Retail Order Purchase Buy Now Buttons Cart Cost Comparision:
TrepStar cart fees vs. other carts:
TrepStar charges a very low monthly fee of $9.95 per month. We only charge this fee if you have sales. We do not require a credit card to sign up. Only once you start selling product do we deduct any monthly fee.| Monthly Fees | Purpose | TrepStar Purchase Page/Cart | Other Carts / Merchant Services | TrepStar Savings |
| Shopping Cart Fee: | Facilitate eCommerce | $9.95 | $30.00 - $199.00 | $45.05 |
| Merchant Services: | Required to accept credit cards and connect accounts such as Paypal, Stripe, Square, or your merchant account. | $0.00 (included) | $30.00 - $90.00 | $45.00 |
| TrepStar Fee Savings: | $90.05 |
| Transaction and other Fees | Purpose | TrepStar Purchase Page/Cart | Other Carts / Merchant Services | TrepStar Savings |
| Base Transaction Fee: | Discourage low purchase price (You may not realize low priced transactions are costing you a lot in fees). | $0.00 | $0.40 - $0.60 | $0.49 |
| Process Fee %: | Visa/MC/Discover/PayPal/Stripe/Square charge to use their payment method | 5.0% (with zero transaction fees) | 2.8% - 4.8% (plus transaction fee of $0.49 ) | Depends on your retail price but products under $25 costs you less when using TrepStar. |
| Refund Fee: | Pay for increased customer support costs | $15.00 | $25.00 | $10.00 |
| Charge-back Fee: | Pay for increased customer support costs | $30.00 | $30.00 | $0.00 |
What are my net proceeds?
| Example TrepStar Retail Order Page Net Proceeds Calculation: | ||
| If you set your product retail price to $25.00, your TrepStar retail order net proceeds would be: | ||
| Retail Price: | $25.00 | The retail price you set from within your project. We charge the customer this plus shipping/handling. |
| Shipping/Handling: | n/a | Your customer chooses a shipping method during the purchase process. We add that amount to your retail price to cover our shipping/handling costs so you don't pay them (your customer does). Would you like to reduce the S/H costs that are charged to your customer? |
| Manufacture Cost: | -$2.14 | The amount we charge you, the publisher, to manufacture the product (as most commonly configured). |
| Processing Fee: | -$1.25 | 5.00% of $25.00. This covers the fees we are charged by our merchant provider. |
| Net Proceeds: | $21.61 | This is the amount TrepStar will owe you. You pay manufacture cost, and processing fee. Your customer is charged extra to cover all S&H. |
Are you selling a multi disc set? Click here for net proceeds for multi disc sets.
Definitions and Key:
- Shopping Cart Fees: eCommerce shopping cart systems like Shopify, SamCart, ThriveCart, WooCommerce, and others charge monthly rates of $30.00 - $199.00 per month. They charge your credit card each month regardless if you're selling product or not. The TrepStar retail order purchase gateway/cart does not charge you those high fees. It is only $9.95, and we only charge this if you have a positive retail order balance (you've sold product). Because of this, we don't require a credit card to use our service.
- Merchant Services: When you decide on a shopping cart service, you then need to connect to merchant services. This is $30-$90 depending on how many services you use. You have to sign up with a merchant provider like PayPal, Stripe, Square, or an actual merchant account of your own. Sometimes, you have to sign a long term contracts for merchant accounts. Merchant services allow you to actually accept the credit card purchases (Visa,MC,Amex/Discover). Shopping Cart fees are separate. The TrepStar Retail Purchase Gateway accepts all major credit cards (Visa/MasterCard/Discover and PayPal) on your behalf, and does not charge you anything extra for this service, and there are NO commitments.
Transaction and other Fees:
- Base Transaction Fee: All merchant account services like authorize.net, square, PayPal etc. charge a base transaction fee of around $0.49. The TrepStar Retail Purchase Gateway does not charge you this base fee in order to keep things simple. For lower priced products, when you add the transaction fee with the process fee, it's more than our flat rate.
