage.

Shopify integrates with stripe...