Stripe offers a payment infrastructure for the Internet, enabling payment acceptance, payouts, and financial processes automation. It’s a reliable partner in payment processing, which is why we used Stripe to create Easycart. We believe Stripe is currently the best payment tool globally—offering the highest possible security level, global operations, and multiple payment methods in various currencies. Stripe is an ideal solution for large enterprises with advanced development teams. Stripe Checkout and Easycart, however, are suitable for smaller businesses and online creators looking for ready-to-use solutions.
Stripe Checkout, one of several products in Stripe’s portfolio, is a ready-made payment form that can be embedded directly on your website. You can also use it as a stand-alone payment page. Stripe Checkout and Easycart both fall into the same tool category - they facilitate online payments and are easy to implement. If all you need is a straightforward way to accept online payments, Stripe Checkout fits the bill. But if you’re after a more all-encompassing solution, one that offers a robust set of features for managing online sales - think marketing tools and product access management - Easycart could be your go-to.
With Easycart, you get the best of both worlds - Stripe’s top-notch payment infrastructure coupled with a wealth of our custom features. If you’re mulling over whether Easycart could be a worthy alternative to Stripe Checkout, this article should clear the air. :)
Full checkout customization
The appearance of your shopping cart is pivotal to the purchasing process. If a potential customer lands on your transaction page ready to buy, make it easy for them!
Easycart
With Easycart, you can create a cart that perfectly aligns with your brand. You can add a logo and customize fonts, background color, text and link colors, and even colors of a specific product variant - such as the color of the frame of an inactive variant or its price. Need more? With Easycart, you can also change your cart’s look using CSS. Plus, you have full control over the appearance of the “pay” button—you can set any text to encourage payment completion.
Right in the product panel, you can activate fields for phone numbers or addresses, and add other optional fields for customers to complete. Plus, you can include any custom info to display in the cart footer.
Stripe Checkout
Stripe Checkout provides basic cart customization options: you can add a logo, pick colors, accents, buttons, and a background, as well as select fonts and shapes. However, CSS customization isn’t an option. That feature is available in Stripe Elements, but it’s an extra paid tool. Also, you can’t introduce your own payment-encouraging CTA, though you can opt for one of three available price table options: schedule time, contact, or book a demo.
Native integrations and automation
You probably use a bunch of tools that make your workday smoother. That’s awesome! No matter the size of your business, there’s no need to do everything by hand. Integrations and automations are here to simplify processes and save you time.
Easycart
With Easycart, you can set up integrations or automations right in the vendor panel. Plus, you can dispatch cart data to webhooks to pull off even the most advanced scenarios using tools like Make or Zapier. We’re constantly refreshing our list of native integrations, which includes big names like ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, MailerLite, GetResponse, HubSpot, Circle, Discord, Kajabi, and WebToLearn. You can scope out the full list of currently available native integrations on Easycart here.
To make your job as simple as can be, we’ve carved out a special “automation” section where you’ll find a menu with the most common events. On the list, you’ll spot actions such as order completed, subscription canceled, access expires in 3 days, or product assigned to a customer. You can leverage these to craft automatic actions based on your pre-established integrations. And if you’re scratching your head over how to automate certain processes, just give us a shout! Our team can whip up suitable automation scenarios for you or lend a hand with configuration.
Stripe Checkout
To integrate Stripe Checkout with other tools, you must use the Stripe App Marketplace. There you’ll find apps to install, some of which have user interface extensions available on the Stripe Checkout panel. You can sync up with HubSpot or pick from a handful of email marketing platforms like Mailchimp. Mail integration is doable through MailerBuddy, an app whipped up by an independent developer. Heads up, though - this is an extra paid solution, and if your email list keeps growing, you’ll be shelling out at least $10-$15 a month (and that’s just for 50 new subscribers!).
The Stripe App Marketplace also offers 6 affiliate apps, but each one comes with its own price tag, e.g., impact.com will set you back $500 a month. Over on Easycart, you can create an unlimited number of affiliate links and track reports directly in the vendor panel.
Just a note, though - adding many apps may make your payment system more complex and trickier to manage. Moreover, while the Stripe’s app list is quite extensive, it’s missing a few key players like Discord, Circle, or Pipedrive.
Digital downloads and content gating
If you’re a digital creator selling your products online, you certainly expect that your products will quickly and smoothly reach buyers after purchase. And your customers? They’re itching for instant access to their new products.
Easycart
On Easycart, you can attach a digital product in PDF or ZIP format (up to 100MB), which will be instantly available to the customer post-purchase - on the thank you page, via an email link, and in the client panel. Delivering a product that automatically lands in your customers’ laps is as easy as uploading it during cart configuration. You can also upload and assign different files to individual price variants.
With the “login wall” feature, you can securely gate access to your products on a chosen page. Each visitor is automatically verified - if they’ve made a purchase and are logged into Easycart, they’ll be directed straight to the product page. If not, we’ll present them with a login window featuring your logo. Authorized folks can conveniently log in using a password or a magic link sent to their email. Everyone else will be rerouted to the cart, where they can buy access to the product.