- Process Fee: All merchant account services and PayPal charge a percentage fee for the total amount collected. You are charged this fee because that's what Visa/MC/Amex/Discover/PayPal charge you to use their method of payment. These fees are typically 2.9%-4.8% of the total amount collected for each transaction. The TrepStar Retail Purchase Gateway charges a simple flat 5.0% transaction fee but we have no base transaction fee. For example, if you charge $25.00 or less for your product, the TrepStar fees are lower (some examples below). We get charged these fees and we pass them to you.
- Refund Fee: All merchant account services and PayPal charge a refund fees. When a customer requests a refund, it's a lot of manual work. We attempt to refund only the retail price, not shipping and handling whenever possible. When you, the merchant, lose a dispute with a customer, the credit card companies and PayPal refund the purchase price from your account and charge a refund fee. If tracking was used, and we can show it was delivered, sometimes we can avoid a refund situation. TrepStar only charges $15.00. Before a refund is issued, TrepStar has to respond to several email messages sent back and forth between your customer and card services (Visa/MC/Discover) or PayPal. We attempt to remedy the situation to reduce refunds.
- Charge-Back Fee: All merchant account services and PayPal have charge-back fees. When a customer disputes a charge, it's called a charge-back. This is different from a refund where the customer did order the product but later changes their mind. Usually, a charge-back is the result of fraud (stolen credit cards). Most of these customers never knew of your product and only saw a bill on their credit card statement a month later. They dispute the charge with their bank, and we are told the purchase was a result of fraud. In this case we are forced to allow the refund. When you, the merchant, lose a dispute, the credit card companies refund the purchase price from your account AND charge a charge-back fee of usually $25.00 or more. Because TrepStar collected the money on your behalf, we attempt to defend the dispute which takes time and resources. TrepStar charges $30.00 (which is what we get charged from our merchant services). Before a charge-back is issued, TrepStar has to respond to several email messages sent back and forth between your customer and card services (Visa/MC/Discover) or PayPal. We attempt to remedy the situation to reduce charge-backs.
- Withdrawing from TrepStar: You will not be charged any additional fees when we pay your net proceeds via Paypal. In other words, we are charged the fees when we collect money on your behalf (fees listed above). We pass those fees onto you by reducing your net proceeds. However, when we pay your net proceeds, there are no additional transaction fees. We transfer money to your PayPal account and you are not charged anything extra so your net proceeds listed on the TrepStar reports are what you will actually receive.
Other Shopping Carts & Fee Examples:
Process fee: With traditional shopping cart / merchant services you pay 3.7% (on average) or more plus a base transaction fee of about $0.49. They may quote a low price of 2.9% but that is only for certain visa debit cards in the USA. Amex or international cards are usually 4.4% or more. Your average would likely be around 3.5% to 3.7% in process fees.- For example, for any other shopping cart system (Shopify, ThriveCart, PayPal buttons etc.) if you had a $25.00 retail purchase price, the fees would be something comparable to $0.49 (base transaction) + 3.7% of the total $25.00 retail charge. This is $0.49 + $0.93 for a total of $1.42.
- TrepStar charges about the same or less (depending on the retail price you set) because we don't charge the base transaction fee. We charge you a flat 5.0% processing fee with no transaction fee. Our charge for a $0.93 product retail price is $1.25 (which is less than you would pay if you collected the money using your own shopping cart).
- If you choose an even lower retail purchase price of $10.00 , the TrepStar savings are even better. We charge $0.50 on a $10.00 retail price. PayPal and other merchant services would charge you 0.49 (transaction fee) + 0.37 (process fee) which is a total of $0.86 compared to our lower charge of $0.50.
Monthly Fee: You could easily pay $150.00 or more for monthly fees if you use a traditional shopping cart / merchant service.
- You would have two(2) $20.00 products per week to just cover your costs using a traditional eCommerce cart solution (Shopify, ThriveCart etc).
- With TrepStar, just sell one product a month and you're covering the fee.
- The TrepStar monthly fee of only $9.95 is charged on or near the first of each month only if you have sales and net proceeds.
Why are the TrepStar fees so low?
- TrepStar exists to help you self publish your product, and give you the most economical way to do that. Our goal is to break even on our internal fees, fraud losses, refunds and charge-back fees, as well as account maintenance overhead and support costs.