About Google Checkout

Google Checkout is a payment gateway and shopping cart system that allows your customers to buy products and services using their personal Google log-in credentials. This is a huge disadvantage for your customers that don’t have a Google account, requiring them to open a Google account just to buy from you.

Here’s how Google works. When your customer is ready to buy, they click a Google-checkout branded payment button and are brought to a Google branded payment page. When this occurs, your company’s brand is essentially disconnected from the transaction and your customers get the feeling that they’ve left your site.

Chargify addresses this issue in two ways.

1. Merchants have the option to integrate our API into their sites to create a seamless payment experience.
   
2. Or they can link to their hosted payment page. Hosted payment pages can be custom branded, giving your customers the impression that they haven’t left your site.

Next, Google processes their payment information, validates the transaction, and transfers the payment into your merchant bank account. When your customer’s view their credit card statement the charge is marked as coming from Google and not your company as the merchant. This makes you look unprofessional, decreases your brand equity, and will most likely increase the number of charge backs your receive. Google makes it really easy to get paid for one-time transactions but what does it offer in terms of recurring billing for growing subscription based businesses?

Not much. Google Checkout is inadequate for Web 2.0 and SaaS companies for a few different reasons. Its first downfall is the lack of any subscription management tools. It simply allows you to define a price and set an interval at which to bill that price. Chargify can create an unlimited number of product families, with multiple subscription plans. You can setup free trials, create add-ons, and define the frequency at which you’d like to bill your customers. You control every aspect of how your customers get billed.

Google’s second downfall is its lack of analysis and billing intelligence tools. It doesn’t help you learn from your billing. It does not track sign ups, trends in revenue, or cancellations. Chargify’s robust reporting system analyzes your billing and shows you the key operational metrics you need to make key business decisions. It shows you how your business has performed over time and how to make it perform better in the future.

In the interest of full disclosure, Google’s recurring billing functionality is currently in beta. In addition, use of recurring billing is limited to those who choose to integrate the Google Checkout API into their websites. Google’s definition of recurring billing is: “charge customers on a regular basis without additional input from your customer.” At Chargify, we believe growing Web 2.0 and SaaS companies deserve more tools, more control, and easier integration with their billing system.

Cost

Google Checkout has a tiered-percentage fee structure. They take a tiered percentage of each transaction and a flat rate of 30 cents on top of that (for every transaction). They base the percentage on how much revenue your application is generating. The lower your revenue, the higher the percentage they take.

How is Chargify Different?

• Provides robust reporting tools that help you analyze your billing data to make key business decisions.
• Works with a variety of merchant gateways so you can shop around for the best rate
• Merchants have the choice of either integrating our API or sending customers to a custom-branded payment page. Customers will never feel like they’re leaving your site.
• Chargify never charges transaction fees or setup fees and has simple flat-rate billing plans. Chargify also support billing an unlimited number of customers.
• Chargify customers can setup and test different freemium pricing models and make changes without affecting customers who’ve already signed up.
• Your customer’s see your company name on their credit card statement as the Merchant of Record