Stripe Checkout
If you whip up a product in Stripe Checkout, regrettably, there’s no option to attach a file. You can only upload a photo (JPG or PNG, max 2MB). If you’re looking to deliver an e-book, video file, or grant access to a course or community, you’ll need to use another tool or resort to manually sending files if you hit a snag.
Price and promotion management
Many factors sway the purchase decision, and price and promotion are key players. Having the flexibility to manage prices and tweak them on the fly to suit specific situations is a convenience you won’t want to pass up.
Easycart
When it comes to pricing and promotions, Easycart has you covered with a slew of handy features, including: dynamic pricing, time-limited offers with a countdown timer, striking out the old price to showcase the new one, hiding price variants, prioritizing net price, coupons, and discounts. With Easycart, you can hawk the same product at varying prices without having to clone the offer. Just head over to the product panel, under the sharing tab. There, you’ll find the “Share at price…” option, where you can input your desired price. Easy peasy! You can also enable the “Pay What You Want” option, letting your customers fork over as much as they choose for a product or service.
Stripe Checkout
Stripe Checkout does offer similar options, but the distinctions are clear. While you can include price variants and share links, a separate price table is necessary to furnish a payment page with chosen product variants. Stripe doesn’t allow for hiding selected price variants either. It does offer a “Pay What You Want” feature, along with the ability to apply coupons and discounts. However, it lacks a countdown timer for promotions and doesn’t have an “old price” function like Easycart does.
Customer reviews on the checkout page
Reviews pack a punch: they’re a potent tool to boost sales. It’s a return-on-investment that’s quick to pay off! But, gathering and leveraging them can be a bit of a hassle. Good thing Easycart has got your back on this one.
Easycart
Understanding the weight of what others say about your products, we’ve enabled showcasing reviews right on the cart page. This is made possible through Easylove—one of the nifty tools in our Easytools suite. Pairing Easycart with Easylove helps automate and streamline the customer review collection process. You can flaunt them as a wall of love at checkout, or anywhere on your site. Plus, you can import reviews from Google and sort them by date or star count.
Stripe Checkout
Stripe’s main gig is handling payments, and it doesn’t offer support for collecting reviews. That’s a real bummer considering… 89% of customers peek at reviews before they buy! (source: Trustpilot “The critical role of reviews in Internet trust”, 2020). Product reviews wield a ton of influence and can ramp up conversions, so they’re worth leveraging. If you’re on Stripe Checkout, you’re left to your own devices when it comes to review collection. You could scout for a dedicated tool, but that’s going to cost you in both money and time.
What else will you find on Easycart?
Easycart packs a punch with features that Stripe Checkout lacks. You’ll love the referral links, a bonus avenue to reach customers through partners. The “Referrals” tab dishes out detailed sales stats for each partner.
Easycart also offers cross-selling and upselling, letting you suggest extra or pricier product versions. Cross-sells pop up on the payment confirmation page and can be snagged with a single click. Upselling, on the other hand, is presented in the cart as a product variant. With Stripe Checkout, upselling is solely for recurring payments. You also can’t show product availability, buy for others, create waitlists, or recover failed payments. The latter feature can be found in Stripe Billing (at an additional cost), and at present, abandoned cart emails are only being tested in the US.
Easycart also serves up a customer panel, where your customers can access their products, handle subscriptions and payment methods, download invoices, request refunds or tweak invoice details. Stripe Checkout doesn’t have a customer portal, though such info can be found on the product description page. Stripe Billing’s customer portal is, on the other hand, limited to managing payment methods and subscriptions (like canceling a subscription or changing a plan), and downloading invoices. Sure, the customer can update account info and check payment history, but they can’t access purchased digital products.
Easycart: simple and effective online sales solution
The features we’ve highlighted are just a glimpse of what Easycart brings to the table. While Stripe is an excellent payment solution, Stripe Checkout might not be enough to build customer trust, boost conversions, or streamline processes. To achieve that, you need a toolkit that offers robust support without demanding much from you - that’s where Easycart comes in.
We’ve spent countless hours to crafting a system that effortlessly and swiftly sells digital products, including subscriptions. Our well-structured post-purchase journey includes confirmation emails, access assignments, CRM additions, and more. Plus, we’ve built payment automations for invoice issuing, return processing, newsletter subscriptions, sales notifications on Slack, and beyond!
Easycart is also a component of the larger Easytools ecosystem, designed to empower digital creators in their online endeavors. Our suite of tools allows you to generate terms & conditions or privacy policies, add an FAQ section to your website, create cookie notifications, gather and showcase reviews, or even build your own platform for video courses. All of this, at one price, with zero coding!
We designed our shopping cart with both the buyer and seller in mind. For buyers, we’ve made the process as straightforward as possible, offering a superb front-end experience. For sellers, we handle time-consuming details, helping you sell more effectively and boost conversions.
Still deciding between Stripe Checkout and Easycart? Give our platform a spin and discover firsthand how Easycart’s extensive capabilities can drive your business growth.